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LAMARCK. 


THE 


POPULAE   SCIENCE 


MON"THLY. 


CONDUCTED  BY  E.   L,  AND  W.  J.    YOUMANS. 


VOL.  XXIV. 

NOVEMBER,   1883,   TO  APRIL,    1884. 


NEW  YOEK : 
D.     APPLETON     AND     COMPANY, 

1,  3,  AND  5  BOND  STREET. 

1884. 


IIGHT,  1884, 

bt  d.  appletobt  and  company. 


2-^ 


THE 

POPULAR    SCIENCE 
MONTHLY. 


NOVEMBER,  1883. 


"THE    GEEEK    QUESTION"* 

By  JOSIAH  PAESONS  COOKE, 

PROFESSOR   OF   CHEMISTRY  IN   HARVARD   COLLEGE. 

THE  question  whether  the  college  faculty  ought  to  continue  to 
insist  on  a  limited  study  of  the  ancient  Greek  language,  as  an 
essential  prerequisite  of  receiving  the  A.  B.  degree,  has  been  under 
consideration  at  Cambridge  for  a  long  time  ;  and,  since  the  opinions 
of  those  with  whom  I  naturally  sympathize  have  been  so  greatly 
misrepresented  in  the  desultory  discussion  which  has  followed  Mr. 
Adams's  Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration,  I  am  glad  of  the  opportunity  to  say 
a  few  words  on  the  "  Greek  question." 

This  question  is  by  no  means  a  new  one.  For  the  last  ten  years 
it  has  been  under  discussion  at  most,  if  not  at  all,  of  the  great  univer- 
sities of  the  world  ;  and,  among  others,  the  University  of  Berlin,  which 
stands  in  the  very  front  rank,  has  already  conceded  to  what  we  may 
call  the  new  culture  all  that  can  reasonably  be  asked. 

Let  me  begin  by  asserting  that  the  responsible  advocates  of  an 
expansion  of  the  old  academic  system  do  not  wish  in  the  least  degree 
to  diminish  the  study  of  the  Greek  language,  the  Greek  literature,  or 
the  Greek  art.  On  the  contrary,  they  wish  to  encourage  such  studies 
by  every  legitimate  means.  For  myself  I  believe  that  the  old  classical 
culture  is  the  best  culture  yet  known  for  the  literary  professions  ;  and 
among  the  literary  professions  I  include  both  law  and  divinity. 
Fifty  years  ago  I  should  have  said  that  it  was  the  only  culture  worthy 
of  the  recognition  of  a  university.  But  we  live  in  the  present,  not  in 
the  past,  and  a  half -century  has  wholly  changed  the  relations  of  human 

*  Remarks  made  at  the  dimier  of  the  Harvard  Club  of  Rhode  Island,  Newport,  Au- 
gust 25,  1883. 

VOL.  XXIV. — 1 


2  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

knowledge.  Regard  the  change  with  favor  or  disfavor,  as  you  please, 
the  fact  remains  that  the  natural  sciences  have  become  the  chief  fac- 
tors of  our  modern  civilization  ;  and — which  is  the  important  point 
in  this  connection — they  have  given  rise  to  new  professions  which 
more  and  more  every  year  are  opening  occupations  to  our  educated 
men.  The  professions  of  the  chemist,  of  the  mining  engineer,  and  of 
the  electrician,  which  have  entirely  grown  up  during  the  lifetime  of 
many  here  present,  are  just  as  "learned"  as  the  older  professions,  and 
are  recognized  as  such  by  every  university.  Moreover,  the  old  pro- 
fession of  medicine,  which,  when,  as  formerly,  wholly  ruled  by  author- 
ity or  traditions,  might  have  been  classed  with  the  literary  professions, 
has  come  to  rest  on  a  purely  scientific  basis. 

In  a  word,  the  distinction  between  the  literary  and  the  scientific 
professions  has  become  definite  and  wide,  and  can  no  longer  be  ig- 
nored in  our  systems  of  education.  Now,  while  they  would  accord  to 
their  classical  associates  the  right  to  decide  what  is  the  best  culture 
for  a  literary  calling,  the  scientific  experts  claim  an  equal  right  to 
decide  what  is  the  best  culture  for  a  scientific  calling.  Ever  since  the 
revival  of  Greek  learning  in  Europe  the  literary  scholars  have  been 
working  out  an  admirable  system  of  education.  In  this  system  most 
of  us  have  been  trained.  I  would  pay  it  all  honor,  and  I  would  here 
bear  my  testimony  to  the  acknowledged  facts  that  in  no  departments 
of  our  own  university  have  the  methods  of  teaching  been  so  much  im- 
proved during  the  last  few  years  as  in  the  classical.  I  should  resist 
as  firmly  as  my  classical  colleagues  any  attempt  to  emasculate  the 
well-tried  methods  of  literary  culture,  and  I  have  no  sympathy  what- 
ever with  the  opinion  that  the  study  of  the  modern  languages  as  polite 
accomplishments  can  in  any  degree  take  the  place  of  the  critical  study 
of  the  great  languages  of  antiquity.  To  compare  German  literature 
with  the  Greek,  or,  what  is  worse,  French  literature  with  the  Latin,  as 
means  of  culture,  implies,  as  it  seems  to  me,  a  f orgetfulness  of  the  true 
spirit  of  literary  culture. 

But  literature  and  science  are  very  different  things,  and  "  what  is 
one  man's  meat  may  be  another  man's  poison,"  and  the  scientific 
teachers  claim  the  right  to  direct  the  training  of  their  own  men.  It 
is  not  their  aim  to  educate  men  to  clothe  thought  in  beautiful  and 
suggestive  language,  to  weave  argument  into  correct  and  persuasive 
forms,  or  to  kindle  enthusiasm  by  eloquence.  But  it  is  their  object 
to  prepare  men  to  unravel  the  mysteries  of  the  universe,  to  probe  the 
secrets  of  disease,  to  direct  the  forces  of  nature,  and  to  develop  the 
resources  of  this  earth.  These  last  aims  may  be  less  spiritual,  lower 
on  your  arbitrary  intellectual  scale,  if  you  please,  than  the  first ;  but 
they  are  none  the  less  legitimate  aims  which  society  demands  of  edu- 
cated men  :  and  all  we  claim  is  that  the  astronomers,  the  physicists, 
the  chemists,  the  biologists,  the  physicians,  and  the  engineers,  who 
have  shown  that  they  are  able  to  answer  these  demands  of  society. 


''THE  GREEK  QUESTION:'  3 

should  be  intrusted  with  the  training  of  those  who  are  to  follow  them 
in  the  same  work. 

Now,  such  is  the  artificial  condition  of  our  schools,  and  so  com- 
pletely are  they  ruled  by  prescription,  that,  when  we  attempt  to  lay 
out  a  proper  course  of  training  for  the  scientific  professions,  we  are 
met  at  the  very  outset  by  the  Greek  question.  Greek  is  a  requisition 
for  admission  to  college,  and  the  only  schools  in  which  a  scientific 
training  can  be  had  do  not  teach  Greek,  and,  what  is  more,  can  not  be 
expected  to  teach  it. 

This  brings  us  to  the  root  of  the  whole  difficulty  with  which  the 
teachers  of  natural  science  have  been  contending,  and  which  is  the 
cause  of  the  present  movement.  We  can  not  obtain  any  proper  scien- 
tific training  from  the  classical  schools,  and  the  present  requisitions  for 
admission  to  college  practically  exclude  students  prepared  at  any 
others.  At  Cambridge  we  have  vainly  tried  to  secure  some  small 
measure  of  scientific  training  in  the  classical  schools  :  first,  by  establish- 
ing summer  courses  in  practical  science  especially  designed  for  train- 
ing teachers,  and  chiefly  resorted  to  by  such  persons  ;  and,  secondly, 
by  introducing  some  science  requisitions  into  the  admission  examina- 
tions. But  the  attempt  has  been  an  utter  failure.  The  science  requi- 
sitions have  been  simply  "  crammed,"  and  the  result  has  been  worse 
than  useless  ;  because,  instead  of  securing  any  training  in  the  methods 
of  science,  it  has  in  most  cases  given  a  distaste  for  the  whole  subject. 
True  science-teaching  is  so  utterly  foreign  to  all  their  methods  that 
the  requisitions  have  merely  hampered  the  classical  schools,  and  the 
sooner  they  are  abandoned  the  better.  Both  the  methods  and  the 
spirit  of  literary  and  scientific  culture  are  so  completely  at  variance 
that  we  can  not  expect  them  to  be  successfully  united  in  the  same  pre- 
paratory school. 

We  look,  therefore,  to  entirely  different  schools  for  the  two  kinds 
of  preparation  for  the  university  which  modern  society  demands — 
schools  which,  for  the  want  of  better  distinctive  names,  we  may  call 
classical  and  scientific  schools.  In  the  classical  school  the  aim  should 
be,  as  it  has  always  been,  literary  culture,  and  the  end  should  be  that 
power  of  clothing  thought  in  words  which  awakens  thought.  Of 
course,  the  results  of  natural  science  must  to  a  certain  extent  be  taught ; 
for  even  literary  men  can  not  afford  to  be  wholly  ignorant  of  the  great 
powers  that  move  the  world.  But  the  natural  sciences  should  be 
studied  as  useful  knowledge,  not  as  a  discipline,  and  such  teaching 
should  not  be  permitted  in  the  least  degree  to  interfere  with  the  se- 
rious business  of  the  place.  In  the  scientific  school,  on  the  other  hand, 
while  language  must  be  taught,  it  should  be  taught  as  a  means,  not  as 
an  end.  The  educated  man  of  science  must  command  at  least  French 
and  German — and  for  the  present  a  limited  amount  of  Latin — as  well 
as  his  mother-tongue,  because  science  is  cosmopolitan.  But  these 
languages  should  be  acquired  as  tools,  and  studied  no  further  than  they 


4  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

are  essential  to  the  one  great  end  in  view,  that  knowledge  which  is 
the  essential  condition  of  the  power  of  observing,  interpreting,  and 
ruling  natural  phenomena. 

In  such  a  course  as  this  it  is  obvious  that  the  study  of  Greek  would 
have  no  place,  even  if  there  were  time  to  devote  to  it,  and  we  can  not 
alter  the  appointed  span  of  human  life,  even  out  of  respect  to  this 
most  honored  and  worthy  representative  of  the  highest  literary  cul- 
ture. Of  course,  no  one  will  question  that  the  scholar  who  can  coi^- 
mand  both  the  literary  and  the  scientific  culture  will  be  thereby  so 
much  the  stronger  and  more  useful  man  ;  and  certainly  let  us  give 
every  opportunity  to  the  "  double  firsts  "  to  cultivate  all  their  abilities, 
and  so  the  more  efficiently  to  benefit  the  world.  But  such  powers  are 
rare,  and  the  great  body  of  the  scientific  professions  must  be  made  up 
of  men  who  can  only  do  well  the  special  class  of  work  in  which  they 
have  been  trained  ;  and,  if  you  make  certain  formal  and  arbitrary 
requisitions,  like  a  small  amount  of  Greek,  obstacles  in  the  way  of 
their  advancement,  or  of  that  social  recognition  to  which  they  feel 
themselves  entitled  as  educated  men,  those  requisitions  must  neces- 
sarily be  slighted,  and  your  policy  will  give  rise  to  that  cry  of  "  fe- 
tich "  of  which  recently  we  have  heard  so  much. 

Now,  all  the  schools  which  prepare  students  for  Harvard  College 
are  classical  schools.  We  do  not  wish  to  alter  these  schools  in  any 
respect,  unless  to  make  them  more  thorough  in  their  special  work.  As 
I  have  already  said,  the  small  amount  of  study  of  natural  science  which 
we  have  forced  upon  them  has  proved  to  be  a  wretched  failure,  and 
the  sooner  this  hindrance  is  got  out  of  their  way  the  better.  We  do 
not  wish  to  alter  the  studies  of  such  schools  as  the  Boston  and  Rox- 
bury  Latin  Schools,  the  Exeter  and  Andover  Academies,  the  St.  Paul's 
and  the  St.  Mark's  Schools,  and  the  other  great  feeders  of  the  college. 
No — not  in  the  least  degree  !  We  do  not  ask  for  any  change  which 
in  our  opinion  will  diminish  the  number  of  those  coming  to  the  col- 
lege with  a  classical  preparation  by  a  single  man.  We  look  for  our 
scientific  recruits  to  wholly  different  and  entirely  new  sources.  For, 
although  we  think  that  there  are  many  students  now  coming  to  us 
through  the  classical  schools  who  would  run  a  better  chance  of  be- 
coming useful  men  if  they  were  trained  from  the  beginning  in  a 
different  way,  yet  such  is  the  social  prestige  of  the  old  classical 
schools  and' of  the  old  classical  culture  that,  whatever  new  relations 
might  be  established,  the  class  of  students  which  alone  we  now 
have  would,  I  am  confident,  all  continue  to  come  through  the  old 
channels. 

This  is  not  a  mere  opinion  ;  for  only  a  very  few  men  avail  them- 
selves of  the  limited  option  which  we  now  permit  at  the  entrance  ex- 
aminations— ^nine,  at  least,  out  of  ten,  offering  what  is  called  maximum 
in  classics. 

We  look,  then,  for  no  change  in  the  classical  schools.     Our  only 


''THE  GREEK   QUESTION:'  5 

expectation  is  to  affiliate  the  college  with  a  wholly  different  class  of 
schools,  which  will  send  us  a  wholly  different  class  of  students,  with 
wholly  different  aims,  and  trained  according  to  a  wholly  different 
method.  At  the  outset  we  shall  look  to  the  best  of  our  New  Eng- 
land high-schools  for  a  limited  supply  of  scientific  students,  and  hope 
by  constant  pressure  to  improve  the  methods  of  teaching  in  these 
schools,  as  our  literary  colleagues  have  within  ten  years  vastly  im- 
proved the  methods  in  the  classical  schools.  In  time  we  hope  to  bring 
about  the  establishment  of  special  academies  which  will  do  for  science- 
culture  what  Exeter  and  St.  Paul's  are  doing  for  classical  culture.  We 
expect  to  establish  a  set  of  requisitions  just  as  difficult  as  the  classical 
requisitions — only  they  will  be  requisitions  which  have  a  different  mo- 
tive, a  different  spirit,  and  a  different  aim  ;  and  all  we  ask  is,  that  they 
should  be  regarded  as  the  equivalents  of  the  classical  requisitions  so 
far  as  college  standing  is  concerned.  "We  do  not  at  once  expect  to 
draw  many  students  through  these  new  channels.  To  improve  meth- 
ods of  teaching  and  build  up  new  schools  is  a  work  of  years.  But 
we  have  the  greatest  confidence  that  in  time  we  shall  thus  be  able 
to  increase  very  greatly  both  the  clientage  and  the  usefulness  of  the 
university. 

Is  this  heresy  ?  Is  this  revolution  ?  Is  it  not  rather  the  scientific 
method  seeking  to  work  out  the  best  results  in  education  as  elsewhere 
by  careful  observation  and  cautious  experimenting,  unterrified  by  au- 
thority or  superstition  ?  Certainly,  the  philologist  must  respect  our 
method  ;  for  of  all  the  conquests  of  natural  science  none  is  more  re- 
markable than  its  conquest  of  the  philologists  themselves.  They  have 
adopted  the  scientific  methods  as  well  as  the  scientific  spirit  of  inves- 
tigation ;  but,  while  thus  widening  and  classifying  their  knowledge, 
they  have  rendered  the  critical  study  of  language  more  abstruse  and 
more  difficult ;  and  this  is  the  chief  reason  why  the  time  of  prepara- 
tion for  our  college  has  been  so  greatly  extended  during  the  last  twenty- 
five  years.  Nominally,  the  classical  schools  cover  no  more  ground  than 
formerly,  but  they  cultivate  that  ground  in  a  vastly  more  thorough  and 
scientific  way. 

These  increased  requirements  of  modem  literary  culture  suggest 
another  consideration,  which  we  can  barely  mention  on  this  occasion. 
How  long  will  the  condition  of  our  new  country  permit  its  youths  to 
remain  in  pupilage  until  the  age  of  twenty-three  or  twenty-four ;  on 
an  average  at  least  three  years  later  than  in  any  of  the  older  countries 
of  the  civilized  world  ?  It  is  all  very  well  that  every  educated  man 
should  have  a  certain  acquaintance  with  what  have  been  called  the 
"  humanities."  But  when  your  system  comes  to  its  present  results, 
and  demands  of  the  physician,  the  chemist,  and  the  engineer — whose 
birthright  is  a  certain  social  status,  which  by  accident  you  tempo- 
rarily control — that  he  shall  pass  fully  four  years  of  the  training  period 
of  his  life  upon  technicalities,  which,  however  important  to  a  literary 


6  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

man,  are  worthless  in  his  future  calling,  is  it  not  plain  that  your  con- 
servatism has  become  an  artificial  barrier  which  the  progress  of  society- 
must  sooner  or  later  sweep  away  ?  Is  it  not  the  part  of  wisdom,  how- 
ever much  pain  it  may  cost,  to  sacrifice  your  traditional  preferences 
gracefully  when  you  can  direct  the  impending  change,  and  not  to  wait 
until  the  rush  of  the  stream  can  not  be  controlled  ? 


mFLUEl^CE  OF  THE  EXYIEOJ^MEIS'T  OK  KELIGION. 

By  PB0FES30B  JAMES  T.  BIXBY. 

WHILE  religious  phenomena  are  in  some  respects  singularly  con- 
stant, they  are,  nevertheless,  as  noted  for  their  diversity. 
While  certain  essential  elements  are  common  to  almost  all  faiths,  on 
the  other  hand,  every  individual  faith  has  something  peculiar  to  itself. 
It  not  only  differs  in  some  respects  from  other  religions,  but,  as  we 
trace  down  its  history,  we  find  it  varying  from  itself. 

The  Hindoos,  Persians,  Greeks,  Romans,  Kelts,  Teutons,  and 
Slavs,  are  shown  by  philological  research  to  have  come  originally 
from  a  single  stock — the  primitive  Aryan.  Their  ancestors  originally 
dwelt  together  in  a  common  home  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Caspian 
Sea  ;  and  in  this  ancient  time  their  religion  was,  probably,  one  and 
the  same  faith,  i.  e.,  in  substance.  Yet  how  widely  diverse  have  the 
faiths  of  these  nations  come  to  be,  in  the  four  to  five  thousand  years 
since  that  ancient  home  was  little  by  little  deserted  !  How  has  this 
diversity  come  about  ?  What  are  the  forces  or  influences  that  dif- 
ferentiate religions  ?  We  may  divide  them  roughly  into  two  kinds  : 
1.  The  external  variables.  2.  The  internal  variables.  In  this  paper 
I  shall  try  to  sketch  the  first ;  i.  e.,  those  environing  influences  about 
man,  about  a  special  race  or  nation,  that  tend  to  produce  variation 
in  the  course  of  the  development  of  religion. 

1.  I  would  mention  the  varied  influences  of  outward  nature.  The 
diverse  phenomena  of  the  world  naturally  diversify  the  direction  and 
character  of  faith.  The  religious  capacities  common  to  all  men  evolve 
a  stock  of  religious  feeling  which  lies  latent  and  fluent,  as  it  were, 
in  the  soul — like  an  electric  charge  in  the  battery — until  some  expe- 
perience  of  the  man  occurs  to  elicit  its  discharge  and  give  it  direc- 
tion. The  form  and  path  of  faith  are  determined,  in  much,  by  the 
kind  of  natural  objects  with  which  the  spiritual  faculty  is  most  closely 
or  impressively  brought  in  contact.  Where  the  spirit  of  man  is  fre- 
quently confronted  with  Nature  in  its  power,  beauty,  or  wrath — 
where  sky,  sun,  mountain,  or  river,  is  an  important  factor  in  the  daily 
experience  and  fortune — there  arise  naturally  the  corresponding  forms 
of  religion — Nature- worship,  fetichism,  and  pantheism.     Where,  how- 


RELIGION  AND    THE  ENVIRONMENT,  7 

ever,  it  is  dreaded  and  mysterious  animate  things — the  gloojay,  awe- 
inspiring  forest,  the  venomous  serpent,  the  terrible  lion — ^that  most 
agitate  man's  heart,  there  we  see,  as  in  Africa,  e.  g.,  and  among  the 
American  aborigines,  tree-worship  and  beast-worship  abounding. 

There  are  certain  great  natural  phenomena  that  are  common  to 
all  countries,  familiar  with  all  tribes  and  nations,  such  as  sun,  moon, 
stars,  earth,  rain,  wind,  etc.  These  are,  therefore,  the  objects  univer- 
sally divinized.  In  some  countries,  where  the  scenery  is  very  slightly 
diversified,  these  few  objects,  personified  over  and  over  again,  in 
varied  aspects  and  under  various  symbols,  seem  to  constitute  the 
whole  pantheon,  the  whole  mythology.  It  was  thus  in  Egypt,  e.  g., 
whose  numberless  gods  represent,  after  all,  but  about  half  a  dozen 
great  natural  objects.  But  when  we  pass  out  of  the  level  plains  of 
such  countries  as  Egypt  and  Babylon,  to  countries  where  the  moun- 
tains rise  to  stupendous  and  frowning  heights,  and  bowlders  and  cliffs 
abound,  we  have  a  new  class  of  divinities  added  to  the  objects  that 
man  worships.  The  mountaineer,  gazing  aloft  to  the  white  peak,  saw, 
far  up,  the  shining  morn  strike  the  cheek  of  virgin  snow,  and  in  his 
guileless  faith  it  became  an  abode  of  the  gods  ;  or  a  deity  itself,  hold- 
ing aloft  the  heavenly  dome.  If  on  the  soft  sandstone  of  a  hill,  be- 
fore petrifaction,  bird  or  beast  had  left  its  tracks,  then  the  place,  like 
the  Enchanted  Mountain  of  Georgia,  was  deemed  haunted.  If  the 
mount,  like  Kineo,  in  the  north  of  Maine,  happens  to  have  the  shape 
of  a  moose,  then  it  is  reputed  to  be  the  queen  and  progenitor  of  the 
moose-tribe  turned  to  stone. 

When  the  barbarian  cries  out  in  joy  or  pain  beneath  the  rocky 
wall,  he  hears  a  mysterious  voice  answering  him  back — a  voice  that 
belongs  to  no  material  creature,  and  that  must,  therefore,  belong  to 
some  divinity  or  departed  spirit.  So  the  sounds  that  come  from  cav- 
erns, or  the  roar  of  the  billows  on  the  sea-shore,  are  thought  to  be 
produced  by  the  spirits  that  have  their  haunt  there  ;  and  the  kobolds 
and  water-nixies  are  accordingly  added  to  the  lists  of  the  gods  popu- 
larly believed  in.  The  strange  phenomena  of  volcanoes,  or  the  explo- 
sion of  confined  gases  in  certain  rocks,  in  their  ebullition  through 
springs,  would  suggest  the  idea  of  mighty  superhuman  beings  who 
lived  beneath  the  earth,  and  to  whose  activity  the  volcano's  eruptions 
were  due.  The  Koniagas  think  that,  when  the  craters  of  Alaska  send 
forth  fire  and  smoke,  the  gods  are  cooking  their  food  and  heating  their 
sweat-houses.  So  among  the  Australians,  the  volcanic  rocks  found  in 
various  places  suggest  the  belief  that  sulky  demons,  the  igna,  have 
made  great  fires  and  thrown  out  red-hot  stones  ;  and  the  Nicaraguans 
offered  vessels  of  food  and  even  human  victims  to  Popogatipec,  i.  e., 
smoking  mountain,  to  appease  her  when  there  was  a  storm  or  an  earth- 
quake. 

Wave  and  frost  are  great  sculptors  of  rude  images,  bearing  near 
enough  likeness  to  man  or  beast  to  impress  profoundly  the  imagina- 


8  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

tion  of  the  uncultivated.  All  along  our  Northern  coasts  and  in  our 
Western  mountains  are  to  be  found  such  figures — like  the  Stone-face, 
at  the  White  Mountains  ;  the  Bishop  Rock,  at  Campobello,  on  the  Maine 
coast ;  and  the  Master  of  Life,  at  the  entrance  to  Lake  Superior.  So 
in  the  North  and  West  of  our  country  there  are  many  erratic  bowl- 
ders, some  oval,  or  glistening  with  native  copper  or  mica  scales,  or 
balanced  on  convex  prominences  so  that  they  readily  oscillate.  In  un- 
enlightened but  pious  minds,  such  curious  figures  naturally  inspire 
veneration  and  worship  as  the  abodes  of  spirits,  as  was  the  case  with 
the  Ojibways,  Ottawas,  and  Dakotas  ;  or  they  give  rise  to  wild  myths 
of  transformation,  such  as  the  Indian  legends  abound  in.  So,  where 
the  rocky  and  mountainous  aspect  of  nature  produces  cataracts  or 
dangerous  rapids,  and  the  waters  roar  and  toss  their  white  manes  in 
the  air,  these  places — as,  e.  g.,  Niagara,  the  mouth  of  the  Wabash, 
or  the  Brear  Beaux  Falls  on  the  Wisconsin — became  to  the  savage 
the  haunt  of  spirits  or  demons,  who  must  be  propitiated  with  offer- 
ings of  tobacco  and  meat. 

And  this  mention  of  tobacco  may  serve  to  turn  our  thoughts  to 
remembrance  of  the  influence  of  trees  and  plants  in  drawing  forth 
religious  veneration.  Wherever  plants  are  found,  like  tobacco,  or  the 
Peruvian  coca,  the  snake-root,  the  Indian  hemp,  the  wine  of  Bacchanal 
worship,  that  had  a  special  effect ;  whether  stimulating,  narcotic,  poi- 
sonous, or  curative,  they  were  held  to  possess  supernatural  power,  and 
were  used  for  various  magic  rites  and  became  sacred.  The  soma  of 
the  ancient  Aryans  even  became  exalted  to  a  place  among  the  gods, 
and  to  drink  it  was  the  means  of  gaining  immortality.  So,  likewise, 
the  mysterious  whisperings  of  the  wind  in  ancient  forests,  or  the  inex- 
plicable movements  of  some  half -blown-down  tree,  as  the  heat  of  the 
sun  contracted  or  lengthened  its  twisted  roots,  and  caused  it  alter- 
nately to  rise  and  fall,  have  more  than  once  attracted  the  superstitious 
awe  of  the  barbarian,  and  supplied  new  objects  for  his  adoration. 

Thus  do  the  peculiarities  of  natural  objects  supply  molds  in  which 
the  metal  of  religious  faith,  already  lying  latent,  readily  sets.  And 
not  only  directly,  but  indirectly,  do  they  shape  the  forms  of  faith. 
The  rushing  river,  e.  g.,  not  merely  attracts  the  reverence  of  the  primi- 
tive man  to  itself,  but  by  its  swift  and  treacherous  motion,  its  sinuous 
course,  and  snake-like  hiss  and  gleam,  it  is  personified  as  a  mighty  di- 
vine serpent,  and  next  makes  sacred  by  association  the  serpents  of  the 
country  about.  The  sky,  personified  by  the  ancient  Egyptian  as  a 
heavenly  goose,  enveloping  and  hatching  the  cosmic  ^^^^^^  made  sacred 
henceforth  all  geese  to  the  pious  dwellers  by  the  Nile.  In  climes  like 
Egypt,  where  the  skies  are  rainless  and  the  whole  aspect  of  nature 
equable,  almost  unchanging,  there  the  gods  are  marked  by  calmness  of 
bearing  and  serenity  of  nature.  We  must  go  to  the  slopes  of  the 
Himalayas  or  the  ridges  of  the  Apennines  to  find  the  howling  Rudra, 
with  his  attendant  Maruts,  the  pounders,  rushing  wildly  through  the 


RELIGION  AND    THE  ENVIRONMENT,  9 

glens,  or  to  see  the  bullocks  slain  in  honor  of  Jupiter  Tonans,  the 
Thunderer.  In  cold  and  temperate  climes  it  is  the  enlivening  and 
warming  sun  that  is  loved  and  adored  ;  but,  in  the  sultry  air  of  the 
tropics,  the  sun  and  the  sky  of  day  become  evil  and  destructive  dei- 
ties, and  affection  is  transferred  to  the  refreshing  sky  of  night. 

So,  also,  in  their  ideas  of  heaven  and  hell,  there  is  a  natural  con- 
trast between  the  faith  of  the  man  of  the  tropics  and  the  man  of  the 
Arctic  zone.  To  the  first,  the  future  home  of  the  good  is  some  abode 
of  coolness,  some  garden  of  the  Hesperides,  or  a  breezy  Olympian 
height,  and  the  place  of  punishment  a  place  of  fire.  To  the  Ice- 
lander, hell  is  the  place  of  cold,  worse  far  to  him  than  fire,  and  heaven, 
some  comfortable  hall  surrounded  by  a  hedge  of  flame.  Again,  in  hot 
climes,  where  the  soil  of  the  river-bottoms  is  deep  and  rich,  and  na- 
ture teems  with  productiveness,  there  the  gods  are  credited  with  the 
same  sensuous  nature  ;  religious  ideas  are  apt  to  revolve  about  the 
mysteries  of  procreation,  and  the  worship  of  the  people  is  apt  to  in- 
clude not  a  few  impure  rites  and  symbols. 

The  numerous  gods  of  fertility  among  the  agricultural  Egyptians 
— Chem,  Min,  Chnam,  Osiris — the  sexual  rites  of  Babylonia,  and  the 
numerous  objectional  symbols  in  Hindoo  worship,  illustrate  this.  On 
the  contrary,  under  the  clear  skies  and  bright  moon  and  the  pure 
streamlets  of  Greece,  it  is  the  virgin  goddesses  of  the  most  exacting 
purity,  Dianas  and  Pallas  Athenes,  rather  than  loose-zoned  and  wanton 
mistresses,  that  are  suggested.  Aphrodite  and  Cybele,  and  Dionysos 
indeed,  were,  later,  members  of  the  Olympian  court ;  but  they  came 
from  regions  farther  east,  where  they  were  tinged  with  an  earthly  and 
sensuous  dye,  such  as  we  do  not  find  in  the  native  worship  of  Hellas. 

The  tribes  of  Northern  Asia,  wandering  amid  the  bleak  wastes  of 
Mongolia  or  the  gloomy  forests  of  the  Ural,  their  frail  shelter  shaken 
by  the  riotous  winds,  whose  mysterious  sighs  and  bowlings  often  make 
them  quake  with  terror,  come  naturally  to  be  believers  in  dim,  mys- 
terious, supernatural  powers,  with  which  their  own  lot  is  bound  up, 
and  readily  devote  themselves  to  whatever  occult  and  magic  rites  the 
shaman  may  produce.  The  Shemite,  on  the  broad  plains  of  Chaldea 
or  the  sandy  wastes  of  Arabia,  found  nothing  to  arrest  his  eyes  till  they 
rested  on  the  glistening  skies,  brilliant,  in  that  clear  air,  with  a  brill- 
iancy beyond  anything  that  we  know  :  and  he  became  thus,  most  natu- 
rally, a  devout  star  -  worshiper ;  invested  the  chief  celestial  objects 
with  the  most  exalted  attributes,  and  raised  them,  in  his  fervid  ado- 
ration, to  more  and  more  absolute  majesty  and  incomparable  power, 
till  at  length  the  idea  of  the  divine  was  exalted  into  monotheism. 

The  Aryan,  on  the  contrary,  grew  up  among  the  mountain  pastures 
of  Bactria,  where  the  clouds  are  often  about  his  feet,  and  the  heavens 
are  not  so  far  away.  The  earliest  Yedic  hymns  are  marked  by  a  sense 
of  the  nearness  of  the  gods,  and  men  are  seen  mingling  with  them, 
familiarly,  as  friends.     Nature  did  not  oppress  man  with  dreadful 


lo  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

earthquake  or  hurricane,  vast  and  fatal  desert,  or  frowning  mountain  ; 
but  by  its  pleasing  diversity  it  stimulated,  without  overwhelming,  his 
soul.  That  portion  of  the  Aryans  that,  upon  their  migration  from  the 
old  Bactrian  home,  reached  the  shores  of  the  ^gean,  found  there  a  land 
that  fostered  still  more  these  traits.  Here  nature  was  picturesque 
and  diversified,  without  the  stupendous  magnitudes  that  overawe  the 
soul.  Above  him,  the  sky  was  bluest  of  the  blue.  The  marble  hills 
formed  continual  pictures.  The  streams  rippled  cheerily  down  their 
songful  beds.  The  wavelets  chased  each  other  playfully  in  the  light 
zephyrs.  All  the  aspects  of  earth  and  sea  and  sky  were  bright  and 
gladsome,  and  conspired  to  stimulate  the  imagination  of  the  Greek. 

Hellenic  religion  came  thus,  by  right,  to  be  a  happy  and  luxuriant 
faith,  full  of  pretty  fancies,  putting  man  at  ease  with  the  divine,  and 
personifying  the  gods  under  the  most  familiar  and  graceful  shapes  : 

*'  Sunbeams  upon  distant  hill, 
Gliding  apace  with  shadows  in  their  tram, 
Might,  with  small  help  from  fancy,  be  transformed 
Into  fleet  oreads,  sporting  visibly." 

The  wind  was  fancied  a  divine  harper,  who  makes  music  in  the 
tree-tops,  and  drives  the  flocks  of  the  sun — the  fleecy  clouds — where 
he  wills.  The  murmuring  spring  was  imaged  as  a  gentle  nymph  ;  and 
within  each  fine  tree  was  an  imprisoned  dryad.  In  short,  the  diversi- 
fied and  charming  scenery  supplied  an  unequaled  wealth  of  religious 
and  mythic  lore.  And,  as  man,  in  this  climate,  exempt  from  the  de- 
bilitating heats  of  the  tropics  and  the  stunting  of  too  severe  cold, 
reached  the  ideal  of  bodily  perfection,  the  human  form  became,  not 
unnaturally,  to  the  Greek,  the  noblest  type  under  which  he  could 
represent  the  divine.  The  gods  were  humanized — stronger  and  more 
beautiful  beings,  to  be  sure,  than  ordinary  men,  but  possessed  of  the 
same  forms,  members,  and  passions. 

The  course  which  the  Norsemen  took  when  they,  in  their  turn, 
went  forth  from  the  common  Aryan  home,  was  less  propitious.  It  led 
them  to  a  land  whore  the  summer  was  short  and  the  sun  soon  had  to 
wage  a  bitter  and  losing  war  for  long  months  with  frost  and  snow  ;  a 
land  where  the  fiords  were  heavily  sealed  with  ice,  and  man  had  a 
bitter  task  to  keep  the  wolf  of  starvation  and  death  from  his  door. 
The  sternness  and  gloom  of  the  land  were  reflected  in  the  Northman's 
thought  and  faith.  Woden,  the  stormful,  Thor,  the  thunderer,  and 
Loki,  the  vengeful  and  cunning  destroyer,  become  the  chief  figures 
in  his  myths.  The  interest  centers  in  the  struggles  of  the  Aesir,  the 
deities  of  light  and  beneficence,  against  the  frost-giants  and  their  allies 
or  servants — the  midgard-serpent,  the  fenris-wolf,  and  the  dreaded 
Hel — varied  personifications  of  darkness,  cold,  and  death. 

Delighting  himself,  as  the  Norseman  did,  in  the  vigorous  exercise 
and  the  hearty  feasting,  to  which  the  frosty  air  stimulated,  his  gods 


RELIGION  AND    THE  ENVIRONMENT,  n 

likewise  were  boisterous  and  stalwart  beings,  riding  on  the  tempest, 
amusing  themselves  by  feats  of  strength,  reveling  in  the  crash  of 
battle,  and  gathering  the  fallen  heroes  into  the  bright  Valhalla,  there 
to  reward  them  for  theii*  courage  with  foaming  cups  of  mead,  and  the 
barbaric  delights  of  ceaseless  combats,  in  indestructible  bodies.  Thus, 
instead  of  the  Graces  and  the  beautiful  Apollo  of  Greece,  we  find  in 
Scandinavia  deities  as  blustering  and  uncouth  as  the  Northland  itself, 
but  manly  and  good-hearted.  While  in  Greece  the  primitive  Aryan 
faith  takes  on  a  more  aesthetic  and  refined  aspect,  in  Germany  and 
Scandinavia  it  becomes  more  tragic  and  intense. 

Let  us  follow  next  the  steps  of  that  part  of  the  Aryans  who  turned 
their  steps  southward  into  the  languorous  plains  of  India,  and  we  shall 
see  a  different  change.  The  first  thing  we  notice  is,  that  Dyans — the 
shining  one,  the  bright  sky  of  day — loses  his  ancient  pre-eminence. 
His  supremacy  in  the  thoughts  of  the  Aryan  emigrants  is  first  taken 
by  Varuna — the  night-sky.  In  the  hot  clime  of  India,  the  bright  sky 
of  day  was  no  longer  so  pleasant  to  them,  and  Varuna  seemed  a  kinder 
deity,  and  therefore  became  more  popular.  But  soon  he  also  is  super- 
seded by  Indra,  the  rain-god,  who,  with  his  glittering  lance — the  light- 
ning— pierces  and  releases  the  imprisoned  waters.  For  in  India,  then, 
as  to-day,  the  coming  of  the  rainy  season  after  the  long  drought  is 
by  far  the  most  important  of  all  nature's  changes.  It  was  not  long 
before  Indra,  therefore,  by  his  terrible  might  and  his  beneficent  prowess 
in  slaying  the  drought-serpent,  became,  with  his  coadjutors,  the  Maruts, 
the  beating  winds,  the  chief  object  of  Vedic  adoration.  And  soon  we 
notice  an  equally  significant  change.  The  vigorous  Aryan,  in  the 
debilitating  heats  of  the  Indian  plains,  became  a  victim  of  lassitude. 
He  lost  his  healthful  delight  in  the  good  things  of  sense  and  earth. 
The  languid  air  lulled  him  in  dreamy  reveries.  Meditation  takes  the 
place  of  service  in  the  commandments  of  religion  ;  and  asceticism,  in- 
stead of  the  divine  blessings,  becomes  the  pious  practice.  So  great 
and  so  rapid  is  the  change  that  comes  over  their  faith  that,  before 
many  centuries  have  passed,  pessimistic  views  of  life  become  so  seated 
in  the  race  that  the  illusiveness  of  the  world  and  the  essential  wretch- 
edness of  life  become  cardinal  doctrines  of  faith  ;  and  the  great  desire 
of  men's  heart's  is  not  for  renewed  lease  of  life,  but  for  the  means  of 
obtaining  exemption  from  the  misery  of  rebirth.  And  so  it  has  been 
with  other  nations  and  races.  The  physical  characteristics  of  the 
countries  they  have  dwelt  in  have  powerfully  modified  the  aspect  of 
their  religion.  The  races  inhabiting  the  most  barren  and  unfavorable 
quarters  of  the  globe — such  as  the  Patagonians,  Hottentots,  Kamschat- 
kans — have  suffered  correspondingly  in  their  possibility  of  religious 
progress.  Conversely,  it  is  that  intermediate  zone  between  the  tropical 
and  the  temperate — the  land  of  the  olive,  the  fig,  and  the  orange — 
where  the  mean  temperature  is  not  lower  than  60°  Fahr.  nor  more 
than  75°  Fahr.,  that  has  been  the  home  of  the  great  founders  of  re- 


12  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

ligions — Zoroaster,  Moses,  Buddha,  Mohammed,  Confucius,  and  Christ. 
Moreover,  we  may  notice,  as  Peschel  has  pointed  out,  the  suggestive 
fact  that  it  is  in  the  wide  expanses  and  awe-inspiring  solitudes  of  the 
desert,  where  the  imagination,  while  vividly  excited,  is  yet  not  dis- 
tracted and  divided  among  the  manifold  wonders  of  nature — shim- 
mering leaf  and  gnarled  trunks,  writhing  mists  and  rattling  thunder, 
and  the  weird  sounds  of  forest  or  sea-beach — that  suggest  and  develop 
the  polytheistic  gods,  but  can  give  itself  up  entirely  to  the  impressions 
of  a  single  Majesty  and  Infinity — it  is,  I  say,  amid  these  noble  yet 
simple  aspects  of  nature,  that  the  great  monotheistic  religions,  Judaism, 
Mohammedanism,  and  Christianity,  have  been  originated.  It  was  at 
Sinai  that  Moses  promulgated  his  stern  prohibitions  of  idolatry  and 
polytheism.  It  was  by  a  Bedouin  foster-mother  that  Mohammed  was 
reared,  and  as  a  shepherd  and  caravan-merchant,  traveling  across  the 
Arabian  deserts,  that  he  passed  his  early  life.  And  it  was  in  the 
desert  that  Christ  listened  to  the  preaching  of  John  the  Baptist,  and 
passed  the  forty  days  in  which  he  prepared  himself  for  his  great  career. 
2.  In  the  second  place,  we  must  notice,  as  of  equal  if  not  greater 
influence  in  giving  diversity  to  religious  faith,  man's  experiences  with 
himself  and  with  his  fellows.  It  is  an  old  maxim  that  it  is  "  in  the 
experiences  of  life  that  each  individual  finds  or  loses  his  god."  Start- 
ing on  the  lowest  range  of  the  soul's  experience,  we  notice  the  effect 
of  the  dreams,  trances,  swoons,  ecstasies,  and  other  abnormal  phe- 
nomena of  human  nature,  in  giving  direction  and  variety  to  religious 
conceptions.  While  I  regard  it  as  a  grave  error  to  derive  religion 
solely  from  these  morbid  phenomena,  nevertheless  they  have  undoubt- 
edly done  much  in  awakening  the  spiritual  powers  of  man,  and  in  giv- 
ing shape  to  his  religious  instincts.  Life,  in  its  most  familiar  and 
natural  phases,  is  a  mysterious  thing — a  wonder  which  doubtless  filled 
the  primitive  man  with  ill-understood  awe,  as  it  has  made  even  the 
pride  of  modern  science  stand  abashed  before  it.  And  its  more  eccen- 
tric and  exceptional  aspects  would  especially  set  men  to  marveling, 
and  suggest  explanations  which  we  may  to-day  laugh  at,  but  without 
really  having  penetrated  into  the  heart  of  the  mystery  any  more  than 
our  remotest  ancestors.  Thus,  among  almost  all  peoples  the  shadow 
has  been  looked  upon  as  a  second  self,  and  as  one  of  the  causes  if  not 
the  cause  of  life.  The  breath,  likewise,  with  whose  cessation  life  ends, 
has  been  especially  identified  with  the  soul,  the  principle  of  life,  as  is 
shown  by  the  same  or  similar  words  employed  in  most  languages,  as 
their  names — atman  in  Sanskrit  ;  nephesh  and  ruacli  among  the  He- 
brews ;  wang  among  the  Australians  ;  anemos  and  anima  in  Greek 
and  Latin — indicate.  As  in  dreams  the  savage  seems  to  see  his  distant 
kinsmen,  to  visit  remote  localities,  to  behold  again  the  long-dead  par- 
ent or  grandparent  ;  so  he  comes  to  believe  that  the  soul,  an  impal- 
pable form  within  the  fleshly  organism,  is  capable  of  leaving  the  body 
when  it  pleases,  of  taking  long  journeys  and  flashing  with  incredible 


RELIGION  AND    THE  ENVIRONMENT.  13 

swiftness  from  place  to  place,  of  possessing  its  will  and  consciousness 
independently  of  the  body,  and  continuing  to  exist  and  appear  after 
the  death  of  the  body. 

This  conception  of  the  soul  once  formed,  the  abnormal  facts  of 
disease,  insanity,  epilepsy,  and  hysteria,  come  readily  to  be  explained 
by  the  invasion  into  these  bodies  of  other  spirits  than  their  own — celes- 
tial or  demoniac,  superhuman  or  infra-human,  according  to  the  phe- 
nomena observed.  These  notions,  once  diffused,  give  rise,  in  their  turn, 
to  a  whole  cycle  of  kindred  animistic  theories  and  religious  practices- 
such  as  divination  by  dreams,  exorcisms  of  demons,  dervish-dancings, 
and  other  artificially  produced  swoons  and  ecstasies,  and  fetichistic 
magic  of  all  sorts.  Sneezing,  hiccough,  and  all  painful  diseases,  are 
to  the  savage  the  work  of  some  spirit  that  has  crept  into  his  body. 
Fasting,  as  occasioning  vivid  visions,  becomes  a  method  of  seeing  one's 
tutelar  deity,  as  among  our  Indians,  or  as  the  proper  rite  to  fit  the 
priest  for  initiation  into  his  sacred  office,  as  generally  in  savage  tribes. 
When  it  is  evil  spirits  that  do  their  work  in  man,  they  must  be 
cast  out  by  invoking  some  beneficent  and  more  powerful  god.  Hence 
exorcism,  witchcraft,  medicine-men.  When  it  is  good  spirits  that  do 
their  work  in  man,  we  have  inspired  seers  and  priestesses — divine 
oracles,  like  those  of  Delphi  and  Dodona.  Out  of  a  belief  that  the 
spirits  of  the  dead  still  maintain  an  interest  in  those  they  have  left, 
and  are  causers  of  good  and  evil  to  them,  come  propitiation  of  them 
by  gifts  and  prayers,  and  ancestor-worship — so  prevalent  in  ancient 
China,  Egypt,  and  Rome,  as  among  many  African  and  Polynesian 
tribes  still — is  developed. 

Next,  perhaps  (as  happens  in  many  cases),  the  departed  chieftain 
or  patriarch,  still  looked  upon  as  protecting  his  descendants  and  tribes- 
men, becomes  the  guardian  deity  of  the  tribe,  or  the  ruler  of  the  hid- 
den land  to  which  the  ghosts  of  the  dead  must  journey.  As  still 
further  evolutions  from  this  root,  we  find  the  belief  in  the  resurrection 
of  the  body  and  the  transmigration  of  souls,  the  custom  of  embalming, 
and  the  varied  ideas  of  the  nature  of  the  future  life  found  in  different 
nations. 

3.  Next,  we  must  notice  the  great  influence  of  man's  intercourse  with 
his  fellows.  Under  this  third  head  I  would  call  attention  to  the  action 
of  the  political  condition  or  environment,  as  a  differentiating  factor. 
In  ancient  times,  the  connection  between  religion  and  government  was 
far  closer  than  we  see  almost  anywhere  to-day.  That  separation  be- 
tween church  and  state,  that  independence  of  politics  and  faith  so 
prevalent  everywhere  to-day,  was  unknown  to  antiquity.  The  state 
and  the  church  were  one.  The  king  was  high-priest  by  virtue  of  his 
office,  and  the  priest  as  much  a  state  or  civic  official  as  judge  or  war- 
rior-chief. Not  infrequently,  the  same  individual  held  both  what  we 
now  distinguish  as  secular  and  sacred  offices.  Among  the  ancient 
Aryans — as  with  the  early  Hindoos,  Greeks,  and  Romans — religion 


14  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

was  a  domestic  rite.  Each  home  had  its  altar  and  its  sacred  fire, 
whose  flame  must  never  be  allowed  to  go  out.  And  so  the  word 
hestia  or  vesta — the  fixed  place  for  the  family  hearth-fire — came  to 
represent  the  divine  mother,  the  guardian  of  the  family,  who,  if  duly 
honored,  would  preserve  it  in  honor  and  prosperity.  It  was  the  ofiice 
of  the  father  or  grandfather,  the  living  head  of  the  family,  to  pour  on 
the  sacred  flame  the  offerings  of  meal  and  butter,  to  offer  the  incense 
and  pour  out  the  libations,  and  to  salute  with  prayer  and  praise  the 
beneficent  god  of  light,  at  his  morning  rising  ;  or  when,  by  neglect 
properly  to  feed  the  deity  of  the  hearth,  the  god  had  left  them,  it  was 
the  duty  of  the  father  to  bring  him  back,  by  the  friction  of  the  sacred 
sticks. 

As  families  increased  to  tribes,  and  tribes  were  consolidated,  the 
chief  of  the  tribe,  the  patriarch  of  the  community  became,  of  course, 
the  proper  officer  to  perform  the  religious  rites  for  the  greater  social 
body  ;  as  was  the  case  in  ancient  Egypt,  Assyria,  Greece,  and  Rome, 
and  is  still  the  case  in  China  to-day.  The  gods  were  conceived  of 
as  belonging  to  and  concerned  only  with  the  tribe  or  nation  that  wor- 
shiped them  ;  often,  indeed,  were  imagined  inseparable  from  a  particu- 
lar land  ;  and  he  who  went  away  from  it  was  beyond  the  protection  of 
his  accustomed  gods. 

Thus  David,  in  his  well-known  appeal  (1  Samuel,  xxvi,  19),  says  to 
Saul,  If  men  have  stirred  thee  up  against  me,  they  are  cursed,  for 
they  have  driven  me  out  this  day  from  dwelling  in  Jehovah's  heritage, 
saying  to  me,  Go,  serve  other  gods.  The  idea  that  all  lands  might 
be  under  the  care  of  one  god,  and  the  people  of  different  nations 
might  be  of  one  religion,  was  a  conception  slow  in  arising.  Who- 
ever belonged  to  a  tribe  or  nation  was  bound  to  worship  the  gods 
of  that  nation.  When  a  man  was  adopted  into  a  nation,  or  a  woman 
married  into  another  gens  or  tribe,  such  a  person  was  held  to  adopt 
the  divinities  and  tutelar  deities  of  their  new  companions  also.  The 
promise  of  Kuth  to  Kaomi,  "Thy  people  shall  be  my  people,  and 
thy  God  my  God,"  was  not  an  exceptional  but  a  necessary  conjunc- 
tion. To  disown  or  ignore  the  gods  of  one's  fathers  was  to  disown 
one's  nationality. 

Conversely,  the  god  of  a  special  people  must  protect  and  favor  his 
own.  In  the  historical  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  e.  g.,  we  see  many 
times  appearing  the  idea  that  Jehovah's  honor  is  so  bound  up  with  that 
of  his  people  that  he  could  not  neglect  to  protect  and  bless  them,  no 
matter  how  great  his  wrath  against  their  trespasses.  The  existence 
of  foreign  gods  was  not  at  all  disbelieved,  nor  their  power  denied.  But 
they  were  looked  upon  as  naturally  confining  their  favors  to  their  own 
land  and  people.  It  was  proper  that  their  own  people  should  worship 
them,  but  to  foreigners  they  would  be  indifferent  or  hostile.  To  in- 
troduce strange  gods  into  the  state  was  therefore  a  dangerous  experi- 
ment, entailing  the  risk  of  alienating  their  rightful  divine  protectors. 


RELIGION  AND    THE  ENVIRONMENT.  15 

Similarly,  the  idea  of  seeking  proselytes  to  one's  own  religion  was,  at 
first,  quite  antagonistic  to  the  instincts  of  faith.  The  favor  of  Brahma, 
the  blessings  of  Jehovah,  were  privileges  of  the  chosen  people  of  these 
gods  ;  especial  boons,  which  were  not  to  be  rashly  cheapened  by  ad- 
mitting foreigners  to  them.  The  sudra,  however,  desirous  of  knowing 
and  worshiping  the  Brahmanic  deities,  was  never  allowed  to  read  the 
Veda,  or  join  in  the  most  holy  ceremonies. 

Now,  from  this  local  character  of  ancient  divinities  it  is  evident 
what  greater  influence  political  conditions  would  have  on  religion 
than  is  possible  in  our  day,  when  state  and  church  are  so  independent 
of  each  other.  In  races,  like  the  Aryan,  where  the  early  organiza- 
tion was  into  small  communities  with  a  patriarchal  or  quasi-VQ^uhli' 
can  government,  where  both  the  diversified  face  of  the  land  and  their 
own  free  spirit  kept  a  host  of  small  cities  and  states  in  independent 
existence,  there  the  loose  coalescence  which  comes  through  commerce, 
and  identity  of  speech  and  civilization  into  a  national  life  and  religion, 
does  nothing  to  destroy  the  various  local  gods,  and  we  have,  as  in 
India,  Greece,  and  Germany,  a  bewildering  pantheon  of  divinities, 
many  most  similar  to  one  another,  because  originally  representative 
of  aspects  of  the  same  natural  objects  or  phenomena.  Their  religion 
was  as  full  of  variety  and  as  lacking  in  centralization  as  their  political 
system. 

The  first  result  on  religion  of  advance  toward  national  unity  is, 
therefore,  a  great  multiplication  of  deities.  But  soon  other  forces  are 
called  into  play.  Wherever,  by  conquest,  intermarriage  of  princes,  or 
treaties  of  alliance,  two  or  more  small  states  are  thoroughly  merged 
into  a  larger,  there  a  coalescence  of  their  gods  and  diminution  of  the 
number  of  the  divinities  are  apt  to  take  place.  While  their  fetich- 
gods — divinities  of  merely  local  origin,  mountain,  earth,  tree,  cavern, 
river — would  be  different,  the  elemental  gods — deities  of  sun,  moon, 
sky,  wind,  and  storm — would  be  common  to  both,  and  have  more  or 
less  common  features.  They  would,  therefore,  be  readily  identified, 
and  their  worship,  under  a  name  and  ritual  compounded,  very  likely, 
from  the  traditions  of  both  tribes,  would  gain  in  popularity,  while  the 
more  local  gods,  worshiped  only  by  parts  of  the  new  nation,  would 
fall  into  oblivion. 

Again,  when  an  ancient  nation  was  subjugated,  it  was  not  believed 
to  be  due  merely  to  the  weakness  of  the  people,  or  their  inferior  cour- 
age or  military  skill ;  but  the  people's  tutelar  deities  were  supposed 
to  have  withdrawn  their  protection,  or  to  have  been  shown  inferior  in 
their  guardian  power  to  the  gods  of  the  victorious  people.  The  people 
often,  therefore,  voluntarily  abandoned  their  own  deities,  to  secure  the 
more  effective  protectorship  of  the  victorious  gods.  In  the  wake  of 
the  great  armies  of  Assyria  and  Rome,  faith  after  faith  of  antiquity 
was  left  a  wreck  of  its  former  self,  its  sacred  prestige  ruined,  and  its 
gods  degraded  into  subordinates  of  the  triumphant  foreign  deities. 


i6  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

The  conquerors  sometimes  relentlessly  stamped  out  the  worship  of  the 
conquered.  Often,  out  of  policy  or  pity,  they  gave  it  a  quasi-vQcogmr 
tion  ;  and  then  came  about  an  amalgamation  of  beliefs. 

These  international  religions  tended  to  subdue  the  ethnic  distinc- 
tions and  local  worships,  and  to  give  prominence  to  the  higher  and 
more  universal  deities.  Thus,  the  great  monarchies  of  antiquity, 
through  their  very  tyranny  and  the  absoluteness  of  the  royal  power  in 
them,  broke  the  path  for  the  universal  religions.  The  Roman  Empire 
was  the  forerunner  that  made  straight  the  way  for  Christianity.  Sar- 
gon  of  Assyria  is  no  more  famous  for  his  conquests  than  for  his  sys- 
tematization  of  the  Mesopotamian  religion.  And  in  Egypt  we  find  its 
religion  unified  step  by  step  with  the  goverjiment.  The  rival  cycles 
of  gods  and  goddesses,  the  varied  triads  of  its  different  epochs,  the 
confusing  medley  of  divinities,  great  and  small,  of  whom,  now  one, 
now  another,  is  said  to  be  the  supreme,  can  never  be  comprehended 
until  we  recognize  that  the  2>olitical  xinity  of  Egypt  was  not  original 
or  constant,  but  a  growth,  through  the  consolidation  of  the  forty-two 
distinct  nomes  or  districts  which  occupied  the  length  of  the  valley. 

Each  of  these  little  kingdoms,  or  duchies,  as  we  may  call  them  (re- 
sembling, in  their  relations  to  one  another,  the  little  duchies  of  Ger- 
many before  Prussia  swallowed  them  up  so  effectually),  had  its  capi- 
tal, its  hereditary  duke,  its  special  deity  or  deities,  and  its  shrine  or' 
great  temple.  We  find  the  names  of  the  Egyptian  gods  followed  by 
the  name  of  their  special  home,  as  Neith  of  Sais  ;  Aman-Ra,  chief  in 
Aptu,  i.  e.,  Thebes.  When  gods  of  the  same  name  or  origin  were  wor- 
shiped in  different  places,  they  were  regarded  as  more  or  less  differ- 
ent deities,  and  often  had  different  characteristics  or  symbols. 

Thus  we  find  four  Sets  mentioned  in  one  inscription  and  six  Anu- 
bises  in  another.  Though  originating  from  the  same  natural  object, 
different  aspects  of  the  divine  power  were  deified  in  each.  When  at 
length  these  independent  districts  were  united  in  a  single  empire  and 
a  close  social  unity,  the  deities  were  naturally  consolidated  more  or 
less. 

Out  of  political  comity  and  national  sympathy,  the  people  of  each 
nome  would  admit  the  deities  of  other  sections  as  also  venerable  and 
worshipful ;  but,  in  their  own  grading  of  the  comparative  dignity  of 
the  various  gods,  each  would  put  its  own  local  deities  in  the  chief  seats, 
and  make  the  deities  of  other  districts  subordinate  to  them.  Hence 
would  arise  distinctions  among  the  gods,  as,  some  of  the  first  order, 
others  of  the  second,  others  of  the  third.  Those  that  in  one  nome, 
say,  that  of  Thebes,  were  placed  at  the  head,  in  another,  such  as  that 
of  Memphis,  always  jealous  of  its  rival  for  the  dignity  of  the  metro- 
politanship  of  Egypt,  would  be  likely  to  be  put  down  into  the  second 
or  third  class,  to  make  room  for  the  ancient  hereditary  favorites  of  the 
worshipers  of  that  locality. 

As,  in  the  political  struggles  of  the  country,  one  nome  after  another 


RELIGION  AND    THE  ENVIRONMENT.  17 

became  the  seat  of  the  central  government — now  This,  now  Thebes, 
now  Memphis,  now  Tanais — or  as  the  royal  house  (through  some  dy- 
nastic change,  or  intermarriage  with  princesses  from  a  distance)  fa- 
vored one  or  another  local  group  of  gods  or  particular  deity,  so  the 
hierarchical  order  and  the  very  character  of  the  deities  shifted.  Thus, 
when  the  Hyksos  came  into  power,  a  Semitic  dynasty,  they  favored 
especially  the  god  8e%  whom  they  fancied  identical  with  their  own 
Sedeq  or  El-Shaddai.  They  took  him  for  their  providential  leader,  and 
discouraged  the  worship  of  the  other  gods.  But  when,  by  their  op- 
pressions, they  had  stirred  up  the  Egyptians,  at  length,  to  revolt,  and 
were  driven  out  of  the  country,  Set,  though  before  an  honored  deity, 
was  now  associated  with  all  that  was  evil,  and  was  credited  with  en- 
tire malevolence,  and  made,  instead  of  Apap,  the  serpent  of  darkness, 
the  great  antagonist  of  the  beneficent  Osiris.  The  hatred  of  the  Egyp- 
tians for  the  very  name  of  Set  was  carried  so  far  that  it  was  chiseled 
out  of  the  monuments  ;  the  day  that  had  been  dedicated  to  him  be- 
came the  Black  Friday  of  the  Egyptians  ;  and  the  animals  chosen  to 
symbolize  him  were  the  most  hateful  monsters  known  to  them,  the 
crocodile  and  the  hippopotamus  :  he  became,  in  short,  the  almighty 
destroyer  and  blighter — the  great  devil  of  their  pantheon. 

This  is  no  isolated  instance.  Repeatedly  do  we  find  wars  between 
nations,  arraying  their  gods,  in  the  popular  belief,  in  hostility  ;  and 
the  only  historical  record  we  have  of  the  military  conflict  is  the  myth 
of  the  wars  between  the  supernatural  guardians  of  the  different 
peoples.  Such  a  myth  is  that  of  the  wars  between  the  Hellenic  gods 
and  the  Titans  and  giants,  and  the  celestial  usurpation  by  which  Zeus 
and  Apollo  drive  Saturn  from  his  throne,  banishing  the  sons  of  earth 
to  the  regions  of  night  and  death,  burying  Enceladus  under  Etna,  and 
fastening  Prometheus  by  eternal  fetters  to  his  rock  of  punishment. 
The  historical  fact  beneath  this  is  the  struggle  between  the  celestial 
deities  of  the  Aryan  invaders  and  the  rude,  burly  peasant  gods  of  the 
peasant  aborigines. 

Similarly,  out  of  the  conflicts  of  the  Iranians  with  their  brother- 
people,  the  Brahmans — whom  they  seem  at  first  to  have  accompanied 
in  their  migration  from  Bactria — we  have  a  religious  change  of  a  nota- 
ble character.  One  part  of  the  immigrants,  the  Iranians,  seemed  to 
desire  to  cease  their  wanderings  and  adopt  a  settled  agricultural  life  ; 
the  other  were  unwilling  to  do  so,  and  would  not  respect  the  inclosed 
fields  of  the  Iranians.  Hence  an  hereditary  feud,  that  antagonized 
them  religiously  as  well  as  politically.  Originally,  both  the  words 
devas,  i.  e.,  the  bright  ones,  and  asuras,  the  living  ones,  were  used  as 
names  of  the  Aryan  gods,  both  terms  being  terms  of  respect  and  love. 
But  gradually  the  term  deva  came  to  be  the  favorite  with  the  Brah- 
mans, and  the  term  asura  or  aJmra  the  favorite  with  the  Iranians. 
But,  after  the  feud  broke  out,  we  find  the  asuras  of  the  Iranians  be- 
coming such  an  object  of  dislike  to  the  Brahmans  that  gradually  the 

VOL.  XXIV. 2 


i8  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

word  ceased  to  be  used  for  the  good  gods,  to  whom  the  term  devas 
was  appropriated.  And  to  the  Iranians,  the  devas  of  their  foes  became 
so  hateful  that  the  word  became  synonymous  with  evil  spirit — a  mean- 
ing still  retained  in  our  word  devil.  Out  of  the  throes  of  this  bitter 
early  contest  of  the  Parsees  came  that  trumpet-call  to  intensest  and 
unceasing  struggle  against  all  sin  and  impurity  and  wickedness  that 
put  the  religion  of  Zarathushtra  on  such  an  astonishingly  lofty  moral 
plane. 

Thus,  when  two  nations  stand  for  a  length  of  time  in  hostility, 
neither  prevailing,  the  result  is  usually  to  intensify  the  special  pecul- 
iarities in  the  faith  of  each  and  widen  their  diversity.  But,  when  one 
conquers  the  other,  the  result  is  generally  to  amalgamate  the  religions 
of  the  two  peoples,  in  more  or  less  degree.  It  is  natural,  of  course, 
that  the  faith  of  the  subjected  people  should  be  shaped  over  in  the 
mold  of  the  victor's  faith.  But  the  reverse  of  this  is  almost  equally 
common,  and  we  repeatedly  see,  as  we  follow  down  the  course  of  his- 
tory, the  race  conquered  in  battle  gradually  reasserting  itself  under 
the  new  regime,  and  subduing  the  conquerors,  socially  and  religiously, 
by  infusing  among  them  the  customs  and  faith  they  had  sought  at 
first  to  trample  under  foot.  Thus,  we  find  the  Turanian  peoples  whom 
the  Iranians  subdued  in  Persia  retaliating  upon  the  victors,  by  uncon- 
sciously, as  the  years  went  by,  introducing  into  the  higher  Zara- 
thushtran  faith  the  doctrine  of  the  fravashis,  or  ancestral  tutelary 
spirits,  the  magical  practices  and  excessive  adoration  of  fire,  and  the 
soma,  or  drink  of  immortality — none  of  which  seemed  native  to  the 
Aryan  religion. 

So  in  the  Brahman  religion,  the  idea  of  the  transmigration  of  souls, 
quite  absent  from  the  early  Yedic  hymns,  becomes,  when  we  reach 
the  time  of  the  collection  called  the  laws  of  Manu,  one  of  the  most 
prominent  features  of  the  religion.  Unknown  as  it  is  in  all  other 
branches  of  the  Aryan  family,  its  rise  and  prominence  among  the 
Brahmans  are  to  be  referred  to  the  pre- Aryan  occupants  of  the  Ganges 
Valley,  whom  the  Aryans  conquered  and  absorbed,  and  from  whose 
belief  in  it  the  Brahmans  derived  it,  when,  at  length,  the  conquerors 
and  conquered  had  been  fused  together  into  one  people.  So  with  the 
animal-worship  of  Egypt,  so  opposite  in  character  to  the  worship  of 
Osiris  and  Ra.  It  is  best  explainable  as  a  remnant  of  the  religion  of 
the  inferior  people  who  inhabited  the  land  of  the  Nile  in  far  remote 
ages,  and  who  were  subdued  by  the  emigrants  from  Asia,  who  brought 
higher  knowledge  and  a  more  spiritual  faith  with  them  and  founded 
the  wonderful  civilization  that  in  ancient  times  distinguished  that 
land.  The  new  faith,  unfortunately,  could  not  wean  the  common 
people  altogether  from  their  grosser  faith,  but  was  forced  to  receive 
much  of  it  into  itself. 

Again,  we  may  notice  the  influence  of  political  considerations,  in 
establishing  some  of  the  peculiar  institutions  of  religion,  such  as  that 


RELIGION  AND    THE  ENVIRONMENT,  19 

of  caste,  which  has  played  such  a  great  rdle  in  Hindoo  society.  In 
the  oldest  hymns  of  the  Yedas,  we  find  no  mention  of  it.  It  arose  out 
of  the  bitter  struggles  against  the  non-Aryan  people — the  dark  race, 
whom,  at  last,  they  succeeded  in  conquering.  The  word  for  caste- 
varna  means  kind  or  color,  and  indicated  at  first  the  difference  be- 
tween the  whiter  conquering  race  and  the  darker-tinted  race  whom 
they  subdued,  and  with  whom  they  would  brook  no  slightest  inter- 
course nor  mixture,  no  relation  but  that  of  a  slave  to  his  masters. 

This  strong  antipathy  of  race  and  bitter  contempt  for  all  who  could 
not  fight,  nor  recite  the  sacred  hymn,  petrified  into  impassable  barriers. 
Pride  of  birth  and  intolerance  of  spirit  united  to  increase  these  heredi- 
tary disabilities,  and  the  priestly  class  did  not  fail  to  fan  the  fire  of 
superstition  that  gave  them  such  privileges.  But,  much  as  the  Brah- 
mans,  at  first  and  probably  since,  have  congratulated  themselves  on 
the  advantages  of  the  institution,  the  student  of  history  beholds,  as  its 
product,  the  most  bitter  fruit — an  intolerable  rigidity,  a  cumbrous  cere- 
monialism, and  the  alienation  and  degradation  of  the  common  people. 
It  was  no  wonder  that  ere  long  Buddhism  should  arise,  and  in  the 
strength  of  the  popular  disaffection  sweep  over  all  India,  and  if,  in 
another  century,  it  lost  this  conquest,  yet  should  go  on  in  triumphant 
march  over  Eastern  Asia,  till  it  came  to  number  more  souls  in  its  ranks 
than  any  other  faith. 

4.  We  must  notice  the  great  influence  of  man's  varied  social  condi- 
tions in  differentiating  religious  belief.  The  level  of  religion  with  any 
people  corresponds  to  the  general  level  of  social  organization  and  re- 
finement. "  Thou  art  fellow  with  the  spirit  that  thy  mind  can  grasp," 
is  the  pregnant  monition  of  Mephistopheles  in  Goethe's  "  Faust."  The 
coarse,  imbruted,  petty-minded  man  can  not  entertain  any  high  or  pure 
notions  of  God.  The  negroes  of  the  West  Coast  represent  their  deities 
as  black  and  mischievous,  delighting  to  torment  men  in  various  ways. 
The  god  of  the  Polynesian  cannibals  is  believed  by  them  to  feed  on 
the  souls  of  the  men  sacrificed  to  him,  as  they  themselves  do  on  the 
bodies.  When  the  negro's  fetich  does  not  bring  him  good  fortune, 
the  stock  or  stone  gets  a  drubbing. 

Among  tribes  that  still  remain  in  the  predatory  state,  subsisting  by 
hunting,  and  continually  resorting  to  plunder  and  war,  we  find  religion 
in  its  crudest  forms.  Animal-worship,  great  regard  for  omens  and  use 
of  magic,  and  shamanistic  practices  of  all  sorts,  swarm  in  their  reli- 
gions. Their  rites  are  apt  to  be  cruel  and  their  sacrifices  bloody,  often 
demanding  human  victims.  The  religions  of  the  warlike  negroes  of 
the  Gold  Coast,  the  Feejee-Islanders,  and  the  hunting  tribes  of  Amer- 
ica, illustrate  this. 

Even  where  nations  have  risen  to  a  high  level  of  civilization,  but 
have  retained  their  military  habits,  as  the  Assyrians  and  the  Aztecs, 
e.  g.,  there  the  sanguinary  and  revolting  character  of  their  religion 
shows  the  same  influence.     On  the  other  hand,  where  pastoral  life  pre- 


20  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

vails,  there,  as  among  the  Hottentots  and  Caffres,  religion  has  a  milder 
aspect  ;  while,  among  those  tribes  which,  besides  cattle-breeding  and 
agriculture,  have  engaged  also  in  industry  and  commerce,  a  still  more 
humane  spirit  characterizes  their  worship. 

A  similar  difference,  though  on  a  less  pronounced  scale,  is  seen  in 
the  two  elements  that  united  to  form  the  Greek  nation.  The  older 
stock,  whose  blood  ran  in  the  peasantry,  were  a  half-savage  people  and 
their  gods  consequently  rude — half -bestial  satyrs  and  centaurs,  black 
Demeters,  images  of  the  unsown  earth  ;  mountain  Titans,  uncouth 
Pan  ;  thievish,  tricksy  Hermes  ;  the  mighty  but  reckless,  wanton  Her- 
acles, type  of  the  red  and  angry  sun,  gods  but  half -focused  in  the 
minds  of  their  own  worshipers,  and  represented  often  by  rude  blocks 
of  wood  and  stone.  But  these  could  not  content  the  spiritual  demands 
of  the  later  comers,  the  more  polished  Iranians,  finer  of  temperament, 
and  imbued  by  their  contact  with  the  civilization  of  Asia  Minor  with 
higher  tastes.  So  we  find  among  them  more  graceful  and  elevated 
gods — stately  Hera  and  chaste  Artemis,  heaven-born  Pallas  and  the 
beauteous  Apollo — noble  ideals  of  the  highest  manhood  and  woman- 
hood that  they  could  conceive. 

And  as  civilization  still  further  progresses,  as  peace  and  law  be- 
come the  rule  in  the  community,  as  arts  and  knowledge  increase,  the 
conceptions  of  the  divine  and  the  worship  suitable  for  him  rise  pro- 
portionately. "With  the  exacter  study  of  nature,  sorcery  and  omens 
become  less  credible.  The  gods  themselves  are  seen  to  be  subject  to 
an  unchangeable  order.  Indications  of  intelligence,  of  goodness,  and 
of  rectitude  in  the  world,  point  irresistibly  to  a  divine  with  the  high 
attributes  from  which  alone  these  effects  can  proceed.  As  the  reason 
grows,  the  crude  polytheism  in  which  man  at  first  rested  is  found  en- 
vironed with  perplexities  and  inconsistencies.  Reason  pushes  steadily 
toward  the  universal  and  the  single.  If  the  thunder-cloud  was  a  di- 
vine being,  why  not  every  drop  of  rain  that  fell  ?  If  the  lion  or  bull 
was  a  god,  why  not  every  fly  and  midge  ?  In  revolt  against  such 
cheapening  of  the  idea  of  divinity,  there  would  arise,  with  the  devel- 
opment of  intelligence,  a  tendency  to  absorb  the  host  of  gods  in  fewer 
and  more  potent  gods.  Next,  the  interaction  of  nature's  processes 
would  be  noted.  The  fire  that  warms  the  house  is  recognized  as  essen- 
tially one  and  the  same  force  with  that  which  flushes  the  sky  at  dawn, 
flashes  from  the  solar  orb,  or  gleams  in  the  lightning's  quick  illumina- 
tion :  "  Thou  Agni,"  as  the  Vedic  poet  at  length  cried — "  thou  Agni 
art  Indra,  art  Vishnu,  art  Brahman-aspati.  Thou  Agni  art  born  Va- 
runa,  becoraest  Mitra  when  kindled.  In  thee,  son  of  strength,  art  all 
the  gods."— ("Rig-Veda,"  vii,  30,  31,  vii,  1-3.) 

As  observation  widens,  then,  the  diverse  parts  of  nature  are  more 
and  more  woven  into  one  web.  The  various  deities  are  recognized  as 
but  aliases  under  which  a  single  power  hides.  The  unity  of  the  world 
forbids  us  to  think  of  it  as  the  prey  of  numberless  capricious  and  in- 


RELIGION  AND    THE  ENVIRONMENT.  21 

dependent  personalities.  Thus  the  early  scientific  investigators,  as 
Anaxagoras  and  Parmenides,  necessarily  broke  with  polytheism,  and 
proclaimed  the  essential  oneness  of  that  power  from  which  all  came. 
Men  of  philosophic  spirit  everywhere,  whether  in  India,  Egypt,  China, 
or  Rome,  have  pressed  behind  the  confusing  throng  of  pagan  panthe- 
ons, to  reach  some  elder,  more  eternal,  more  majestic,  and  absolute 
power  behind  them  all.  Nutar  =  the  power  ;  Tao  =  the  eternal  prin- 
ciple ;  Akevana  Zarvana  —  boundless  time  ;  Brahma  =  the  supernatural 
essence  of  all.  The  questions,  "  Whence  has  all  come  ?  What  is  the 
source  of  all  ?  "  have  become  more  and  more  urgent.  One  after  an- 
other, the  idols  of  ancient  belief  have  been  broken  by  the  iconoclastic 
hammer  of  fuller  knowledge,  and  the  yearning  arms  of  faith,  that 
must  embrace  some  adored  object,  have  reached  up  to  purer  concep- 
tions of  the  divine,  more  worthy  of  worship. 

Or  when,  on  the  contrary,  civilization  is  decaying,  and  the  incur- 
sions and  conquests  of  barbarians  are,  from  century  to  century,  making 
society  coarser  and  rougher,  as  happened  in  Europe  from  the  fifth  to 
the  tenth  century,  then  we  see  a  corresponding  degeneration  in  re- 
ligion. 

How  lofty  and  pure  the  spiritual  truths  that  Jesus  taught !  And, 
in  the  simple,  ingenuous  narratives  of  the  gospel,  what  an  anchor  to 
the  Christian  Church  to  keep  it,  one  would  think,  from  ever  drifting 
far  away  from  its  original  place  !  And  yet,  what  melancholy  degrada- 
tion, what  gross  perversions,  did  Christianity  lapse  into  among  the 
dissolute  Greeks  and  Romans,  the  rude  Franks  and  Vandals  !  As  we 
study  mediaeval  Christianity,  with  its  belief  in  witchcraft  and  all  sorts 
of  pious  and  impious  magic  ;  its  melancholy  asceticism  ;  the  gross  wor- 
ship of  saints,  relics,  and  images,  and  deifications  of  Virgin  and  eucha- 
ristic  bread  and  wine  ;  with  its  martial,  steel-clad  bishops,  ready  to  fight 
in  public  as  in  private  ;  with  its  exaltation  of  ceremony  above  morality, 
and  investment  of  priest  and  pope  with  supernatural  power  and  au- 
thority— it  seems  almost  incredible  that  the  glad-tidings  of  the  gospel, 
the  simple  faith  that  started  as  a  message  of  peace  on  earth  and  good- 
will to  men,  could  ever  have  been  transformed  into  this.  It  is  only 
by  the  irresistible  influence  of  a  corrupt  society  in  the  first  place,  and, 
secondly,  of  a  barbarous  society,  that  it  is  at  all  explainable. 

The  first  forms  of  religion  have  well  been  called  a  kind  of  primi- 
tive philosophy.  So,  full-fledged  philosophy  has  been  the  constant 
pioneer  of  a  purer  theology,  and  the  diverse  speculations  of  the  intel- 
lect, from  the  days  of  Ptah-hotep  and  Lao-Tsee  down  to  those  of  Hegel 
and  Cousin,  have  been  prominent  forces  in  giving  pious  hearts  their 
special  directions  in  the  religious  field.  According  as  the  metaphysics 
of  a  people  varies — following  the  empiric  or  the  intuitive,  the  positive 
or  the  idealistic  type — so  will  its  religion  vary.  See,  e.  g.,  what  a  dif- 
ferent thing  Buddhism  developed  into  among  the  nation  of  positivists, 
the  Chinese,  from  the  form  it  took  among  the  idealistic  Brahmans. 


22  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

The  student  of  history,  as  he  looks  back  at  the  great  religious  move- 
ments of  the  world,  can  discern  how  each  great  wave  of  spiritual  feel- 
ing was  preceded,  prepared  for,  and  received  its  direction  from,  some 
philosophic  current.  Aristotle,  e.  g.,  did  more  to  determine  the  spe- 
cial phase  of  medissval  Christendom  than  any  of  its  popes.  These 
four  philosophers,  Kant,  Hegel,  Stuart  Mill,  and  Herbert  Spencer,  sur- 
pass in  their  influence  on  the  religious  situation  any  forty  theologians 
who  can  be  mentioned.  Religion  at  certain  epochs,  such  as  that  of 
the  Hindoo  Upanishads,  the  Neoplatonism  of  the  second  and  third 
centuries,  or  the  mediaeval  scholasticism,  is  but  philosophy  in  priestly 
robe. 

As  religions  develop,  the  work  of  conscious  thought  and  reasoning 
becomes  greater  and  greater.  It  is  these  that  mold  the  warm  and  im- 
pressible wax  of  pious  feeling  into  such  different  theologic  types.  It 
is  these  that  draw  up  creeds,  and  that  define  doctrines  with  ever- 
increasing  detail ;  that  subtilize  over  the  pre-existent  state  of  great 
prophets,  that  invent  theories  of  incarnation  and  tran substantiation, 
and  that  multiply  dogmatic  distinctions  and  schemes  of  salvation,  until 
the  sects  become  multitudinous.  And,  if  this  may  be  said  to  the  dis- 
credit of  metaphysic  speculation,  to  its  credit,  on  the  other  side  of 
the  account,  we  may  put  the  fact  that  it  is  only  through  the  influence 
of  the  philosophic  reason  that  religion  is  exalted  above  dull  naturalism 
or  sensuous  anthropomorphism.  It  is  impossible,  by  mere  observa- 
tion and  induction,  to  ascend  from  the  imperfect  creation  to  the  per- 
fect divine.  The  finite  universe  may  suggest  a  being  of  vast  power 
and  astonishing  wisdom,  but  it  demonstrates  no  infinitude.  All  that 
we  draw  from  nature  and  the  human  is  of  the  relative  and  transient 
order,  and  supplies  no  warrant  to  us  of  any  absolute  and  eternal.  Rude 
and  uneducated  minds  are  always  found  investing  Deity  with  physi- 
cal characteristics  and  human  imperfections.  "  God  is  a  good  man," 
said  Dogberry,  and,  to  the  sensuous  thought,  he  is  to-day  but  little 
more  than  the  magnified  image  of  our  own  humanity.  It  is  by  philo- 
sophic training  alone  that  we  learn  to  analyze  and  carry  out  to  their 
rational  conclusions  those  principles  of  reason  which  demand  of  us  to 
recognize  as  most  characteristic  of  God's  attributes,  beyond  anything 
that  either  nature  or  the  human  body  presents,  those  attributes  of 
infinity,  perfection,  and  absolute  existence,  which  constitute  true  di- 
vinity. 

5.  Similarly  the  moral  condition  of  a  people  is  a  most  important 
variable  in  its  development.  Ideas  of  heaven  and  hell  correspond  to 
the  moral  elevation  of  the  community.  The  warlike  Maori  imagined 
life  after  death  a  constant  series  of  battles,  in  which  the  gods  are 
always  victorious.  The  Moslem's  paradise  excites  our  disgust  by  its 
sensualities  ;  the  Greek's,  by  its  trivialities.  It  is  only  where  the  moral 
nature  is  elevated  that  heaven  is  ennobled  to  a  place  worthy  the  long- 
ings of  a  manly  man. 


RELIGION  AND    THE  ENVIRONMENT,  23 

God-fearing  armies,  as  Carlyle  tells  us,  are  the  best  armies.  So, 
as  Bagehot  has  pointed  out,  those  kinds  of  morals  and  that  kind  of 
religion  which  tend  to  make  the  firmest  and  most  effectual  character 
are  sure  to  prevail,  all  else  being  the  same  ;  and  creeds  or  systems  that 
conduce  to  a  soft,  limp  mind  tend  to  perish.  Strong  beliefs  win  strong 
men,  and  then  make  them  stronger.  Such  is,  no  doubt,  another  cause 
why  monotheism  tends  to  prevail  over  polytheism.  It  at  once  attracts 
and  produces  steadier  character.  It  is  not  confused  by  competing 
rites  nor  distracted  by  miscellaneous  duties. 

As  in  man,  at  the  outset,  the  moral  and  spiritual  faculties  lie  mostly 
latent,  overshadowed  by  his  animal  wants  and  passions,  so  the  gods, 
in  whose  image  he  fashions  at  first  the  dimly  discerned  divine,  are  be- 
ings of  physical  power  and  sensuous  nature,  personifications  of  giant 
strength,  imperative  will,  terrible  passions,  dangerous  to  arouse — a 
wanton  Mylitta,  a  thievish  Hermes,  an  implacable  Pluto,  the  Moloch 
only  to  be  propitiated  by  giving  him  the  best-beloved  child  to  de- 
vour in  his  sacred  flame  ;  or  a  burly  Thor,  whose  hammer-blows  rive 
huge  valleys  in  the  ground,  to  whom  any  deceit  by  which  he  may  over- 
come his  foes  is  entirely  allowable. 

From  this  low  nature  range,  where  morality  is  not  yet  known,  the 
conceptions  of  the  gods  move  up  to  the  philosophic  level,  and  from 
that  to  the  ethical  range.  The  Hindoo  Rita,  at  first  simply  the  fixed 
path  of  the  sun  or  other  heavenly  bodies,  became,  as  the  next  step, 
generalized  in  law  or  order  in  the  abstract  ;  and  then  was  exalted 
into  the  celestial  path  of  rectitude  and  peace,  the  eternal  power  mak- 
ing for  righteousness.  Osiris,  at  first  the  setting  sun,  becomes  next 
the  mysterious  principle  of  life  and  harmony  ;  then,  the  great  judge 
of  men's  conduct,  the  source  of  good. 

All  nature-religions,  derived  as  they  are  from  the  physical  world 
and  its  processes,  and  originating  in  the  infancy  of  civilization,  are 
ethically  imperfect.  They  are  not  immoral,  so  much  as  innocent  of 
those  distinctions,  modesties,  and  virtues,  to  which  so  much  regard  is 
later  given.  But,  just  because  of  this,  many  incidents  of  their  sacred 
histories  come  in  time  to  seem  impure  and  revolting.  While  Zeus 
was  clearly  recognized  as  the  sky  that  fertilizes  the  earth  and  quickens 
nature,  the  myths  of  his  manifold  amours — how,  in  swan-garb  of 
feathery  cirrhus,  he  approaches  and  overshadows  Leda  ;  how  in  a 
shower  of  golden,  sunlight  rain  he  impregnates  Danae,  the  imprisoned 
earth  of  frosty  spring — all  these  would  be  intelligible  and  inoffensive. 
But  when  Zeus  became  the  supreme  ruler  of  earth  and  heaven,  the  all- 
holy  law-giver,  then  men  could  not  but  soon  find  these  narratives 
shocking  to  their  moral  sense.  We  do  not  easily  bear  the  thought 
that  the  objects  of  our  worship  should  be  inferior  in  any  respect  to 
ourselves.  When  this  is  felt,  then  the  worship  must  be  radically  re- 
formed, or  it  falls  before  some  faith  of  purer  type. 

All  the  great  universal   religions  —  Buddhism,  Christianity,  and 


24  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Mohammedanism — are  distinguished  for  their  high  moral  quality,  and 
by  this  won  their  glorious  victories  ;  and  their  crystallization  in  the 
heart  of  a  noble-minded  prophet  and  reformer  was  in  each  case  pre- 
ceded by  a  great  social  and  moral  quickening  throughout  the  commu- 
nity in  which  they  arose.  When  the  depths  of  the  human  heart  are 
moved  and  the  imperative  claims  of  justice,  truth,  and  purity  once 
perceived,  then  the  death -knell  of  mere  nature-worship  has  been 
rung  in  that  land.  As  the  pagan  god,  Wainamoinen,  in  the  Finnish 
epic  of  the  Kalevala,  when  he  hears  of  the  birth  of  Christ,  enters  his 
canoe  and  paddles  away  to  the  northern  wastes  of  snow  and  silence, 
so  must  the  worship  of  force  give  way  to  the  more  majestic  divinity 
of  conscience.  The  varied  influences  of  man's  environment  conspire 
with  the  aspiring  instincts  of  his  in  most  soul  to  conduct  him  con- 
stantly out  of  the  imperfect  toward  the  perfect.  Whether  or  not  he 
reach  it,  it  is  that  that  must  be  the  goal  of  his  striving. 


ISCHIA  AND  ITS  EAETHQUAKES. 

By  M.  CH.  V:fiLAIN. 

THE  island  of  Ischia,  which  has  recently  been  so  terribly  rent  by  an 
earthquake,  is  situated  in  the  northwestern  part  of  the  Bay  of 
Naples,  and  near  the  Phlegrean  fields,  with  which  the  little  island  of 
Procida,  likewise  volcanic,  constitutes  a  connecting  link.  It  forms  a 
part  of  the  Neapolitan  volcanic  region,  which  may  be  considered  as 
still  in  a  state  of  solfatarian  activity,  which  is  exemplified  by  the 
well  known  solfatara  of  Puzzuoli,  where  the  sulphur  is  re-deposited,  as 
far  as  it  is  mined,  by  numerous  gaseous  emanations,  and  by  the  escape 
of  carbonic  acid  in  the  Grotto  del  Cane  near  Lake  Agnano.  All  of 
these  exhalations,  which  are  the  mark  of  a  declining  volcanic  activity, 
attest  that  this  region,  situated  on  a  great  line  of  fracture  running 
northwest  and  southeast  from  Vesuvius  to  Vultura,  is  still  in  direct 
communication  with  the  subterranean  sources.  The  ancients  fully 
recognized  this,  and  regarded  all  those  explosive  craters,  now  trans- 
formed into  a  chain  of  remarkably  picturesque  lakes  across  the  Phle- 
grean fields,  as  so  many  doors  of  Tartarus  through  which  the  infernal 
divinities  took  souls  to  the  banks  of  the  Acheron.  The  most  celebrated 
of  them.  Lake  Avernus,  "  Atri  Janua  Ditis  "  (the  gate  of  black  hell), 
now  smiling  and  salubrious,  then  exhaled  torrents  of  suffocating  gases 
which  well  justified  its  name,  and  rendered  a  stay  there  mortal  to  the 
birds  that  ventured  into  its  neighborhood. 

The  Neapolitan  volcanic  region  extends  from  Vesuvius  to  Vultura, 
on  the  eastern  edge  of  the  Apennines,  and  includes  the  Phlegrean  fields 
and  the  connected  islands  of  Ischia  and  Procida.    The  volcanic  activity 


IS  CHI  A  AND  ITS  EARTHQUAKES, 


25 


of  this  whole  space  is  now  concentrated  at  Vesuvius,  and  is  manifested 
at  other  places  in  the  vicinity  only  by  the  emanations  and  thermal 
springs  of  which  we  have  spoken,  and  from  time  to  time,  during  pe- 
riods when  the  volcano' is  inactive,  by  violent  shocks,  of  which  the 
terrible  disaster  of  the  28th  of  July,  at  Ischia,  has  just  given  an  im- 
pressive example. 

Previous  to  the  Christian  era,  Vesuvius,  covered  with  a  rich  vege- 
tation, was  wholly  inactive.  Nothing  except  the  form  of  the  mountain 
could  give  a  suspicion  of  the  intensity  of  the  fires  that  were  raging 
beneath  it.     Volcanic  activity,  then  localized  in  the  Phlegrean  fields, 


a  iLLuvio 

H   aUATEDMt 


MuHVAS  EStRXeHYTie      TUFA* 

9  rLioccHE  ( EOCENE         LeR£.TAceaua 

Fig.  1.— Bat  of  Naples.    Geological  Map  showikg  the  Belations  op  Ischia  with  thb 

Phlegrean  Fields. 


attained  its  maximum  in  Ischia,  which  was  its  escape-valve  during  the 
entire  period  of  Vesuvian  quiet.  It  produced  then,  through  the  action 
of  a  large  number  of  eruptions  taking  place  within  a  period  of  several 
thousand  years,  a  considerable  island,  which  now  rises  more  than  eight 
hundred  metres,  or  two  thousand  six  hundred  feet,  above  the  level  of 
the  sea.  It  is  eighty  kilometres,  or  a  little  less  than  fifty  miles,  in  cir- 
cumference at  the  level  of  the  sea,  eight  kilometres,  or  not  quite  five 
miles,  long  from  east  to  west,  and  eight  kilometres,  or  about  three 
miles,  broad.  From  its  center  rises  Mount  Epomeo,  which,  crowned 
by  an  abrupt,  semicircular  rampart,  which  is  nothing  else  than  the 
eastern  edge  of  the  grand  crater,  whence  have  issued  all  the  trachytic 
projections  that  now  form  the  greater  part  of  the  island,  presents  the 
somber  aspect  of  a  fire-vomiting  mountain.  This  crater  has  never 
given  out  lavas.     Built  on  masses  of  pumiceous  tufas  of  slight  con- 


26  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

sistency,  the  lava-flows  have  always  been  produced  upon  the  slope  or 
at  the  base  of  the  mountain.  At  each  of  the  orifices  of  issue  the  pro- 
jections forced,  out  by  tumultuous  jets  of  gas  have  formed  adventitious 
cones  of  dimensions  often  considerable,  like  those  of  il  Toppo,  il  Trip- 
piti,  and  il  Garifoli ;  and  we  may  count  some  ten  such  cones  around 
Epomeo,  all  of  which  have  been  centers  of  activity  and  furnished  large 
flows. 

The  appearance  of  Ischia  was  relatively  of  recent  date  ;  it  is  not 
placed  farther  back  than  the  older  quaternary.  The  foundation  of  the 
island  was  begun  by  submarine  eruptions,  above  which  opened  the 
crater  of  Epomeo,  at  first  appearing  above  the  surface  of  the  sea  as  an 
annular  reef,  from  which  were  thrown  out  jets  of  trachytic  scoria. 
The  island  was  raised  up  in  successive  stages  by  the  accumulation  of 
the  projected  matter  around  the  orifice  of  issue.  The  proof  of  this  is 
drawn  from  the  fact  that  we  may  still  find  on  the  sides  of  Mount 
Epomeo,  carried  to  a  height  of  four  hundred  and  seventy  metres, 
masses  of  marine  shells  of  species  yet  living  in  the  Mediterranean,  en- 
cased in  clays  that  have  resulted  from  the  decomposition  of  trachytic 
tufas  under  water.  The  whole  of  this  trachytic  mass  is  itself  estab- 
lished on  marls  and  clays,  including  numerous  remains  of  Mediterra- 
nean shells,  and  has  evidently  acquired  its  present  relief  within  the 
historical  epoch. 

The  most  ancient  of  the  recorded  eruptions  in  Ischia  was  that  of 
Montagnone,  to  which  is  ascribed  the  origin  of  the  vast  crater  of  regular 
form  that  still  existed  before  the  recent  earthquake,  in  a  state  of  per- 
fect preservation,  in  the  northwestern  part  of  Ischia.  About  470  b.  c, 
successive  eruptions  at  Point  Comacchia  gave  rise  to  the  vast  flows  of 
Manecoco  and  Bale,  which  extended  far  into  the  sea  and  prolonged  the 
point  to  the  north.  Numerous  efforts  have  been  made  since  these  an- 
cient times  to  plant  colonies  on  this  unstable  land,  even  then  fertile 
and  covered  with  a  luxuriant  vegetation. 

Lyell,  who  made  a  long  exploration  of  the  island  in  1828,  relates 
that  first  the  Erythreans  and  afterward  the  Chalcideans,  who  had  set- 
tled in  the  island  before  the  Christian  era,  were  driven  away  by  the 
incessant  earthquakes  and  the  mephitic  exhalations  escaping  from 
every  point.  At  a  later  time,  280  b.  c,  Hiero,  king  of  Syracuse,  tried 
to  found  a  colony  there,  but  it  was  soon  driven  away  by  a  formidable 
explosion  preceding  the  -  great  flows  of  lava  which  gave  rise  to  the 
masses  now  forming  the  promontories  of  Zaro  and  Camso. 

The  same  fate  befell  the  Grecian  colonies  which  afterward  tried  at 
different  times  to  occupy  the  island.  The  eruption  that  forced  the 
retreat  of  the  first  Grecian  colony  gave  rise  to  Monte  Rosato,  that 
cone  of  projections  the  sudden  formation  of  which  is  comparable  to 
that  of  Monte  Nuovo.  The  last-named  mountain  was  raised  in  Sep- 
tember, 1538,  in  forty-eight  hours,  at  Puzzuoli,  after  a  succession  of 
formidable  shocks  which  occasioned  great  disasters  in  the  Phlegrean 


ISCHIA  AND   ITS  EARTHQUAKES,  27 

fields  and  destroyed  a  great  number  of  Roman  buildings.  These  two 
mountains  of  volcanic  erection,  formed  under  similar  conditions,  at  two 
distinct  epochs  corresponding  in  each  case  with  a  period  of  repose  in 
Vesuvius,  are  distinguished  by  their  regular  form,  which  may  be  com- 
pared with  that  of  the  classic  volcanoes  of  the  chain  of  the  puys  of 
Auvergne.  Both,  terminating  in  a  vast  crater,  have  emitted,  like  the 
volcanoes  of  Auvergne,  only  a  single  flow  of  lava,  which  seems  to  have 
exhausted  all  their  energy.  A  long  period  of  repose  followed.  Dur- 
ing more  than  a  century  "  Ischia  the  Joyous,"  as  it  was  called,  rested 
in  perfect  tranquillity.  The  pleasure-loving  Romans  made  of  it  the 
most  enchanting  resort  in  the  world  ;  all  their  magnates  had  villas 
there. 

It  is  to  be  remarked  that  this  period  of  repose  was  correspondent 
with  a  resumption  of  activity  on  Vesuvius.  The  first  symptom  of  an 
awakening  of  energy  in  that  volcano  was  an  earthquake,  which  in  the 
year  68  occasioned  considerable  damage  in  the  neighboring  towns. 
We  know  well  how,  eleven  years  later,  in  79,  the  hitherto  peaceful 
mountain,  covered  at  the  time  with  rich  plantations  and  forests  nearly 
to  its  crater,  revealed  by  a  sudden  explosion  the  terrible  force  that 
was  sleeping  in  its  depths.  La  Somma,  reduced  to  powder,  was  pro- 
jected into  the  air ;  then  a  column  of  thick  smoke  was  seen  to  rise 
vertically  from  the  summit  of  the  mountain,  and  to  spread  horizontally, 
covering  the  country  under  its  immense  shadows.  The  sun  was  ob- 
scured even  as  far  as  to  Rome,  and  it  was  believed  that  the  "great 
night  of  the  earth "  was  about  to  begin.  When  light  was  restored, 
the  dismantled  mountain  had  changed  its  form  ;  the  luxuriant  forests 
that  had  covered  it  had  disappeared,  and  so  had  the  populous  cities  of 
Herculaneum,  Pompeii,  and  Stabise,  buried,  with  their  inhabitants, 
under  ashes  and  volcanic  debris.  From  this  time,  Vesuvius  does  not 
appear  to  have  emitted  any  eruption  of  lava  for  several  hundred 
years  ;  and  this  period  of  quiet  at  that  center  seems  to  have  been 
marked  at  Ischia  by  a  resumption  of  the  fires  of  Epomeo,  which  had 
enjoyed  so  long  a  rest  that  large  forests  had  grown  up  to  the  very 
edge  of  its  crater.  In  1302,  after  the  island  had  been  shaken  with  a 
succession  of  earthquakes  during  the  previous  year,  the  lava  gushed 
out  by  a  new  opening  near  the  city  of  Ischia,  and  in  less  than  four 
hours  reached  the  sea,  having  destroyed  everything  in  its  passage  as 
if  it  had  been  a  torrent  of  fire.  The  city  was  terribly  afliicted  ;  large 
houses  and  numerous  villas  were  buried,  with  their  inhabitants.  The 
rough  surface  of  this  lava  stream  has  resisted  all  weathering,  and  still 
refuses  to  bear  any  vegetation.  The  new  eruptive  phase  was  of  long 
duration,  and  it  is  remarked  that  while  it  continued  Vesuvius  was 
quiet.  The  alternations  between  the  eruptive  movements  of  lava  in 
the  two  volcanic  centers  find  a  natural  explanation  in  the  facts  that 
they  are  both  on  the  same  line  of  fracture,  and  a  subterranean  com- 
munication probably  exists  between  them. 


28  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

Epomeo  became  tranquil  after  Vesuvius  resumed  its  eruptions  ; 
and  for  long  series  of  years  the  island  of  Ischia  had  no  other  outlets 
for  the  escape  of  the  gases  generated  in  its  depths  than  its  thirty  or 
forty  thermal  springs,  which  have  contributed,  together  with  the  pure 
air  and  the  beauty  of  the  situation,  to  increase  every  year  the  crowd 
of  visitors. 

Every  indication  tends  to  support  the  belief  that  Ischia,  a  rival  to 
Vesuvius  in  the  height  of  its  volcano,  is  an  ancient  cone  composed  of 
the  matter  thrown  up  by  extremely  violent  submarine  eruptions  which 
took  place  before  the  present  epoch.  As  the  mountain  increased  in 
height  through  the  successive  accumulations  of  the  trachytic  projec- 
tions from  the  central  crater,  the  weaker  parts  of  its  flanks,  yielding 
to  the  height  of  the  liquid  column  in  the  vent,  were  cleft  in  every  di- 
rection ;  the  injection  of  lavas  into  all  the  fissures  thus  formed  giving 
rise  to  the  flows  we  have  just  mentioned,  melted  in  with  and  consoli- 
dated the  structure,  which  is  thus  the  result  of  a  protracted  alternation 
of  projected  debris  and  flows  of  compact  lavas.  "We  can  in  this  man- 
ner account  for  the  disposition  of  the  grand  ravines  which,  descending 
from  Epomeo,  plow  the  flanks  of  the  mountain  to  a  great  depth. 


Fig.  2.— Coast  or  Ischia,  bken  pbom  the  West,  Point  Comacchia. 

The  island  has,  therefore,  been  progressively  raised  above  the 
waters,  and  has  grown  laterally  during  the  historic  period,  as  is  testi- 
fied by  the  flows  of  lava  still  visible  on  the  Arso  and  on  Monte  Tabor, 
which  are  prolonged  to  the  sea,  and  by  the  numerous  secondary  cones 
scattered  over  its  plateaus.  It  definitely  acquired  its  present  relief 
toward  the  beginning  of  this  century.  Since  that  time.  Mount  Epomeo 
has  not  given  any  other  signs  of  its  volcanic  character  than  those  which 
the  scientific  observer  might  deduce  from  the  analogy  of  its  form  with 
the  forms  of  other  volcanoes.  Its  arid,  slashed  summit,  looking  up  to 
the  sky,  served  as  the  end  of  the  promenade  for  the  numerous  visitors 
who  every  summer  frequented  the  thermal  stations  at  Casamicciola, 
Castiglione,  and  San  Lorenzo.  Its  springs,  highly  endowed  with  ther- 
mal qualities,  and  the  exceptional  fertility  of  its  volcanic  soil,  on  which 
small  shrubs  became  arborescent,  would  have  sufficed  to  give  to  the 
fortunate,  healthful,  and  gay  island  great  wealth,  had  not  its  earth- 
quakes always  caused  apprehensions. 

These  disturbances  of  the  earth,  the  relations  of  which  with  the 
volcanic  structure  are  most  evident  have  repeatedly  brought  frightful 
disasters  upon  Ischia.  Hardly  a  trace  of  the  splendid  Roman  struc- 
tures once  built  upon  it  now  remains  ;  without  mentioning  specifically 


IS  CHI  A  AND  ITS  EARTHQUAKES.  29 

all  the  recorded  earthquakes,  that  of  1881,  which  is  still  comparatively 
fresh  in  memory,  partly  destroyed  the  city  of  Casamicciola,  which  has 
now  been  obliterated.  It  gave  a  warning  by  which  no  one  knew  how 
to  profit.     The  constitution  of  the  soil  of  the  island,  which  is  com- 


FiG.  3.— Castle  of  Ischia. 

posed  chiefly  of  trachytic  tufas  and  unconsolidated  loose  matters,  is  a 
considerable  element  in  promoting  these  disasters. 

The  Ischian  earthquakes  are  narrowly  localized.  Their  origin  is 
not  doubtful,  but  is  readily  traceable  to  the  efforts  which  the  lavas  and 
the  gases,  strongly  compressed  under  the  earth,  make  to  escape.  Their 
effects  never  extend  to  great  distances.  The  catastrophe  which  has 
just  consummated  the  destruction  of  Casamicciola,  already  severely 
shaken  in  1881,  is  a  striking  example  of  them.  A  violent  shock,  quick 
as  the  firing  of  a  cannon,  was  enough  to  unsettle  and  partly  destroy 
the  whole  northern  slope  of  the  island.  Procida,  which  was  near  it,  was 
shaken,  but  only  a  few  rumblings  in  the  earth  were  felt  on  the  neigh- 
boring coast.  The  phenomena  are  marked  by  vertical  shocks,  acting 
only  upon  a  definite  point,  and  violent  in  proportion  as  they  are  lim- 
ited in  extent.  These  shocks  are  propagated  irregularly,  without  con- 
tinuity, by  sudden  starts,  across  the  trachytic  tufas  forming  the  sub- 
soil of  the  island.  Slides  of  the  ground  are  thus  produced,  which  carry 
off  with  them  cultivated  fields  and  buildings.  One  is  sometimes 
tempted  to  compare  them,  on  account  of  the  formidable  subterranean 
sounds  that  accompany  them,  and  of  their  suddenness,  to  mine  explo- 
sions ;  but  the  illustration  would  be  badly  chosen,  for  these  move- 
ments have  never  caused  a  sudden  rising  of  the  soil,  and  there  is 
nothing  about  them  comparable  to  the  disturbances  produced  by  an 
explosion. 

They  are  rather  sinkings  down,  into  a  soil  already  cracked  and 


30  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

partly  disintegrated  by  tlie  thermal  waters,  that  have  produced  all 
these  disasters  which  we  now  know  have  been  greater  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  the  points  where  these  springs  are  most  active  and  most  abun- 
dant. Casamicciola,  where  the  hydro-thermal  activity  of  the  island  is 
concentrated,  has  been  destroyed  forever,  for  prudence  will  demand 
that  it  never  be  rebuilt.  A  single  house  remains  standing  in  the  midst 
of  that  disorder  of  ruins  and  that  accumulation  of  dead  bodies  that 
now  cover  the  site  of  a  watering-place  once  so  prosperous  and  bo 
thronged.  The  city  of  Ischia  itself  has  suffered  severely  ;  Loco 
Ameno  exists  no  more  ;  Forio  is  almost  in  ruins  ;  Porto  d'Ischia  has 
also  been  very  much  tried  ;  and  we  might  say  that  there  is  not  one  of 
those  picturesque  villas,  hung  upon  the  mountain-side,  or  hidden  in 
the  verdure  of  the  valleys,  that  has  not  been  damaged  ;  and  the  num- 
ber of  victims  buried  under  the  mass  of  ruins  will  probably  never  be 
fully  ascertained. 

We  shall  have  to  go  very  far  back  in  the  history  of  the  Neapolitan 
volcanoes  to  find  an  example  of  another  such  catastrophe.  Since 
Herculaneum  and  Pompeii  were  buried  under  a  cover  of  ashes  and 
lava,  the  most  recent  great  disaster  we  can  at  all  compare  with  the 
destruction  of  Ischia  is  that  of  Potenza,  which,  in  December,  1857,  cost 
the  lives  of  more  than  ten  thousand  persons.  This  was  in  Calabria — 
that  is,  in  one  of  the  provinces  between  Vesuvius  and  Etna,  which 
have  frequently  been  subjected  to  terrible  disturbances. — Translated 
for  the  Popular  Science  Monthly  from  La  Nature, 


A  PLEA  FOE  PUKE  SCIENCE.* 

By  H.  a.  ROWLAND, 

PBOFKSSOB  OF  PHYSICS   IN   JOHNS    HOPKINS   UNIVEESITY. 

THE  question  is  sometimes  asked  us  as  to  the  time  of  year  we  like 
the  best.  To  my  mind,  the  spring  is  the  most  delightful ;  for 
Nature  then  recovers  from  the  apathy  of  winter,  and  stirs  herself  to 
renewed  life.  The  leaves  grow,  and  the  buds  open,  with  a  suggestion 
of  vigor  delightful  to  behold  ;  and  we  revel  in  this  ever-renewed  life 
of  Nature.  But  this  can  not  always  last.  The  leaves  reach  their  limit ; 
the  buds  open  to  the  full,  and  pass  away.  Then  we  begin  to  ask  our- 
selves whether  all  this  display  has  been  in  vain,  or  whether  it  has  led 
to  a  bountiful  harvest. 

So  this  magnificent  country  of  ours  has  rivaled  the  vigor  of  spring 
in  its  growth.     Forests  have  been  leveled,  and  cities  built,  and  a  large 

*  Vice-Presidential  Address  delivered  before  Section  B,  of  the  American  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  August  15,  1883.  Abridged  for  The  Popular  Science 
Monthly. 


A  PLEA   FOR  PURE  SCIENCE,  31 

and  powerful  nation  has  been  created  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  "We 
are  proud  of  our  advancement.  We  are  proud  of  such  cities  as  this, 
founded  in  a  day  upon  a  spot  over  which,  but  a  few  years  since,  the 
red-man  hunted  the  buffalo.  But  we  must  remember  that  this  is  only 
the  spring  of  our  country.  Our  glance  must  not  be  backward  ;  for, 
however  beautiful  leaves  and  blossoms  are,  and  however  marvelous 
their  rapid  increase,  they  are  but  leaves  and  blossoms,  after  all. 
Rather  should  we  look  forward  to  discover  what  will  be  the  outcome 
of  all  this,  and  what  the  chance  of  harvest.  For,  if  we  do  this  in  time, 
we  may  discover  the  worm  which  threatens  the  ripe  fruit,  or  the  bar- 
ren spot  where  the  harvest  is  withering  for  want  of  water. 

I  am  required  to  address  the  so-called  physical  section  of  this  As- 
sociation. Fain  would  I  speak  pleasairt  words  to  you  on  this  subject  ; 
fain  would  I  recount  to  you  the  progress  made  in  this  subject  by  my 
countrymen,  and  their  noble  efforts  to  understand  the  order  of  the 
universe.  But  I  go  out  to  gather  the  grain  ripe  to  the  harvest,  and  I 
find  only  tares.  Here  and  there  a  noble  head  of  grain  rises  above  the 
weeds  ;  but  so  few  are  they  that  I  find  the  majority  of  my  country- 
men know  them  not,  but  think  that  they  have  a  waving  harvest,  while 
it  is  only  one  of  weeds,  after  all.  American  science  is  a  thing  of  the  fu- 
ture, and  not  of  the  present  or  past  ;  and  the  proper  course  of  one  in  my 
position  is  to  consider  what  must  be  done  to  create  a  science  of  physics 
in  this  country,  rather  than  to  call  telegraphs,  electric  lights,  and  such 
conveniences,  by  the  name  of  science.  I  do  not  wish  to  underrate  the 
value  of  all  these  things  :  the  progress  of  the  world  depends  on  them, 
and  he  is  to  be  honored  who  cultivates  them  successfully.  So  also 
the  cook  who  invents  a  new  and  palatable  dish  for  the  table  benefits 
the  world  to  a  certain  degree  ;  yet  we  do  not  dignify  him  by  the  name 
of  a  chemist.  And  yet  it  is  not  an  uncommon  thing,  especially  in 
American  newspapers,  to  have  the  applications  of  science  confounded 
with  pure  science  :  and  some  obscure  American  who  steals  the  ideas  of 
some  great  mind  of  the  past,  and  enriches  himself  by  the  application 
of  the  same  to  domestic  uses,  is  often  lauded  above  the  great  origina- 
tor of  the  idea,  who  might  have  worked  out  hundreds  of  such  appli- 
cations, had  his  mind  possessed  the  necessary  element  of  vulgarity.  I 
have  often  been  asked  which  was  the  more  important  to  the  world, 
pure  or  applied  science.  To  have  the  applications  of  a  science,  the 
science  itself  must  exist.  Should  we  stop  its  progress,  and  attend 
only  to  its  applications,  we  should  soon  degenerate  into  a  people  like 
the  Chinese,  who  have  made  no  progress  for  generations,  because  they 
have  been  satisfied  with  the  applications  of  science,  and  have  never 
sought  for  reasons  in  what  they  have  done.  The  reasons  constitute 
pure  science.  They  have  known  the  application  of  gunpowder  for 
centuries  ;  and  yet  the  reasons  for  its  peculiar  action,  if  sought  in  the 
proper  manner,  would  have  developed  the  science  of  chemistry,  and 
even  of  physics,  with  all  their  numerous  applications.     By  contenting 


32  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

themselves  with  the  fact  that  gunpowder  will  explode,  and  seeking  no 
further,  they  have  fallen  behind  in  the  progress  of  the  world  ;  and  we 
now  regard  this  oldest  and  most  numerous  of  nations  as  only  barba- 
rians. And  yet  our  own  country  is  in  this  same  state.  But  we  have 
done  better  ;  for  we  have  taken  the  science  of  the  Old  World,  and  ap- 
plied it  to  all  our  uses,  accepting  it  like  the  rain  of  heaven,  without 
asking  whence  it  came,  or  even  acknowledging  the  debt  of  gratitude 
we  owe  to  the  great  and  unselfish  workers  who  have  given  it  to  us. 
And,  like  the  rain  of  heaven,  this  pure  science  has  fallen  upon  our 
country,  and  made  it  great  and  rich  and  strong. 

To  a  civilized  nation  of  the  present  day,  the  applications  of  science 
are  a  necessity  ;  and  our  country  has  hitherto  succeeded  in  this  line, 
only  for  the  reason  that  there  are  certain  countries  in  the  world  where 
pure  science  has  been  and  is  cultivated,  and  where  the  study  of  na- 
ture is  considered  a  noble  pursuit.  But  such  countries  are  rare,  and 
those  who  wish  to  pursue  pure  science  in  our  own  country  must  be 
prepared  to  face  public  opinion  in  a  manner  which  requires  much  moral 
courage.  They  must  be  prepared  to  be  looked  down  upon  by  every 
successful  inventor  whose  shallow  mind  imagines  that  the  only  pursuit 
of  mankind  is  wealth,  and  that  he  who  obtains  most  has  best  succeeded 
in  this  world.  Everybody  can  comprehend  a  million  of  money  ;  but 
how  few  can  comprehend  any  advance  in  scientific  theory,  especially 
in  its  more  abstruse  portions  !  And  this,  I  believe,  is  one  of  the  causes 
of  the  small  number  of  persons  who  have  ever  devoted  themselves  to 
work  of  the  higher  order  in  any  human  pursuit.  Man  is  a  gregarious 
animal,  and  depends  very  much,  for  his  happiness,  on  the  sympathy  of 
those  around  him  ;  and  it  is  rare  to  find  one  with  the  courage  to  pur- 
sue his  own  ideals  in  spite  of  his  surroundings.  In  times  past,  men 
were  more  isolated  than  at  present,  and  each  came  in  contact  with  a 
fewer  number  of  people.  Hence  that  time  constitutes  the  period  when 
the  great  sculptures,  paintings,  and  poems  were  produced.  Each  man's 
mind  was  comparatively  free  to  follow  its  own  ideals,  and  the  results 
were  the  great  and  unique  works  of  the  ancient  masters.  To-day  the 
railroad  and  the  telegraph,  the  books  and  newspapers,  have  united  each 
individual  man  with  the  rest  of  the  world  :  instead  of  his  mind  being 
an  individual,  a  thing  apart  by  itself,  and  unique,  it  has  become  so  in- 
fluenced by  the  outer  world,  and  so  dependent  upon  it,  that  it  has  lost 
its  originality  to  a  great  extent.  The  man  who  in  times  past  would 
naturally  have  been  in  the  lowest  depths  of  poverty,  mentally  and 
physically,  to-day  measures  tape  behind  a  counter,  and  with  lordly  air 
advises  the  naturally  bom  genius  how  he  may  best  bring  his  outward 
appearance  down  to  a  level  with  his  own.  A  new  idea  he  never  had, 
but  he  can  at  least  cover  his  mental  nakedness  with  ideas  imbibed  from 
others.  So  the  genius  of  the  past  soon  perceives  that  his  higher  ideas 
are  too  high  to  be  appreciated  by  the  world  ;  his  mind  is  clipped  down 
to  the   standard  form ;  every  natural  offshoot  upward  is   repressed, 


A  FLEA  FOR  FURE  SCIENCE. 


33 


until  the  man  is  no  higher  than  his  fellows.  Hence  the  world,  through 
the  abundance  of  its  intercourse,  is  reduced  to  a  level.  What  was 
formerly  a  grand  and  magnificent  landscape,  with  mountains  ascend- 
ing above  the  clouds,  and  depths  whose  gloom  we  can  not  now  appre- 
ciate, has  become  serene  and  peaceful.  The  depths  have  been  filled, 
and  the  heights  leveled,  and  the  wavy  harvests  and  smoky  factories 
cover  the  landscape. 

As  far  as  the  average  man  is  concerned,  the  change  is  for  the  bet- 
ter. The  average  life  of  man  is  far  pleasanter,  and  his  mental  con- 
dition better,  than  before.  But  we  miss  the  vigor  imparted  by  the 
mountains.  We  are  tired  of  mediocrity,  the  curse  of  our  country. 
We  are  tired  of  seeing  our  artists  reduced  to  hirelings,  and  imploring 
Congress  to  protect  them  against  foreign  competition.  We  are  tired 
of  seeing  our  countrymen  take  their  science  from  abroad,  and  boast 
that  they  here  convert  it  into  wealth.  We  are  tired  of  seeing  our 
professors  degrading  their  chairs  by  the  pursuit  of  applied  science  in- 
stead of  pure  science  ;  or  sitting  inactive  while  the  whole  world  is 
open  to  investigation  ;  lingering  by  the  wayside  while  the  problem  of 
the  universe  remains  unsolved.  We  wish  for  something  higher  and 
nobler  in  this  country  of  mediocrity,  for  a  mountain  to  relieve  the 
landscape  of  its  monotony.  We  are  surrounded  with  mysteries,  and 
have  been  created  with  minds  to  enjoy  and  reason  to  aid  in  the  un- 
folding of  such  mysteries.  Nature  calls  to  us  to  study  her,  and  our 
better  feelings  urge  us  in  the  same  direction. 

For  generations  there  have  been  some  few  students  of  science  who 
have  esteemed  the  study  of  nature  the  most  noble  of  pursuits.  Some 
have  been  wealthy,  and  some  poor  ;  but  they  have  all  had  one  thing 
in  common — the  love  of  nature  and  its  laws.  To  these  few  men  the 
world  owes  all  the  progress  due  to  applied  science,  and  yet  very  few 
ever  received  any  payment  in  this  world  for  their  labors. 

Faraday,  the  great  discoverer  of  the  principle  on  which  all  machines 
for  electric  lighting,  electric  railways,  and  the  transmission  of  power, 
must  rest,  died  a  poor  man,  although  others  and  the  whole  world  have 
been  enriched  by  his  discoveries.  And  such  must  be  the  fate  of  the 
followers  in  his  footsteps  for  some  time  to  come. 

But  there  will  be  those  in  the  future  who  will  study  nature  from 
pure  love,  and  for  them  higher  prizes  than  any  yet  obtained  are  wait- 
ing. We  have  but  yet  commenced  our  pursuit  of  science,  and  stand 
upon  the  threshold  wondering  what  there  is  within.  We  explain  the 
motion  of  the  planet  by  the  law  of  gravitation  ;  but  who  will  explain 
how  two  bodies,  millions  of  miles  apart,  tend  to  go  toward  each  other 
with  a  certain  force  ? 

We  now  weigh  and  measure  electricity  and  electric  currents  with 

as  much  ease  as  ordinary  matter,  yet  have  we  made  any  approach  to 

an  explanation  of  the  phenomenon  of  electricity  ?    Light  is  an  undu- 

latory  motion,  and  yet  do  we  know  what  it  is  that  undulates  ?    Heat 

VOL.  xxir. — 3 


34  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

is  motion,  and  yet  do  we  know  what  it  is  that  moves  ?  Ordinary  mat- 
ter is  a  common  substance,  and  yet  who  shall  fathom  the  mystery  of 
its  internal  constitution  ? 

There  is  room  for  all  in  the  work,  and  the  race  has  but  commenced. 
The  problems  are  not  to  be  solved  in  a  moment,  but  need  the  best  work 
of  the  best  minds,  for  an  indefinite  time. 

Shall  our  country  be  contented  to  stand  by,  while  other  countries 
lead  in  the  race  ?  Shall  we  always  grovel  in  the  dust,  and  pick  up  the 
crumbs  which  fall  from  the  rich  man's  table,  considering  ourselves 
richer  than  he  because  we  have  more  crumbs,  while  we  forget  that  he 
has  the  cake,  which  is  the  source  of  all  crumbs  ?  Shall  we  be  swine, 
to  whom  the  corn  and  husks  are  of  more  value  than  the  pearls  ?  If  I 
read  aright  the  signs  of  the  times,  I  think  we  shall  not  always  be  con- 
tented with  our  inferior  position.  From  looking  down  we  have  almost 
become  blind,  but  may  recover.  In  a  new  country,  the  necessities  of 
life  must  be  attended  to  first.  The  curse  of  Adam  is  upon  us  all,  and 
we  must  earn  our  bread. 

But  it  is  the  mission  of  applied  science  to  render  this  easier  for  the 
whole  world.  There  is  a  story  which  I  once  read,  which  will  illus- 
trate the  true  position  of  applied  science  in  the  world.  A  boy,  more 
fond  of  reading  than  of  work,  was  employed,  in  the  early  days  of  the 
steam-engine,  to  turn  the  valve  at  every  stroke.  Necessity  was  the 
mother  of  invention  in  his  case  :  his  reading  was  disturbed  by  his 
work,  and  he  soon  discovered  that  he  might  become  free  from  his 
work  by  so  tying  the  valve  to  some  movable  portion  of  the  engine  as 
to  make  it  move  its  own  valve.  So  I  consider  that  the  true  pursuit  of 
mankind  is  intellectual.  The  scientific  study  of  nature,  in  all  its 
branches,  of  mathematics,  of  mankind  in  its  past  and  present,  the  pur- 
suit of  art,  and  the  cultivation  of  all  that  is  great  and  noble  in  the 
world — these  are  the  highest  occupations  of  mankind.  Commerce,  the 
applications  of  science,  the  accumulation  of  wealth,  are  necessities 
which  are  a  curse  to  those  with  high  ideals,  but  a  blessing  to  that  por- 
tion of  the  world  which  has  neither  the  ability  nor  the  taste  for  higher 
pursuits. 

As  the  applications  of  science  multiply,  living  becomes  easier,  the 
wealth  necessary  for  the  purchase  of  apparatus  can  better  be  obtained, 
and  the  pursuit  of  other  things  besides  the  necessities  of  life  becomes 
possible. 

But  the  moral  qualities  must  also  be  cultivated  in  proportion  to  the 
wealth  of  the  country,  before  much  can  be  done  in  pure  science.  The 
successful  sculptor  or  painter  naturally  attains  to  wealth  through  the 
legitimate  work  of  his  profession.  The  novelist,  the  poet,  the  mu- 
sician, all  have  wealth  before  them  as  the  end  of  a  successful  career. 
But  the  scientist  and  the  mathematician  have  no  such  incentive  to 
work  :  they  must  earn  their  living  by  other  pursuits,  usually  teaching, 
and  only  devote  their  surplus  time  to  the  true  pursuit  of  their  science. 


A   FLEA  FOE  PURE  SCIENCE. 


35 


And  frequently,  by  the  small  salary  which  they  receive,  by  the  lack 
of  instrumental  and  literary  facilities,  by  the  mental  atmosphere  in 
which  they  exist,  and,  most  of  all,  by  their  low  ideals  of  life,  they  are 
led  to  devote  their  surplus  time  to  applied  science  or  to  other  means 
of  increasing  their  fortune.  How  shall  we,  then,  honor  the  few,  the 
very  few,  who,  in  spite  of  all  difficulties,  have  kept  their  eyes  fixed  on 
the  goal,  and  have  steadily  worked  for  pure  science,  giving  to  the 
world  a  most  precious  donation,  which  has  borne  fruit  in  our  greater 
knowledge  of  the  universe  and  in  the  applications  to  our  physical  life 
which  have  enriched  thousands  and  benefited  each  one  of  us  ?  There 
are  also  those  who  have  every  facility  for  the  pursuit  of  science,  who 
have  an  ample  salary  and  every  appliance  for  work,  yet  who  devote 
themselves  to  commercial  work,  to  testifying  in  courts  of  law,  and  to 
any  other  work  to  increase  their  present  large  income.  Such  men  would 
be  respectable  if  they  gave  up  the  name  of  professor,  and  took  that  of 
consulting  chemists  or  physicists.  And  such  men  are  needed  in  the 
community.  But  for  a  man  to  occupy  the  professor's  chair  in  a  promi- 
nent college,  and,  by  his  energy  and  ability  in  the  commercial  applica- 
tions of  his  science,  stand  before  the  local  community  in  a  prominent 
manner,  and  become  the  newspaper  exponent  of  his  science,  is  a  dis- 
grace both  to  him  and  his  college.  It  is  the  death-blow  to  science  in 
that  region.  Call  him  by  his  proper  name,  and  he  becomes  at  once  a 
useful  member  of  the  community.  Put  in  his  place  a  man  who  shall 
by  precept  and  example  cultivate  his  science,  and  how  different  is  the 
result !  Young  men,  looking  forward  into  the  world  for  something 
to  do,  see  before  them  this  high  and  noble  life,  and  they  see  that  there 
is  something  more  honorable  than  the  accumulation  of  wealth.  They 
are  thus  led  to  devote  their  lives  to  similar  pursuits,  and  they  honor 
the  professor  who  has  drawn  them  to  something  higher  than  they 
might  otherwise  have  aspired  to  reach. 

I  do  not  wish  to  be  misunderstood  in  this  matter.  It  is  no  disgrace 
to  make  money  by  an  invention,  or  otherwise,  or  to  do  commercial 
scientific  work  under  some  circumstances.  But  let  pure  science  be  the 
aim  of  those  in  the  chairs  of  professors,  and  so  prominently  the  aim 
that  there  can  be  no  mistake.  If  our  aim  in  life  is  wealth,  let  us  hon- 
estly engage  in  commercial  pursuits,  and  compete  with  others  for  its 
possession.  But  if  we  choose  a  life  which  we  consider  higher,  let  us 
live  up  to  it,  taking  wealth  or  poverty  as  it  may  chance  to  come  to  us, 
but  letting  neither  turn  us  aside  from  our  pursuit. 

The  work  of  teaching  may  absorb  the  energies  of  many  ;  and,  in- 
deed, this  is  the  excuse  given  by  most  for  not  doing  any  scientific 
work.  But  there  is  an  old  saying,  that  where  there  is  a  will  there  is  a 
way.  Few  professors  do  as  much  teaching  or  lecturing  as  the  German 
professors,  who  are  also  noted  for  their  elaborate  papers  in  the  scien- 
tific journals.  I  myself  have  been  burdened  down  with  work,  and 
know  what  it  is  ;  and  yet  I  here  assert  that  all  can  find  time  for  scien- 


36  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

tific  research  if  they  desire  it.  But  here,  again,  that  curse  of  our  coun- 
try, mediocrity,  is  upon  us.  Our  colleges  and  universities  seldom  call 
for  first-class  men  of  reputation,  and  I  have  even  heard  the  trustee  of 
a  well-known  college  assert  that  no  professor  should  engage  in  research 
because  of  the  time  wasted  !  I  was  glad  to  see,  soon  after,  by  the  call 
of  a  prominent  scientist  to  that  college,  that  the  majority  of  the  trus- 
tees did  not  agree  with  him. 

That  teaching  is  important,  goes  without  saying.  A  successful 
teacher  is  to  be  respected  ;  but,  if  he  does  not  lead  his  scholars  to  that 
which  is  highest,  is  he  not  blameworthy  ?  We  are,  then,  to  look  to 
the  colleges  and  universities  of  the  land  for  most  of  the  work  in  pure 
science  which  is  done.  Let  us  therefore  examine  these  latter,  and  see 
what  the  prospect  is. 

One,  whom  perhaps  we  may  here  style  a  practical  follower  of  Rus- 
kin,  has  stated  that  while  in  this  country  he  was  variously  designated 
by  the  title  of  captain,  colonel,  and  professor.  The  story  may  or  may 
not  be  true,  but  we  all  know  enough  of  the  customs  of  our  country- 
men not  to  dispute  it  on  general  principles.  All  men  are  born  equal : 
some  men  are  captains,  colonels,  and  professors,  and  therefore  all  men 
are  such.  The  logic  is  conclusive  ;  and  the  same  kind  of  logic  seems 
to  have  been  applied  to  our  schools,  colleges,  and  universities.  I  have 
before  me  the  report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Education  for  1880.  Ac- 
cording to  that  report,  there  were  three  hundred  and  eighty-nine,*  or 
say,  in  round  numbers,  four  hundred  institutions,  calling  themselves 
colleges  or  universities,  in  our  country !  We  may  well  exclaim  that 
ours  is  a  great  country,  having  more  than  the  whole  world  besides. 
The  fact  is  sufficient.  The  whole  earth  would  hardly  support  such  a 
number  of  first-class  institutions.  The  curse  of  mediocrity  must  be 
upon  them,  to  swarm  in  such  numbers.  They  must  be  a  cloud  of  mos- 
quitoes, instead  of  eagles  as  they  profess.  And  this  becomes  evident 
on  further  analysis.  About  one  third  aspire  to  the  name  of  univer- 
sity ;  and  I  note  one  called  by  that  name  which  has  two  professors 
and  eighteen  students,  and  another  having  three  teachers  and  twelve 
students  !  And  these  instances  are  not  unique,  for  the  number  of  small 
institutions  and  schools  which  call  themselves  universities  is  very  great. 
It  is  difficult  to  decide  from  the  statistics  alone  the  exact  standing  of 
these  institutions.  The  extremes  are  easy  to  manage.  Who  can  doubt 
that  an  institution  with  over  eight  hundred  students,  and  a  faculty  of 
seventy,  is  of  a  higher  grade  than  those  above  cited  having  ten  or 
twenty  students  and  two  or  three  in  the  faculty  ?  Yet  this  is  not  al- 
ways true  ;  for  I  note  one  institution  with  over  five  hundred  students 
which  is  known  to  me  personally  as  of  the  grade  of  a  high-school. 
The  statistics  are  more  or  less  defective,  and  it  would  much  weaken 
the  force  of  my  remarks  if  I  went  too  much  into  detail.    I  append  the 

*  Three  hundred  and  sixty-four  reported  on,  and  twenty-five  not  reported. 


A   PLEA  FOB  PURE  SCIENCE,  37 

following  tables,  however,  of  three  hundred  and  thirty  so-called  col- 
leges and  universities  : 

218  had  from      0  to  100  students. 

88     "        "     100    "  200 

12     "       "     200    •*  300        " 

6     "        "     300    "  500        " 

6  over  500 

Of  three  hundred  and  twenty-two  so-called  colleges  and  universities — 

206  had    0  to  10  in  the  faculty. 
99     "    10   "   20         "        " 
17    "    20  or  over       "        " 

If  the  statistics  were  forthcoming — and  possibly  they  may  exist — 
we  might  also  get  an  idea  of  the  standing  of  these  institutions  and 
their  approach  to  the  true  university  idea,  by  the  average  age  of  the 
scholars.  Possibly  also  the  ratio  of  number  of  scholars  to  teachers 
might  be  of  some  help.  All  these  methods  give  an  approximation  to 
the  present  standing  of  the  institutions.  But  there  is  another  method 
of  attacking  the  problem,  which  is  very  exact,  but  it  only  gives  us 
the  possibilities  of  which  the  institution  is  capable.  I  refer  to  the 
wealth  of  the  institution.  In  estimating  the  wealth,  I  have  not  in- 
cluded the  value  of  grounds  and  buildings,  for  this  is  of  little  impor- 
tance, either  to  the  present  or  future  standing  of  the  institution.  As 
good  work  can  be  done  in  a  hovel  as  in  a  palace.  I  have  taken  the 
productive  funds  of  the  institution  as  the  basis  of  estimate.     I  find — 

234  have  below      $500,000. 

8     "      between  $500,000  and  $1,000,000. 
8     "      over    $1,000,000. 

There  is  no  fact  more  firmly  established,  all  over  the  world,  than 
that  the  higher  education  can  never  be  made  to  pay  for  itself.  Usu- 
ally the  cost  to  a  college,  of  educating  a  young  man,  very  much  ex- 
ceeds what  he  pays  for  it,  and  is  often  three  or  four  times  as  much. 
The  higher  the  education,  the  greater  this  proportion  will  be  ;  and  a 
university  of  the  highest  class  should  anticipate  only  a  small  accession 
to  its  income  from  the  fees  of  students.  Hence  the  test  I  have  applied 
must  give  a  true  representation  of  the  possibilities  in  every  case.  Ac- 
cording to  the  figures,  only  sixteen  colleges  and  universities  have 
$500,000  or  over  of  invested  funds,  and  only  one  half  of  these  have 
$1,000,000  and  over.  Now,  even  the  latter  sum  is  a  very  small  endow- 
ment for  a  college  ;  and  to  call  any  institution  a  university  which  has 
less  than  $1,000,000  is  to  render  it  absurd  in  the  face  of  the  world. 
And  yet  more  than  one  hundred  of  our  institutions,  many  of  them 
very  respectable  colleges,  have  abused  the  word  "  university  "  in  this 
manner.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  endowment  of  the  more  respect- 
able of  these  institutions  may  be  increased,  as  many  of  them  deserve 


38  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

it ;  and  their  unfortunate  appellation  has  probably  been  repented  of 
long  since. 

But  what  shall  we  think  of  a  community  that  gives  the  charter  of 
a  university  to  an  institution  with  a  total  of  $20,000  endownment, 
two  so-called  professors,  and  eighteen  students  ;  or  another  with  three 
professors,  twelve  students,  and  a  total  of  $27,000  endowment,  mostly 
invested  in  buildings  !  And  yet  there  are  very  many  similar  institu- 
tions ;  there  being  sixteen  with  three  professors  or  less,  and  very  many 
indeed  with  only  four  or  five. 

Such  facts  as  these  could  only  exist  in  a  democratic  country,  where 
pride  is  taken  in  reducing  everything  to  a  level.  And  I  may  also  say 
that  it  can  only  exist  in  the  early  days  of  such  a  democracy  ;  for  an 
intelligent  public  will  soon  perceive  that  calling  a  thing  by  a  wrong 
name  does  not  change  its  character,  and  that  truth,  above  all  things, 
should  be  taught  to  the  youth  of  the  nation. 

It  may  be  urged  that  all  these  institutions  are  doing  good  work  in 
education  ;  and  that. many  young  men  are  thus  taught  who  could  not 
afford  to  go  to  a  true  college  or  university.  But  I  do  not  object  to 
the  education^though  I  have  no  doubt  an  investigation  would  dis- 
close equal  absurdities  here — for  it  is  aside  from  my  object.  But  I 
do  object  to  lowering  the  ideals  of  the  youth  of  the  country.  Let 
them  know  that  they  are  attending  a  school,  and  not  a  university ; 
and  let  them  know  that  above  them  comes  the  college,  and  above  that 
the  university.  Let  them  be  taught  that  they  are  only  half -educated, 
and  that  there  are  persons  in  the  world  by  whose  side  they  are  but 
atoms.     In  other  words,  let  them  be  taught  the  truth. 

It  may  be  that  some  small  institutions  are  of  high  grade,  especially 
those  which  are  new  ;  but  who  can  doubt  that  more  than  two  thirds 
of  our  institutions  calling  themselves  colleges  and  universities  are  un- 
worthy of  the  name  ?  Each  one  of  these  institutions  has  so-called  pro- 
fessors, but  it  is  evident  that  they  can  be  only  of  the  grade  of  teach- 
ers. Why  should  they  not  be  so  called  ?  The  position  of  teacher  is 
an  honored  one,  but  is  not  made  more  honorable  by  the  assumption  of 
a  false  title.  Furthermore,  the  multiplication  of  the  title  and  the 
ease  with  which  it  can  be  obtained  render  it  scarcely  worth  striving 
for.  When  the  man  of  energy,  ability,  and  perhaps  genius,  is  re- 
warded by  the  same  title  and  emoluments  as  the  commonplace  man 
with  the  modicum  of  knowledge,  who  takes  to  teaching,  not  because 
of  any  aptitude  for  his  work,  but  possibly  because  he  has  not  the  en- 
ergy to  compete  with  his  fellow-men  in  business,  then  I  say  one  of  the 
inducements  for  first-class  men  to  become  professors  is  gone. 

When  work  and  ability  are  required  for  the  position,  and  when 
the  professor  is  expected  to  keep  up  with  the  progress  of  his  subject, 
and  to  do  all  in  his  power  to  advance  it,  and  when  he  is  selected  for 
these  reasons,  then  the  position  will  be  worth  working  for,  and  the  suc- 
cessful competitor  will  be  honored  accordingly.     The  chivalric  spirit 


A   PLEA  FOE  PURE  SCIENCE.  39 

which  prompted  Faraday  to  devote  his  life  to  the  study  of  nature  may 
actuate  a  few  noble  men  to  give  their  lives  to  scientific  work  ;  but,  if 
we  wish  to  cultivate  this  highest  class  of  men  in  science,  we  must 
open  a  career  for  them  worthy  of  their  efforts. 

Jenny  Lind,  with  her  beautiful  voice,  would  have  cultivated  it  to 
some  extent  in  her  native  village  ;  yet  who  would  expect  her  to  travel 
over  the  world,  and  give  concerts  for  nothing  ?  and  how  would  she 
have  been  able  to  do  so  if  she  had  wished  ?  And  so  the  scien- 
tific man,  whatever  his  natural  talents,  must  have  instruments  and  a 
library,  and  a  suitable  and  respectable  salary  to  live  upon,  before  he 
is  able  to  exert  himself  to  his  full  capacity.  This  is  true  of  advance 
in  all  the  higher  departments  of  human  learning,  and  yet  something 
more  is  necessary.  It  is  not  those  in  this  country  who  receive  the 
largest  salary,  and  have  positions  in  the  richest  colleges,  who  have  ad- 
vanced their  subject  the  most :  men  receiving  the  highest  salaries, 
and  occupying  the  professor's  chair,  are  to-day  doing  absolutely  noth- 
ing in  pure  science,  but  are  striving  by  the  commercial  applications  of 
their  science  to  increase  their  already  large  salary.  Such  pursuits,  as 
I  have  said  before,  are  honorable  in  their  proper  place  ;  but  the  duty 
of  a  professor  is  to  advance  his  science,  and  to  set  an  example  of 
pure  and  true  devotion  to  it  which  shall  demonstrate  to  his  students 
and  the  world  that  there  is  something  high  and  noble  worth  living  for. 
Money-changers  are  often  respectable  men,  and  yet  they  were  once 
severely  rebuked  for  carrying  on  their  trade  in  the  court  of  the 
temple. 

Wealth  does  not  constitute  a  university,  buildings  do  not :  it  is 
the  men  who  constitute  its  faculty,  and  the  students  who  learn  from 
them.  It  is  the  last  and  highest  step  which  the  mere  student  takes. 
He  goes  forth  into  the  world,  and  the  height  to  which  he  rises  has  been 
influenced  by  the  ideals  which  he  has  consciously  or  unconsciously  im- 
bibed in  his  university.  If  the  professors  under  whom  he  has  studied 
have  been  high  in  their  profession,  and  have  themselves  had  high 
ideals  ;  if  they  have  considered  the  advance  of  their  particular  subject 
their  highest  work  in  life,  and  are  themselves  honored  for  their  intel- 
lect throughout  the  world — the  student  is  drawn  toward  that  which 
is  highest,  and  ever  after  in  life  has  high  ideals.  But  if  the  student 
is  taught  by  what  are  sometimes  called  good  teachers,  and  teachers 
only,  who  know  little  more  than  the  student,  and  who  are  often  sur- 
passed and  even  despised  by  him,  no  one  can  doubt  the  lowered  tone 
of  his  mind.  He  finds  that  by  his  feeble  efforts  he  can  surpass  one 
to  whom  a  university  has  given  its  highest  honor  ;  and  he  begins  to 
think  that  he  himself  is  a  bom  genius,  and  the  incentive  to  work  is 
gone.  He  is  great  by  the  side  of  the  mole-hill,  and  does  not  know 
any  mountain  to  compare  himself  with. 

A  university  should  not  only  have  great  men  in  its  faculty,  but 
have  numerous  minor  professors  and  assistants  of  all  kinds,  and  should 


40  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

encourage  the  highest  work,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  to  encourage 
the  student  to  his  highest  efforts. 

But,  assuming  that  the  professor  has  high  ideals,  wealth  such  as 
only  a  large  and  high  university  can  command  is  necessary  to  allow 
him  the  fullest  development. 

And  this  is  specially  so  in  our  science  of  physics.  In  the  early 
days  of  physics  and  chemistry,  many  of  the  fundamental  experiments 
could  be  performed  with  the  simplest  apparatus.  And  so  we  often 
find  the  names  of  Wollaston  and  Faraday  mentioned  as  needing 
scarcely  anything  for  their  researches.  Much  can  even  now  be  done 
with  the  simplest  apparatus  ;  and  nobody,  except  the  utterly  incompe- 
tent, need  stop  for  want  of  it.  But  the  fact  remains,  that  one  can 
only  be  free  to  investigate  in  all  departments  of  chemistry  and  physics, 
when  he  not  only  has  a  complete  laboratory  at  his  command,  but  a 
friend  to  draw  on  for  the  expenses  of  each  experiment.  That  simplest 
of  the  departments  of  physics,  namely,  astronomy,  has  now  reached 
such  perfection  that  nobody  can  expect  to  do  much  more  in  it  with- 
out a  perfectly  equipped  observatory  ;  and  even  this  would  be  useless 
without  an  income  sufficient  to  employ  a  corps  of  assistants  to  make 
the  observations  and  computations.  But,  even  in  this  simplest  of  phys- 
ical subjects,  there  is  great  misunderstanding.  Our  country  has  very 
many  excellent  observatories  :  and  yet  little  work  is  done  in  compari- 
son, because  no  provision  has  been  made  for  maintaining  the  work  of 
the  observatory ;  and  the  wealth  which,  if  concentrated,  might  have 
made  one  effective  observatory  which  would  prove  a  benefit  to  astro- 
nomical science,  when  scattered  among  a  half-dozen,  merely  furnishes 
telescopes  for  the  people  in  the  surrounding  region  to  view  the  moon 
with.  And  here  I  strike  the  key-note  of  at  least  one  need  of  our  coun- 
try, if  she  would  stand  well  in  science.  ,  .  . 

Americans  have  shown  no  lack  of  invention  in  small  things  ;  and 
the  same  spirit,  when  united  to  knowledge  and  love  of  science,  be- 
comes the  spirit  of  research.  The  telegraph  operator,  with  his  limited 
knowledge  of  electricity  and  its  laws,  naturally  turns  his  attention  to 
the  improvement  of  the  only  electrical  instrument  he  knows  anything 
about ;  and  his  researches  would  be  confined  to  the  limited  sphere  of 
his  knowledge,  and  to  the  simple  laws  with  which  he  is  acquainted. 
But  as  his  knowledge  increases,  and  the  field  broadens  before  him,  as 
he  studies  the  mathematical  theory  of  the  subject,  and  the  electro- 
magnetic theory  of  light  loses  the  dim  haze  due  to  distance  and  be- 
comes his  constant  companion,  the  telegraph  instrument  becomes  to 
him  a  toy,  and  his  effort  to  discover  something  new  becomes  research 
in  pure  science. 

It  is  useless  to  attempt  to  advance  science  until  one  has  mastered 
the  science  :  he  must  step  to  the  front  before  his  blows  can  tell  in  the 
strife.  Furthermore,  I  do  not  believe  anybody  can  be  thorough  in  any 
department  of  science  without  wishing  to  advance  it.    In  the  study  of 


A  PLEA  FOE  PURE  SCIENCE.  41 

what  is  known,  in  the  reading  of  the  scientific  journals,  and  the  discus- 
sions therein  contained  of  the  current  scientific  questions,  one  would 
obtain  an  impulse  to  work,  even  though  it  did  not  before  exist.  And 
the  same  spirit  which  prompted  him  to  seek  what  was  already  known 
would  make  him  wish  to  know  the  unknown.  And  I  may  say  that  1 
never  met  a  case  of  thorough  knowledge  in  my  own  science,  except  in 
the  case  of  well-known  investigators.  I  have  met  men  who  talked 
well,  and  I  have  sometimes  asked  myself  why  they  did  not  do  some- 
thing ;  but  further  knowledge  of  their  character  has  shown  me  the 
superficiality  of  their  knowledge.  I  am  no  longer  a  believer  in  men 
who  could  do  something  if  they  would,  or  would  do  something  if  they 
had  a  chance.  They  are  impostors.  If  the  true  spirit  is  there,  it  will 
show  itself  in  spite  of  circumstances. 

As  I  remarked  before,  the  investigator  in  pure  science  is  usually  a 
professor.  He  must  teach  as  well  as  investigate.  It  is  a  question 
which  has  been  discussed  in  late  years  as  to  whether  these  two  func- 
tions would  better  be  combined  in  the  same  individual,  or  separated. 
It  seems  to  be  the  opinion  of  most  that  a  certain  amount  of  teaching 
is  conducive,  rather  than  otherwise,  to  the  spirit  of  research.  I  myself 
think  that  this  is  true,  and  I  should  myself  not  like  to  give  up  my 
daily  lecture.  But  one  must  not  be  overburdened.  I  suppose  that 
the  true  solution,  in  many  cases,  would  be  found  in  the  multiplication 
of  assistants,  not  only  for  the  work  of  teaching,  but  of  research.  Some 
men  are  gifted  with  more  ideas  than  they  can  work  out  with  their 
own  hands,  and  the  world  is  losing  much  by  not  supplying  them  with 
extra  hands.  Life  is  short :  old  age  comes  quickly,  and  the  amount 
one  pair  of  hands  can  do  is  very  limited.  What  sort  of  shop  would 
that  be,  or  what  sort  of  factory,  where  one  man  had  to  do  all  the  work 
with  his  own  hands  ?  It  is  a  fact  in  nature,  which  no  democracy  can 
change,  that  men  are  not  equal — that  some  have  brains,  and  some 
hands.  And  no  idle  talk  about  equality  can  ever  subvert  the  order  of 
the  universe. 

I  know  of  no  institution  in  this  country  where  assistants  are  sup- 
plied to  aid  directly  in  research.  Yet  why  should  it  not  be  so  ?  And 
even  the  absence  of  assistant  professors  and  assistants  of  all  kinds  to 
aid  in  teaching  is  very  noticeable,  and  must  be  remedied  before  we 
can  expect  much. 

There  are  many  physical  problems,  especially  those  requiring  exact 
measurements,  which  can  not  be  carried  out  by  one  man,  and  can  only 
be  successfully  attacked  by  the  most  elaborate  apparatus,  and  with  a 
full  corps  of  assistants.  Such  are  Regnault's  experiments  on  the  fun- 
damental laws  of  gases  and  vapors,  made  thirty  or  forty  years  ago  by 
aid  from  the  French  Government,  and  which  are  the  standards  to  this 
day.  Although  these  experiments  were  made  with  a  view  to  the  prac- 
tical calculation  of  the  steam-engine,  yet  they  were  carried  out  in  such 
a  broad  spirit  that  they  have  been  of  the  greatest  theoretical  use. 


42  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

Again,  what  would  astronomy  have  done  without  the  endowments  of 
observatories  ?  By  their  means,  that  science  has  become  the  most  per- 
fect of  all  branches  of  physics,  as  it  should  be  from  its  simplicity. 
There  is  no  doubt  in  my  mind  that  similar  institutions  for  other 
branches  of  physics,  or,  better,  to  include  the  whole  of  physics,  would 
be  equally  successful.  A  large  and  perfectly  equipped  physical  labora- 
tory, with  its  large  revenues,  its  corps  of  professors  and  assistants,  and 
its  machine-shop  for  the  construction  of  new  apparatus,  would  be  able 
to  advance  our  science  quite  as  much  as  endowed  observatories  have 
astronomy.  But  such  a  laboratory  should  not  be  founded  rashly.  The 
value  will  depend  entirely  on  the  physicist  at  its  head,  who  has  to  de- 
vise the  plan,  and  to  start  it  into  practical  working.  Such  a  man  will 
always  be  rare,  and  can  not  always  be  obtained.  After  one  had  been 
successfully  started,  others  could  follow ;  for  imitation  requires  little 
brains. 

One  could  not  be  certain  of  getting  the  proper  man  every  time,  but 
the  means  of  appointment  should  be  most  carefully  studied,  so  as  to 
secure  a  good  average.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  appointment 
should  rest  with  a  scientific  body  capable  of  judging  the  highest  work 
of  each  candidate. 

Should  any  popular  element  enter,  the  person  chosen  would  be 
either  of  the  literary-scientific  order,  or  the  dabbler  on  the  outskirts 
who  presents  his  small  discoveries  in  the  most  theatrical  manner. 
What  is  required  is  a  man  of  depth,  who  has  such  an  insight  into 
physical  science  that  he  can  tell  when  blows  will  best  tell  for  its  ad- 
vancement. 

Such  a  grand  laboratory  as  I  describe  does  not  exist  in  the  world 
at  present  for  the  study  of  physics.  But  no  trouble  has  ever  been 
found  in  obtaining  means  to  endow  astronomical  science.  Everybody 
can  appreciate  to  some  extent  the  value  of  an  observatory  ;  as  astron- 
omy is  the  simplest  of  scientific  subjects,  and  has  very  quickly  reached 
a  position  where  elaborate  instruments  and  costly  computations  are 
necessary  to  further  advance.  The  whole  domain  of  physics  is  so  wide 
that  workers  have  hitherto  found  enough  to  do.  But  it  can  not  al- 
ways be  so,  and  the  time  has  even  now  arrived  when  such  a  grand 
laboratory  should  be  founded.  Shall  our  country  take  the  lead  in  this 
matter,  or  shall  we  wait  for  foreign  countries  to  go  before?  They 
will  be  built  in  the  future,  but  when  and  how  is  the  question. 

Several  institutions  are  now  putting  up  laboratories  for  physics. 
They  are  mostly  for  teaching,  and  we  can  expect  only  a  compar- 
atively small  amount  of  work  from  most  of  them.  But  they  show 
progress  ;  and,  if  the  progress  be  as  quick  in  this  direction  as  in 
others,  we  should  be  able  to  see  a  great  change  before  the  end  of 
our  lives. 

As  stated  before,  men  are  influenced  by  the  sympathy  of  those 
with  whom  they  come  in  contact.     It  is  impossible  to  immediately 


A  FLEA  FOE  PURE  SCIENCE.  43 

change  public  opinion  in  our  favor ;  and,  indeed,  we  must  always 
seek  to  lead  it,  and  not  be  guided  by  it.  For  pure  science  is  the 
pioneer  who  must  not  hover  about  cities  and  civilized  countries,  but 
must  strike  into  unknown  forests,  and  climb  the  hitherto  inaccessible 
mountains  which  lead  to  and  command  a  view  of  the  promised  land — 
the  land  which  science  promises  us  in  the  future ;  which  shall  not 
only  flow  with  milk  and  honey,  but  shall  give  us  a  better  and  more 
glorious  idea  of  this  wonderful  universe.  We  must  create  a  public 
opinion  in  our  favor,  but  it  need  not  at  first  be  the  general  public. 
We  must  be  contented  to  stand  aside,  and  see  the  honors  of  the  world 
for  a  time  given  to  our  inferiors  ;  and  must  be  better  contented  with 
the  approval  of  our  own  consciences,  and  of  the  very  few  who  are  ca- 
pable of  judging  our  work,  than  of  the  whole  world  besides.  Let  us 
look  to  the  other  physicists,  not  in  our  own  town,  not  in  our  own 
country,  but  in  the  whole  world,  for  the  words  of  praise  which  are  to 
encourage  us,  or  the  words  of  blame  which  are  to  stimulate  us  to  re- 
newed effort.  For  what  to  us  is  the  praise  of  the  ignorant  ?  Let  us 
join  together  in  the  bonds  of  our  scientific  societies,  and  encourage 
each  other,  as  we  are  now  doing,  in  the  pursuit  of  our  favorite  study  ; 
knowing  that  the  world  will  some  time  recognize  our  services,  and 
knowing,  also,  that  we  constitute  the  most  important  element  in 
human  progress. 

But  danger  is  also  near,  even  in  our  societies.  When  the  average 
tone  of  the  society  is  low,  when  the  highest  honors  are  given  to  the 
mediocre,  when  third-class  men  are  held  up  as  examples,  and  when 
trifling  inventions  are  magnified  into  scientific  discoveries,  then  the 
influence  of  such  societies  is  prejudicial.  A  young  scientist  attending 
the  meetings  of  such  a  society  soon  gets  perverted  ideas.  To  his 
mind,  a  mole-hill  is  a  mountain,  and  the  mountain  a  mole-hill.  The 
small  inventor  or  the  local  celebrity  rises  to  a  greater  height,  in  his 
mind,  than  the  great  leader  of  science  in  some  foreign  land.  He 
gauges  himself  by  the  mole-hill,  and  is  satisfied  with  his  stature  ;  not 
knowing  that  he  is  but  an  atom  in  comparison  with  the  mountain, 
until,  perhaps,  in  old  age,  when  it  is  too  late.  But,  if  the  size  of  the 
mountain  had  been  seen  at  first,  the  young  scientist  would  at  least  have 
been  stimulated  in  his  endeavor  to  grow. 

We  can  not  all  be  men  of  genius  ;  but  we  can,  at  least,  point  them 
out  to  those  around  us.  We  may  not  be  able  to  benefit  science  much 
ourselves  ;  but  we  can  have  high  ideals  on  the  subject,  and  instill  them 
into  those  with  whom  we  come  in  contact.  For  the  good  of  ourselves, 
for  the  good  of  our  country,  for  the  good  to  the  world,  it  is  incumbent 
on  us  to  form  a  true  estimate  of  the  worth  and  standing  of  persons 
and  things,  and  to  set  before  our  own  minds  all  that  is  great  and  good 
and  noble,  all  that  is  most  important  for  scientific  advance,  above  the 
mean  and  low  and  unimportant. 

It  is  very  often  said  that  a  man  has  a  right  to  his  opinion.     This 


44  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

might  be  true  for  a  man  on  a  desert  island,  whose  error  would  influ- 
ence only  himself.  But  when  he  opens  his  lips  to  instruct  others,  or 
even  when  he  signifies  his  opinions  by  his  daily  life,  then  he  is  directly 
responsible  for  all  his  errors  of  judgment  or  fact.  He  has  no  right  to 
think  a  mole-hill  as  big  as  a  mountain,  nor  to  teach  it,  any  more  than 
he  has  to  think  the  world  flat,  and  teach  that  it  is  so.  The  facts  and 
laws  of  our  science  have  not  equal  importance,  neither  have  the  men 
who  cultivate  the  science  achieved  equal  results.  One  thing  is  greater 
than  another,  and  we  have  no  right  to  neglect  the  order.  Thus  shall 
our  minds  be  guided  aright,  and  our  efforts  be  toward  that  which  is 
the  highest. 

Then  shall  we  see  that  no  physicist  of  the  first  class  has  ever 
existed  in  this  country,  that  we  must  look  to  other  countries  for  our 
leaders  in  that  subject,  and  that  the  few  excellent  workers  in  our 
country  must  receive  many  accessions  from  without  before  they  can 
constitute  an  American  science,  or  do  their  share  in  the  world's 
work.  .  .  . 

"We  call  this  a  free  country,  and  yet  it  is  the  only  one  where  there 
is  a  direct  tax  upon  the  pursuit  of  science.  The  low  state  of  pure 
science  in  our  country  may  possibly  be  attributed  to  the  youth  of  the 
country  ;  but  a  direct  tax,  to  prevent  the  growth  of  our  country  in 
that  subject,  can  not  be  looked  upon  as  other  than  a  deep  disgrace.  I 
refer  to  the  duty  upon  foreign  books  and  periodicals.  In  our  science, 
no  books  above  elementary  ones  have  ever  been  published,  or  are 
likely  to  be  published,  in  this  country ;  aud  yet  every  teacher  in 
physics  must  have  them,  not  only  in  the  college-library,  but  on  his 
own  shelves,  and  must  pay  the  Government  of  this  country  to  allow 
him  to  use  a  portion  of  his  small  salary  to  buy  that  which  is  to  do 
good  to  the  whole  country.  All  freedom  of  intercourse  which  is 
necessary  to  foster  our  growing  science  is  thus  broken  off  ;  and  that 
which  might,  in  time,  relieve  our  country  of  its  mediocrity  is  nipped 
in  the  bud  by  our  Government,  which  is  most  liberal  when  appealed  to 
directly  on  scientific  subjects.  One  would  think  that  books  in  foreign 
languages  might  be  admitted  free  ;  but,  to  please  the  half-dozen  or  so 
workmen  who  reprint  German  books,  not  scientific,  our  free  inter- 
course with  that  country  is  cut  off.  Our  scientific  associations  and 
societies  must  make  themselves  heard  in  this  matter,  and  show  those 
in  authority  how  the  matter  stands.  .  .  . 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE.  45 


THE  KEMEDIES  OF  NATUEE. 

By  FELIX  L.  OSWALD,  M.  D. 

THE  ALCOHOL-HABIT  {concluded). 
II. 

BUT,  in  tracing  tlie  causes  which  led  to  the  present  development  of 
the  poison- vice,  we  should  not  overlook  the  working  of  another 
principle  which  I  must  call  a  reaction  against  the  effect  of  a  wrong 
remedy.  We  can  not  serve  our  cause  by  ignoring  its  weak  points, 
for,  if  we  persist  in  closing  our  eyes  to  the  significance  of  our  mistakes, 
our  enemies  will  not  fail  to  profit  by  our  blindness.  We  can  not  work 
in  the  dark.  In  order  to  reach  our  goal,  we  must  see  our  way  clear  ; 
and  I  trust  that  no  earnest  fellow-laborer  will  misconstrue  my  motive 
if  I  dare  to  say  the  whole  truth. 

The  matter  is  this  :  At  a  time  when  the  civilization  of  antiquity 
had  become  extremely  corrupt,  a  society  of  ethical  reformers  tried  to 
find  the  panacea  for  vice,  as  we  now  seek  the  remedy  for  intemperance. 
But,  instead  of  recognizing  the  local  causes  of  the  evil,  they  ascribed 
it  to  the  general  perversity  of  the  human  heart.  They,  too,  failed  to 
distinguish  between  natural  appetites  and  morbid  appetencies,  and, 
misled  by  the  glaring  consequences  of  perverted  passions,  they  con- 
ceived the  unhappy  idea  that  man's  natural  instincts  are  his  natural 
enemies.  In  order  to  crush  a  few  baneful  nightshades  and  poppy- 
blossoms,  they  began  a  war  of  extermination  against  the  flowers  of 
this  earth.  But  that  attempt  led  to  an  unexpected  result :  the  soil  of 
the  trampled  fields  engendered  weeds  that  were  far  harder  to  destroy 
than  the  noxious  herbs  of  the  old  flower-garden.  The  would-be  re- 
formers had  overlooked  the  fact  that  it  is  easier  to  pervert  than  to 
suppress  a  natural  instinct ;  but  the  history  of  the  last  twelve  hundred 
years  has  illustrated  that  truth  by  many  dreadful  examples.  The  sup- 
pression of  rational  freedom  led  to  anarchy.  Celibacy  became  the 
mother  of  the  ugliest  vices.  The  attempt  to  suppress  the  pursuit  of 
natural  science  led  to  the  pursuit  of  pseudo-science — astrology,  necro- 
mancy, and  all  sorts  of  dire  chimeras.  The  suppression  of  harmless 
pleasures  has  always  fostered  the  penchant  for  vicious  pleasures.  The 
austerity  of  the  Stoics  helped  to  propagate  the  doctrines  of  Epicurus  ; 
in  Islam  the  era  of  the  Hanbalite  ascetics  was  followed  by  the  riots  of 
the  Bagdad  caliphate  ;  and  the  open  licentiousness  of  the  English  anti- 
Puritans,  as  well  as  the  secret  excesses  of  their  northern  neighbors,  can 
be  distinctly  traced  to  the  mistaken  zeal  of  the  party  which  had  waged 
a  long  and  unrelenting  war  against  every  form  of  physical  pleasure, 
and  hoped  to  find  salvation  in  the  suppression  of  all  natural  desires. 
That  doctrine  has  never  become  the  permanent  faith  of  any  Aryan 
nation,  though  now  and  then  it  has  reached  a  local  ascendency  which 


46  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

made  it  a  grievous  addition  to  the  evils  it  proposed  to  cure.  More 
than  fifteen  hundred  years  ago  the  Emperor  Julian,  and  even  St.  Clem- 
ens Alexandrinus,  denounced  the  absurdities  of  the  Marcionite  Gnostics, 
who  "  abstained  from  marriage,  the  pursuit  of  worldly  advantages,  and 
all  temporal  pleasures."  The  original  rigor  of  those  dogmas  could  not 
maintain  itself  against  the  healthier  instincts  of  mankind  ;  but  what 
they  lost  in  consistency  they  made  up  in  aggressiveness  :  an  influential 
sect  of  the  last  century  attempted  to  enforce  upon  others  what  the 
Marcionites  practiced  in  private,  and,  while  the  Syrian  ascetics  preferred 
the  desert  to  the  world,  the  Scotch  ascetics  tried  to  turn  the  world  into 
a  desert. 

"  According  to  that  code,"  says  the  author  of  the  "  History  of 
Civilization,"  "  all  the  natural  affections,  all  social  pleasures,  all  amuse- 
ments, and  all  the  joyous  instincts  of  the  human  heart,  were  sinful. 
They  looked  on  all  comforts  as  wicked  in  themselves,  merely  because 
they  were  comforts.  The  great  object  in  life  was  to  be  in  a  state  of 
constant  affliction  ;  .  .  .  whatever  pleased  the  senses  was  to  be  sus- 
pected. It  mattered  not  what  a  man  liked  ;  the  mere  fact  of  his  liking 
it  made  it  sinful.  Whatever  was  natural  was  wrong.  It  was  wrong 
to  take  pleasure  in  beautiful  scenery,  for  a  pious  man  had  no  concern 
with  such  matters.  On  Sunday  it  was  sinful  to  walk  in  the  fields,  or 
in  the  meadows,  or  enjoy  fair  weather  by  sitting  at  the  door  of  your 
own  house." 

"  Whatever  was  natural  was  wrong  " — though  even  the  extremists 
of  that  school  might  have  shrunk  from  the  consistency  of  their  Syrian 
exemplar,  who  forbade  his  anchorites  to  sleep  twice  under  the  same 
tree,  lest  their  spiritual  interests  should  be  imperiled  by  an  undue 
affection  for  any  earthly  object ! 

If  it  were  possible  that  such  dogmas  could  ever  again  overpower 
the  common  sense  of  mankind,  we  should  welcome  the  poison-mania 
as  the  lesser  evil,  for  it  is  better  to  seek  happiness  by  a  wrong  road 
than  to  abandon  the  search  altogether.  It  is  better  to  taste  a  forbid- 
den fruit  than  to  destroy  all  pleasant  trees.  But  it  is  impossible  that 
such  chimeras  should  have  survived  their  native  night.  After  the  ter- 
rible experience  of  the  middle  ages,  it  is  impossible  that  any  sane  per- 
son should  fail  to  recognize  the  significance  of  the  mistake,  and  we  can 
not  hope  to  maintain  the  field  against  the  opponents  of  temperance  till 
we  have  deprived  them  of  their  most  effective  weapon  :  we  must  fur- 
nish practical  proofs  that  they,  not  we,  are  the  enemies  of  human  hap- 
piness ;  that  we  make  war  upon  vice,  and  not  upon  harmless  pleasures. 

It  is  a  significant  fact  that  in  every  civilized  country  of  this  earth 
drunkenness  is  rarest  among  the  classes  who  have  other  and  better  con- 
vivial resources.  In  the  United  States,  where  the  "  almighty  dollar  " 
confers  unlimited  privileges,  the  well-to-do  people  are  the  most  temper- 
ate in  the  world,  the  poor  the  most  intemperate.  In  Turkey,  where 
the  lower  classes  are  indulged  in  many  pastimes  which  are  considered 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE.  47 

below  the  dignity  of  an  effendi,  the  poison-vice  is  actually  confined 
to  the  upper-ten  :  temperance  reigns  in  the  cottage,  while  opium- 
smoking  and  secret  dram-drinking  prevail  in  the  palace.  In  Scotland, 
where  all  classes  have  to  conform  to  the  moral  by-laws  which  discoun- 
tenance holiday  recreations,  total  abstinence  is  extremely  rare.  For — 
"  Nature  will  have  her  revenge,  and,  when  the  most  ordinary  and  harm- 
less recreations  are  forbidden  as  sinful,  is  apt  to  seek  compensation 
in  indulgences  which  no  moralist  would  be  willing  to  condone.  The 
charge  brought  against  the  Novatians  in  the  early  ages  of  the  Church 
can,  with  equal  plausibility,  be  brought  against  the  Puritans  in  our 
own  day.  One  vice,  at  all  events,  which  Christians  of  every  school, 
as  well  as  non-Christian  moralists,  are  agreed  in  condemning,  is  re- 
puted to  be  a  special  opprobrium  of  Scotland  ;  and  the  strictest  observ- 
ance of  all  those  minute  and  oppressive  Sabbatarian  regulations  to 
which  we  referred  just  now  has  been  found  compatible  with  conse- 
crating the  day  of  rest  to  a  quiet  but  unlimited  assimilation  of  the 
liquid  which  inebriates  but  does  not  cheer.  And  under  the  old  regime 
to  be  drunk  in  private,  though  of  course  not  sanctioned  as  allowable, 
would  have  been  accounted  a  far  less  heinous  outrage  on  the  dignity 
of  the  Sabbath  than  to  whistle  in  the  public  street." — (The  "  Saturday 
Review,"  July  19,  1879,  p.  75.) 

There  is,  indeed,  no  doubt  that  the  "  snuffling,  whining  saints,  who 
groaned  in  spirit  at  the  sight  of  Jack  in  the  Green,"  *  have  driven  as 
many  pleasure-seekers  from  the  play-ground  to  the  pot-house  as  des- 
potism has  turned  freemen  into  outlaws  and  robbers.  For  the  practi- 
cal alternative  is  not  between  conventicles  and  rum-riots,  but  between 
healthful  and  baneful  pastimes.  Before  we  can  begin  to  eradicate  the 
poison-habit  we  must  make  reform  more  attractive  than  vice  ;  and,  as 
long  as  the  champions  of  temperance  shut  their  eyes  to  the  significance 
of  that  truth,  their  legislative  enactments  will  always  remain  dead-letter 
laws.  Our  worst  defects  we  owe,  in  fact,  less  to  the  shrewdness  of  our 
beer-brewing  opponents  than  to  the  blindness  of  our  Sabbatarian  allies. 
A  free  Sunday-garden,  with  zoological  curiosities,  foot-races,  and  good 
music,  would  do  more  to  promote  the  cause  of  temperance  than  a  whole 
army  of  Hudibras  revivalists,  f 

*  Macaulay's  "History,"  vol.  i,  p.  371. 

f  "  Every  one  who  considers  the  world  as  it  really  exists,  and  not  as  it  appears  in  the 
writings  of  ascetics  and  sentimentalists,  must  have  convinced  himself  that,  in  great  towns, 
where  multitudes  of  men  of  all  classes  and  all  characters  are  massed  together,  and  where 
there  are  innumerable  strangers,  separated  from  all  domestic  ties  and  occupations,  public 
amusements  of  an  exciting  order  are  absolutely  necessary,  and  that,  while  they  are  often 
the  vehicle  and  the  occasion  of  evil,  to  suppress  them,  as  was  done  by  the  Puritans  of  the 
Commonwealth,  is  simply  to  plunge  an  immense  portion  of  the  population  into  the  lowest 
depths  of  vice." — (Lecky,  "  History  of  Rationalism,"  vol.  ii,  p.  286  {cf.  ibid.,  vol.  ii,  p.  350.) 

"  Sir,"  said  Johnson,  "  I  am  a  great  friend  to  public  amusements,  for  they  keep  people 
from  vice." — ("Boswell,"  p.  lYl.) 

"  Insani  fugiunt  mundum,  immundumque  sequuntur." — Giordano  Bruno  (Moriz  Car- 
ri^re,  "Weltanschauung,"  p.  396). 


48  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Individuals,  too,  should  be  treated  on  that  plan,  and,  next  to  abso- 
lute abstinence  from  stimulating  poisons,  the  most  essential  condition 
of  a  permanent  cure  is  a  liberal  allowance  of  healthful  stimulants,  in 
the  form  of  diverting  pastimes  and  out-door  exercise.  For  the  chief 
danger  of  a  relapse  is  not  the  attractiveness  of  intoxication,  but  the 
misery  of  the  after-effect,  the  depressing  reaction  that  follows  upon 
the  abnormal  excitement,  and  for  several  weeks  seems  daily  to  gain 
strength  against  the  reformatory  resolves  of  the  penitent.  This  apathy 
of  the  unstimulated  system  can  become  more  intolerable  than  positive 
pain,  and  embitter  existence  till,  in  spite  of  prayers  and  pledges,  its 
victims  either  relapse  into  alcohol  or  resort  to  cognate  stimulants — 
chloral,  absinthe,  or  opium.  In  stress  of  such  temptations  the  prophy- 
lactic influence  of  a  mind-stimulating  occupation  is  almost  as  effective 
as  is  the  deliquium  of  disappointed  love.  Ennui  is  the  chief  coadjutor 
of  the  poison-fiend.  On  the  Militdr  -  Grenze,  the  "  Military  Frontier  " 
of  Eastern  Austria,  a  soldier's  life  is  a  ceaseless  guerrilla-war  against 
smugglers,  outlaws,  and  Bulgarian  bed-bugs  ;  yet  hundreds  of  German 
officers  solicit  transfer  to  that  region  as  to  a  refuge  from  the  tempta- 
tions of  garrison  tedium,  deliberately  choosing  a  concentration  of  all 
discomforts,  as  a  Schnapps-Kur,  a  whisky-cure,  as  they  express  it  with 
frank  directness  ;  and  for  similar  purposes  many  of  Fremont's  contem- 
poraries took  the  prairie-trail  to  the  adventure-land  of  the  far  West. 
Frederick  Gerstaecker  found  that  the  California  rum-shops  got  their 
chief  patronage  from  unsuccessful  miners ;  the  successful  ones  had 
better  stimulants. 

For  the  first  month  or  two  the  convalescent  should  not  content 
himself  with  negative  safeguards,  but  make  up  his  mind  that  tempta- 
tions will  come,  and  come  in  the  most  grievous  form,  and  that  active 
warfare  is  nearly  always  the  safest  plan.  The  alcohol-habit  is  a  phys- 
ical disease,  and  a  Rocky  Mountain  excursion,  a  visit  to  the  diggings, 
a  month  of  sea-side  rambles  and  surf -baths,  will  do  more  to  help  a  con- 
vert across  the  slough  of  despond  than  a  season-ticket  to  all  the  lecture- 
halls  of  the  Christian  Temperance  Union. 

But  such  excursions  should  be  undertaken  in  company.  Soldiers 
in  the  ranks  will  endure  hardships  that  would  melt  the  valor  of  any 
solitary  hero  ;  and  in  the  presence  of  manly  companions  the  spirit  of 
emulation  and  "  approbativeness  "  will  sustain  even  an  enervated  fel- 
low. The  esprit  de  corps  of  a  temperance  society  is  more  cogent  than 
its  vows. 

An  appeal  to  the  passions  is  the  next  best  thing.  Everything  is 
fair  in  the  war  against  alcohol  :  love,  ambition,  pride,  and  even  ac- 
quisitiveness, may  be  utilized  to  divert  the  mind  from  a  more  bane- 
ful propensity — for  a  time,  at  least.  For,  after  the  tempter  has  been 
kept  at  bay  for  a  couple  of  months,  its  power  will  reach  a  turning- 
point  ;  the  nervous  irritability  will  subside,  the  outraged  digestive 
organs  resume  their  normal  functions,  and  the  potency  of  the  poison- 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE.  49 

hunger  will  decrease  from  day  to  day.  After  that  the  main  point  is 
to  gain  time,  and  give  Nature  a  fair  chance  to  complete  the  work  of 
redemption.  As  the  vis  vitce  recovers  her  functional  vigor  the  employ- 
ment of  other  tonics  can  be  gradually  dispensed  with,  except  in  the 
moments  of  unusual  dejection  that  will  now  and  then  recur — especially 
on  rainy  days  and  after  sultry  nights.  But  in  most  such  cases  the 
demon  can  be  exorcised  with  the  price  of  an  opera-ticket,  and  not 
rarely  with  a  liberal  dinner.  "  Good  cheer  "  is  a  suggestive  term  ;  the 
mess,  as  well  as  music,  has  power  to  soothe  the  savage  soul,  and,  before 
invoking  the  aid  of  medicinal  tonics,  Bibulus  should  try  the  dulcifying 
effect  of  digestible  sweetmeats. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  when  luck  and  high  spirits  give  a  suffi- 
cient guarantee  against  present  temptation,  no  opportunity  should  be 
missed  to  forego  a  meal.  Fasting  is  a  great  system-renovator.  Ten 
fast-days  a  year  will  purify  the  blood  and  eradicate  the  poison-diathe- 
sis more  effectually  than  a  hundred  bottles  of  expurgative  bitters. 

And  only  then,  after  the  paroxysmal  phase  of  the  baneful  passion 
has  been  fairly  mastered,  moral  suasion  gets  a  chance  to  promote  the 
work  of  reform.  For,  while  the  delirium  or  the  crazing  after-effects  of 
the  alcohol-fever  distract  the  patient,  exhortations  are  as  powerless  as 
they  would  be  against  chronic  dysentery.  Dr.  Isaac  Jennings  illus- 
trates the  power  of  the  poison-habit  by  the  following  examples  :  A 
clergyman  of  his  acquaintance  attempted  to  dissuade  a  young  man 
of  great  promise  from  habits  of  intemperance.  "  Hear  me  first  a  few 
words,"  said  the  young  man,  "  and  then  you  may  proceed.  I  am  sen- 
sible that  an  indulgence  in  this  habit  will  lead  to  loss  of  property,  the 
loss  of  reputation  and  domestic  happiness,  to  premature  death,  and  to 
the  irretrievable  loss  of  my  immortal  soul ;  and  now  with  all  this  con- 
viction resting  firmly  on  my  mind  and  flashing  over  my  conscience 
like  lightning,  if  I  still  continue  to  drink,  do  you  suppose  anything 
you  can  say  will  deter  me  from  the  practice  ?  " 

Dr.  Mussey,  in  an  address  before  a  medical  society,  mentioned  a 
case  that  sets  this  subject  in  even  a  stronger  light.  A  tippler  was  put 
into  an  almshouse  in  a  populous  town  in  Massachusetts.  Within  a 
few  days  he  had  devised  various  expedients  to  procure  rum,  but  failed. 
At  length  he  hit  upon  one  that  proved  successful.  He  went  into  the 
wood-shed  of  the  establishment,  placed  one  hand  upon  a  block,  and, 
with  an  axe  in  the  other,  struck  it  off  at  a  single  blow.  With  the 
stump  raised  and  streaming,  he  ran  into  the  house,  crying,  "  Get  some 
rum — get  some  rum  !  my  hand  is  off  !  "  In  the  confusion  and  bustle 
of  the  occasion  somebody  did  bring  a  bowl  of  rum,  into  which  he 
plunged  his  bleeding  arm,  then  raising  the  bowl  to  his  mouth,  drank 
freely,  and  exultingly  exclaimed,  "  Now  I  am  satisfied  !  " 

More  than  the  hunger  after  bread,  more  than  the  frenzy  of  love  or 
hatred,  the  poison-hunger  overpowers  every  other  instinct,  and  even 
the  fear  of  death.     In  Mexico,  my  colleague.  Surgeon  Kellermann,  of 

TOL.  XXIV. — 4 


50  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

the  Second  Zouaves,  was  one  night  awakened  by  the  growling  of  his 
spaniel,  and  thought  he  saw  something  like  the  form  of  a  man  crawl- 
ing out  of  his  tent.  The  next  day  the  captain  informed  the  company 
that  some  fellow  had  entered  the  hospital-camp  with  burglarious  in- 
tent, and  that  he  had  instructed  the  sentries  to  arrest  or  shoot  all  noc- 
turnal trespassers.  About  a  week  after,  the  doctor  was  again  awak- 
ened by  his  dog,  and,  lighting  a  match,  he  distinguished  the  figure  of 
a  large  man  crawling  from  under  his  table  and  carrying  in  his  hand  a 
box  or  a  big  book.  He  called  upon  him  to  stop,  cocking  his  pistol  at 
the  same  time,  but  the  fellow  made  a  rush  for  the  door,  and  in  the 
next  moment  was  floored  by  a  ball  that  penetrated  his  skull  two  inches 
above  the  neck.  He  lived  long  enough  to  confess  the  motive  of  his 
desperate  enterprise.  His  regiment  had  been  stationed  in  Northern 
Algiers,  where  he  learned  to  smoke  opium.  Bind  having  exhausted  his 
supply,  and  his  financial  resources,  as  well  as  the  patience  of  the  hos- 
pital steward,  who  had  at  various  times  furnished  him  small  doses  of 
the  drug,  he  felt  that  life  was  no  longer  worth  living,  and  resolved  to 
risk  it  in  the  attempt  at  abducting  the  doctor's  medicine  chest.  What 
can  exhortation  avail  against  a  passion  of  that  sort  ?  We  should  learn 
to  treat  it  as  the  advanced  stage  of  a  physical  disorder,  rather  than  as 
a  controvertible  moral  aberration. 

And,  even  after  the  delirium  of  that  disease  has  subsided,  homilies 
should  be  preceded  by  an  appeal  to  reason.  Ignorance  is  a  chief  cause 
of  intemperance.  The  seductions  of  vice  would  not  mislead  so  many 
of  our  young  men  if  they  could  realize  the  significance  of  their  mis- 
take. All  the  efforts  of  the  Temperance  party  have  thus  far  failed  to 
eradicate  the  popular  fallacy  that  there  is  some  good  in  alcohol ;  that 
somehow  or  other  the  magic  of  a  stimulating  drug  could  procure  its 
votaries  an  advantage  not  attainable  by  normal  means.  Nor  is  this 
delusion  confined  to  the  besotted  victims  of  the  poison-vice.  Even 
among  the  enlightened  classes  of  our  population,  nay,  among  the 
champions  of  temperance,  there  is  still  a  lingering  belief  that,  with 
due  precaution  against  excess,  adulteration,  etc.,  a  dram-drinker  might 
"  get  ahead "  of  Nature,  and,  as  it  were,  trick  her  out  of  some  extra 
enjoyment. 

There  is  no  hope  of  a  radical  reform  till  an  influential  majority  of 
all  intelligent  people  have  realized  the  fact  that  this  tricJc  is  in  every 
instance  a  losing  game^  entailing  penalties  which  far  outweigh  the 
pleasures  that  the  novice  may  mistake  for  gratuitous  enjoyments,  and 
by  which  the  old  habitue  can  gain  only  a  temporary  and  qualified 
restoration  of  the  happiness  which  his  stimulant  has  first  deprived  him 
of.  For  the  depression  of  the  vital  energy  increases  with  every  repe- 
tition of  the  stimulation-process,  and  in  a  year  after  the  first  dose  all 
the  "  grateful  and  exhilarating  tonics  "  of  our  professional  poison-vend- 
ers can  not  restore  the  vigor,  the  courage,  and  the  cheerfulness  which 
the  mere  consciousness  of  perfect  health  imparts  to  the  total  abstainer. 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE.  51 

A  great  plurality  of  all  beginners  underrate  the  difficulty  of  control- 
ling the  cravings  of  a  morbid  appetite.  They  remember  that  their 
natural  inclinations  at  first  opposed,  rather  than  encouraged,  the  indul- 
gence ;  they  feel  that  at  the  present  stage  of  its  development  they 
could  abjure  the  passion  and  keep  their  promise  without  any  difficulty. 
But  they  overlook  the  fact  that  the  moral  power  of  resistance  decreases 
with  each  repetition  of  the  dose,  and  that  the  time  will  come  when 
only  the  practical  impossibility  of  procuring  their  wonted  tipple  will 
enable  them  to  keep  their  pledge  of  total  abstinence.  It  is  true  that 
by  the  exercise  of  a  constant  self-restraint  a  person  of  great  will-force 
may  resist  the  progressive  tendency  of  the  poison-habit  and  confine 
himself  for  years  to  a  single  cigar  or  a  single  bottle  of  wine  per  day. 
But,  if  all  waste  is  sinful,  is  not  this  constant  pull  against  the  stream  a 
wicked  misuse  of  moral  energy — a  wanton  waste  of  an  effort  which 
in  less  treacherous  waters  would  insure  the  happiest  progress,  and  pro- 
pel the  boat  of  life  to  any  desired  goal  ? 

But,  while  temperance  people,  as  a  class,  are  apt  to  underrate  the 
difficulty  of  a  total  cure  of  a  confirmed  poison-habit,  they  generally 
overrate  the  difficulty  of  total  prevention.  The  natural  inclination  of 
a  young  child  is  in  the  direction  of  absolute  abstinence  from  all  noxious 
stimulants.  I  do  not  speak  only  of  the  children  of  temperate  people 
who  strengthen  that  inclination  by  moral  precepts,  but  of  drunkards 
boys,  of  the  misbegotten  cadets  of  our  tenement  barracks  and  slum- 
alleys.  All  who  will  make  their  disposition  a  special  study  may  repeat 
the  experiments  which  have  convinced  me  that  the  supposed  effects  of 
hereditary  propensities  are  in  almost  every  case  due  to  the  seductions 
of  a  bad  example,  and  that  the  influence  of  an  innate  predisposition  has 
been  immoderately  exaggerated.  Watch  the  young  picnickers  of  an 
orphan-festival,  and  see  what  a  great  majority  of  them  will  prefer 
sweet  cold  milk  to  iced  tea,  and  the  lemonade-pail  to  the  ginger-beer 
basket.  Offer  them  a  glass  of  liquor,  and  see  how  few  out  of  a  hun- 
dred will  be  able  to  sip  it  without  a  shudder.  Or  let  us  go  a  step 
further,  and  interview  the  inmates  of  a  house  of  correction,  or  of  a 
Catholic  "  protectory  "  for  young  vagrants.  The  superintendent  of  a 
penitentiary  for  adults  (in  Cologne,  Germany)  expressed  a  conviction 
that  a  plurality  of  his  prisoners  would  stretch  out  their  hands  for  a 
bottle  of  the  vilest  liquor  rather  than  for  a  piece  of  gold.  In  the 
house  of  correction  I  would  stake  any  odds  that  ninety  per  cent  of 
all  boy-prisoners  under  fourteen  would  prefer  an  excursion -ticket  to  a 
bottle  of  the  best  wine  of  Tokay  or  Johannisberg.  At  home,  in  a 
preparatory  school  of  all  vices,  they  of  course  imitate  their  teachers, 
but  only  by  overcoming  almost  the  same  instinctive  repugnance  which 
is  the  best  safeguard  of  the  total  abstainer's  child.  At  the  first  at- 
tempt even  the  offspring  of  a  long  lineage  of  drunkards  abhors  the 
taste  of  alcohol  as  certainly  as  the  child  of  the  most  inveterate  smoker 
detests  the  smell  of  tobacco. 


52  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

But  it  is  true  that  the  impaired  vitality  of  the  habitual  drunkard 
transmits  itself  mentally  in  the  form  of  a  peculiar  disposition  which 
I  have  found  to  be  equally  characteristic  of  the  children  (and  even 
grandchildren)  of  an  opium-eater.  They  lack  that  spontaneous  gayety 
which  constitutes  the  almost  misfortune-proof  happiness  of  normal 
children,  and,  without  being  positively  peevish  or  melancholy,  their 
spirits  seem  to  be  clouded  by  an  apathy  which  yields  only  to  strong 
external  excitants.  But  out-door  work  and  healthy  food  rarely  fail  to 
restore  the  tone  of  the  mind,  and  even  before  the  age  of  puberty  the 
manifestations  of  a  more  buoyant  temper  will  prove  that  the  patient 
has  outgrown  the  hereditary  hebetude,  and  with  it  the  need  of  artificial 
stimulation.  Temptation,  of  course,  should  always  be  guarded  against, 
and  also  everything  that  could  tend  to  aggravate  the  lingering  de- 
spondency of  the  convalescent — harsh  treatment,  solitude,  and  a  mo- 
notonous occupation. 

With  normal  children  such  precautions  are  superfluous.  They 
will  resist  temptation  if  we  do  not  force  it  upon  them.  No  need  of 
threats  and  tearful  exhortations  ;  you  need  not  warn  a  boy  to  abstain 
from  disgusting  poisons — Nature  attends  to  that  ;  but  simply  provide 
him  with  a  sufficient  quantity  of  palatable,  non-stimulating  food,  till 
he  reaches  the  age  when  habit  becomes  as  second  nature.  It  was 
Rousseau's  opinion  that  a  taste  for  stimulants  could  be  acquired  only 
during  the  years  of  immaturity,  and  that  there  would  be  little  danger 
after  the  twentieth  year,  if  in  the  mean  while  observation  and  confirmed 
habits  had  strengthened  the  protective  instincts  which  Nature  has 
erected  as  a  bulwark  between  innocence  and  vice.  We  need  not  for- 
tify that  bulwark  by  artificial  props,  we  need  not  guard  it  with  anx- 
ious care  ;  all  we  have  to  do  is  to  save  ourselves  the  extraordinary 
trouble  of  breaking  it  down.  After  a  boy  becomes  capable  of  induc- 
tive reasoning,  it  can,  of  course,  do  no  harm  to  call  his  attention  to 
the  evils  of  intemperance,  and  give  him  an  opportunity  to  observe  the 
successive  stages  of  the  alcohol-habit,  the  gradual  progress  from  beer 
to  brandy,  from  a  "  state  of  diminished  steadiness  "  to  delirium  tre- 
mens. In  large  cities,  where  the  evils  of  drunkenness  reveal  them- 
selves in  all  their  naked  ugliness,  children  can  easily  be  taught  to 
regard  the  poison- vice  as  a  sort  of  disease  which  should  be  guarded 
against,  like  small-pox  or  leprosy. 

But  it  should  always  be  kept  in  mind  that  even  the  milder  stimu- 
lant-habits have  a  progressive  tendency,  and  that  under  certain  cir- 
cumstances the  attempt  to  resist  that  bias  will  overtask  the  strength 
of  most  individuals.  According  to  the  allegory  of  the  Grecian  myth, 
the  car  of  Bacchus  was  drawn  by  tigers  ;  and  it  is  a  significant  circum- 
stance that  war,  famine  and  pestilence  have  so  often  been  the  fore- 
runners of  veritable  alcohol-epidemics.  The  last  Lancashire  strike  was 
accompanied  by  whisky  riots  ;  the  starving  Silesian  weavers  tried  to 
drown  their  misery  in  Schnapps.     In  France  almost  every  general  de- 


THE  AGE   OF  TREES.  53 

cline  of  material  prosperity  has  been  followed  by  a  sudden  increase  of 
intemperance,  and  after  a  prolonged  war  the  vanquished  party  seems 
to  be  chiefly  liable  to  that  additional  affliction.  The  explanation  is 
that,  after  the  stimulant-habit  has  once  been  initiated,  every  unusual 
depression  of  mental  or  physical  vigor  calls  for  an  increased  applica- 
tion of  the  wonted  method  of  relief.  Nations  who  have  become  ad- 
dicted to  the  worship  of  a  poison-god  will  use  his  temple  as  a  place 
of  refuge  from  every  calamity  ;  and  children  whose  petty  ailments 
have  been  palliated  with  narcotics,  wine,  and  cordials,  will  afterward 
be  tempted  to  drown  their  deeper  sorrow  in  deeper  draughts  of  the 
same  nepenthe. 

And  even  those  who  manage  to  suppress  that  temptation  have  to 
suppress  the  revivals  of  a  hard-dying  hydra,  and  will  soon  find  that 
only  abstinence  from  all  poisons  is  easier  than  temperance. 


THE  AGE  OF  TKEES. 

By  J.  A.  FAEEER. 

SINCE  De  CandoUe,  the  celebrated  Swiss  botanist,  propagated  the 
idea  that  a  tree  has  no  limits  set  by  nature  in  its  constitution  to 
the  term  of  its  existence,  the  question  of  the  age  attainable  by  trees 
has  never  ceased  to  be  debated  with  considerable  interest.  De  Can- 
dolle's  argument  was  to  the  effect  that  whereas  animals  have,  by  the 
physiological  construction  of  their  vessels,  a  set  limit  to  the  duration 
of  their  lives,  trees  have  no  such  natural  termination  ;  and  that  al- 
though their  decay  and  death  are  so  familiar  to  us  that  we  commonly 
speak  of  this  or  that  species  as  living  for  a  given  period  like  two  hun- 
dred years,  yet  such  decay  is  rather  the  result  of  accident  or  disease 
than  of  any  law  inherent  in  their  nature  such  as  in  our  own  case  we 
designate  as  death  by  old  age.  Whence,  the  same  botanist  inferred, 
there  is  no  reason  why  trees  under  perfectly  favorable  conditions 
should  ever  perish  ;  and  he  proceeded  to  adduce  in  favor  of  that  the- 
ory instances  of  trees  which  even  then  were  in  the  enjoyment  of  no 
contemptible  moment  of  eternity. 

Until  accurate  observations  have  been  made  for  hundreds  or  per- 
haps thousands  of  years,  it  would  seem  impossible  to  arrive  at  even 
an  approximate  solution  of  so  wide  a  problem  as  this.  Under  the 
best  conditions  we  could  never  eliminate  those  causes  of  tree  mortality 
which  De  Candolle  fairly  enough  calls  accidental,  but  which  are  con- 
tained in  the  invariable  laws  of  the  elements.  The  largest,  and  there- 
fore probably  the  oldest,  trees  are  the  special  sport  of  the  lightning ; 
and  the  storm  which  has  so  often  felled  trees  of  the  most  prodigious 
size  will,  even  if  it  spare  the  trunk,  break  off  boughs,  thus  admitting 


54  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

at  the  point  of  fracture  that  caries  into  the  trunk  which  will  ulti- 
mately reduce  it  to  a  mere  shell,  similar  to  one  of  those  bull-oaks 
wherein  the  bull  loves  to  hide  himself.  These  causes  of  disease  and 
decay  can  never  be  absent,  since  they  evidently  belong  to  the  perma- 
nent order  of  nature. 

Again,  De  Candolle  accounts  with  great  probability  for  the  di- 
minished rate  of  tree-growth  after  a  certain  period  by  such  considera- 
tions as  the  greater  distance  of  the  roots  from  the  air,  their  coming 
into  contact  with  the  roots  of  other  trees,  or  with  a  rocky  or  otherwise 
unsuitable  substratum,  or  the  diminished  elasticity  of  the  bark  ;  and 
though  it  is  possible  that  trees  might  continue  to  grow  in  their  fifth 
century  at  the  same  rate  as  in  their  first,  if  the  conditions  remained 
equally  favorable,  yet,  since  the  proviso  can  never  be  insured,  a  fur- 
ther difficulty,  amounting  to  insuperability,  occurs,  to  prevent  such  an 
hypothesis  from  being  brought  to  the  test  of  either  observation  or  ex- 
periment. 

Whether,  therefore,  a  tree  might  possibly  continue  living  and 
growing  forever  is  a  question  of  less  entertainment  than  the  question 
of  its  possible  duration  in  the  common  state  of  nature  and  under  the 
irreversible  conditions  of  climate,  soil,  and  the  elements.  What  age 
may  we  ascribe  to  some  of  our  largest  specimens,  either  still  existing 
or  recorded  in  trustworthy  history  ?  Is  the  period  of  one  thousand 
years,  the  favorite  figure  of  tradition,  a  common  or  probable  period 
of  arboreal  longevity,  or  have  our  proudest  forest  giants  attained  their 
present  size  in  half  the  time  that  is  commonly  claimed  for  them  ? 

In  the  discussion  of  this  question  we  have  but  few  known  data  to 
guide  us,  since  statistics  of  the  rate  of  growth,  as  afforded  by  careful 
measurement,  date  only  from  about  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Of  such  statistics  we  may  dismiss  at  once  measurement  of 
height  or  of  the  spread  of  a  tree's  boughs,  the  measurement  of  girth 
being  far  easier  and  more  conclusive.  But  it  is  unfortunate  that  no 
standard  of  distance  from  the  ground  has  yet  been  adopted  for  meas- 
urement, so  that  the  needless  perplexity  might  be  avoided  which  is 
derived  from  giving  the  circumference  now  at  the  ground  and  now  at 
two,  or  three,  or  six  feet  above  it. 

The  counting  of  the  rings  added  by  exogenous  trees  every  year  to 
their  circumferences  can  only,  without  risk  of  great  error,  be  applied 
to  trees  cut  down  in  their  prime,  and  hence  is  useless  for  the  older 
trees  which  are  hollow  and  decayed.  Trees,  moreover,  often  develop 
themselves  so  unequally  from  their  center  that,  as  in  the  case  of  a 
specimen  in  the  museum  at  Kew,  there  may  be  about  two  hundred  and 
fifty  rings  on  one  side  to  fifty  on  the  other.  Perhaps  the  largest  num- 
ber of  rings  that  has  ever  been  counted  was  in  the  case  of  an  oak  felled 
in  1812,  where  they  amounted  to  seven  hundred  and  ten  ;  but  De  Can- 
dolle, who  mentions  this,  adds  that  three  hundred  years  were  added  to 
this  number  as  probably  covering  the  remaining  rings  which  it  was  no 


THE  AGE   OF  TREES,  55 

longer  possible  to  count.  This  instance  may  be  taken  to  illustrate 
how  unsatisfactory  this  mode  of  reckoning  really  is  for  all  but  trees 
of  comparatively  youthful  age. 

The  external  girth  measurement  is  for  these  reasons  the  best  we  can 
have,  being  especially  applicable  where  the  date  of  a  tree's  introduc- 
tion into  a  country  or  of  its  planting  is  definitely  fixed,  since  it  ena- 
bles us  to  argue  from  the  individual  specimen  or  from  a  number  of 
specimens,  not  with  certainty,  but  within  certain  limits  of  variability, 
to  the  rate  of  growth  of  that  tree  as  a  species.  In  these  measurements 
of  trees  of  a  century  or  more  in  age,  such  as  are  given  abundantly  in 
Loudon's  "Arboretum,"  lies  our  best  guide,  though  even  then  the 
growth  in  subsequent  ages  must  remain  matter  of  conjecture.  The 
difficulty  is  to  reduce  this  conjectural  quantity  to  the  limits  of  proba- 
bility ;  for,  given  the  ascertained  growth  of  the  first  century,  how 
shall  we  estimate  the  diminished  growth  of  later  centuries?  The 
best  way  would  seem  to  be  to  take  the  ascertained  growth  of  the  first 
century,  and  then  to  make,  say,  the  third  of  it  the  average  growth  of 
every  century.  Thus,  if  we  were  to  take  twelve  feet  as  the  ascer- 
tained growth  of  an  oak  in  its  first  century,  four  feet  would  be  its  con- 
stant average  rate,  and  we  might  conjecture  that  an  oak  of  forty  feet 
was  about  a  thousand  years  old.  But  clearly  it  might  be  much  less  ; 
for  the  reason  for  taking  the  third  is  not  so  much  that  it  is  a  more 
probable  average  than  the  half,  as  that  it  is  obviously  less  likely  to 
err  on  the  side  of  excess  of  rapidity. 

The  cypress  affords  an  instance  where  the  approximate  certainty 
of  its  introduction  into  England  enables  us  to  form  some  conclusions 
with  regard  to  its  attainable  age.  The  fact  of  its  being  first  men- 
tioned in  Turner's  "  Names  of  Herbs,"  published  in  1548,  makes  it 
probable  that  it  was  not  introduced  into  England  before  the  begin- 
ning of  that  century.  But,  at  all  events,  the  cypress  at  Fulham,  which 
in  1793  was  two  feet  five  inches  at  three  feet  from  the  ground,  can  not 
have  been  planted  there  before  1674,  the  year  that  Compton,  the 
great  introducer  of  foreign  trees  into  England  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, became  Bishop  of  London.  That  gives  a  growth  of  about  two 
feet  in  the  first  century  ;  but  sometimes  it  attains  a  higher  rate,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  cypress  planted  by  Michael  Angelo  at  Chartreux, 
which  was  thirteen  feet  round  in  1817,  giving  the  average  rate  of  over 
four  feet  in  the  first  three  centuries.  Now,  the  cypress  at  Somma, 
between  l^ake  Maggiore  and  Milan,  for  whose  sake  Napoleon  bent  the 
road  out  of  the  straight  line,  is  not  more  than  twenty-three  feet  in 
girth,  so  that  the  tradition  which  makes  its  planting  coeval  with 
Christianity  would  seem  doubtful ;  though  if  we  take  three  feet  as  the 
first  century's  growth,  and  take  the  third  as  the  average,  it  may  evi- 
dently have  been  standing  in  the  time  of  Caesar,  as  an  old  chronicle  of 
Milan  is  averred  to  attest. 

The  Lebanon  cedar  first  planted  at  Lambeth  in  1683  was  only  seven 


56  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

feet  nine  inches  (girth  measurements  alone  need  be  given)  one  hun- 
dred and  ten  years  later.  Dr.  Uvedale's  cedar,  planted  at  Enfield  not 
earlier  than  1670,  was  fifteen  feet  eight  inches  when  measured  in  1835, 
i.  e.,  one  hundred  and  sixty-five  years  afterward.  And  the  large  cedar 
at  Uxbridge,  which  was  blown  down  in  1790,  was  one  hundred  and 
eighteen  years  old  when  Gilpin  measured  it  in  1776,  and  found  it  to  be 
fifteen  feet  and  a  half.  We  should  therefore  be  justified  in  assuming 
twelve  feet  as  the  possible  first  century's  growth  of  a  cedar  even  in 
England  ;  whence  we  may  test  the  probability  of  the  oldest  cedars  now 
on  Mount  Lebanon  having  been  growing  there  in  the  days  of  King 
Solomon.  In  the  year  1696  the  traveler  Maundrell  measured  one  of 
the  largest  of  them  and  found  it  to  be  twelve  yards  six  inches. 
Four  feet  a  century  being  the  average  rate,  the  cedar  measured  by 
Maundrell  would  have  required  only  nine  centuries  to  have  attained 
its  dimensions  of  thirty-six  feet ;  so  that  it  need  have  been  no  older 
than  the  time  of  Charlemagne,  and,  allowing  for  a  more  rapid  growth 
on  a  site  where  it  is  indigenous,  may  probably  have  been  considerably 
younger. 

From  the  claims  to  antiquity  of  the  cedars  of  Lebanon  let  us  pass 
to  those  of  the  Tortworth  Spanish  chestnut  in  Gloucestershire,  which 
sometimes  boasts  to  be  the  oldest  tree  in  England,  and  bears  an  in- 
scription to  the  effect  that  King  John  held  a  Parliament  beneath  it.* 
Sir  Robert  Atkyns,  whose  history  of  that  county  was  published  in 
1712,  usually  bears  the  responsibility  of  connecting  the  tree  with  King 
John ;  but  he  only  speaks  of  it  as  said  by  tradition  "  to  have  been 
growing  there  in  the  reign  of  King  John.  It  is  nineteen  yards  in  com- 
pass, and  seems  to  be  several  trees  incorporated  together,  and  young 
ones  are  still  growing  up  which  may  in  time  be  joined  to  the  old  body." 
It  was  also  probably  on  hearsay  evidence  that  Evelyn  spoke  of  it  as 
standing  on  record  that  a  chestnut  (at  Tamworth)  formed  a  boundary 
tree  in  the  reign  of  Stephen.  We  may  assume  Evelyn  to  have  meant 
the  tree  in  question  ;  we  may  pass  the  hesitation  of  tradition  between 
two  kings  not  remote  from  one  another  in  time  ;  and  we  may  accept 
fifty-seven  feet  as  the  maximum  measurement,  though  no  subsequent 
measurement  gives  so  high  dimensions.  Now,  that  a  chestnut  may 
attain  seventeen  feet  in  its  first  century  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  a 
chestnut  at  Nettlecombe,  planted  within  the  recollection,  and  therefore 
within  the  life,  of  Sir  John  Trevelyan,  who  died  in  1828,  was  over 
seventeen  feet.f  But  we  may  be  content  with  fifteen  feet  for  the  first 
century.  Then,  on  the  principle  of  the  third  as  the  average,  we  should 
require  a  period  of  eleven  centuries  for  fifty-seven  feet ;  but  that  this 
average  would  be  too  low  is  evident  from  the  fact  that  in  seventy-one 
years — i.  e.,  between  1766  and  1837 — it  was  proved  to  have  increased 
two  feet  in  girth.     Therefore  we  should  have  a  diminishing  series  be- 

*  Jesse,  "  Gleanings  in  Natural  History,"  i,  341. 
t  Selby,  "  Forest  Trees,"  334  (1842). 


THE  AGE   OF  TREES,  57 

tween,  say,  fifteen  feet  a  century  at  one  end  and  a  little  over  two  feet 
a  century  at  the  other.  This  might  be  at  the  following  rate,  taking 
each  figure  for  the  growth  of  a  century  :  15  ^- 13 +  10  +  8 +  6  +  3+2  = 
57.  By  which  calculation  seven  centuries  would  have  been  the  tree's 
age  when  Sir  Robert  Atkyns  declared  it  to  be  fifty-seven  feet  in  1712, 
an  antiquity  that  would  amply  satisfy  tradition,  but  could  not  remove 
the  probability  that  the  tree  is  not  a  single  trunk,  but  really  a  number 
of  different  trees  that  have  become  incorporated  together. 

A  somewhat  similar  theory  may  be  applied  to  the  famous  Castagna 
di  Cento  Cavalli  on  Mount  Etna,  so  called  because  a  Queen  of  Ara- 
gon  and  one  hundred  followers  on  horseback  are  said  to  have  taken 
shelter  beneath  it  from  a  shower  of  rain.  Brydone,  in  1790,  measured 
the  circumference  to  be  two  hundred  and  four  feet,  but  it  seemed  to 
him  that  the  tree  in  question,  of  which  only  separate  trunks  remain, 
was  really  five  separate  trees  ;  and  though  he  professed  to  have  found 
no  bark  on  the  insides  of  the  stumps  nor  on  the  sides  opposite  to  one 
another,  yet  a  more  recent  traveler  states,  in  Murray's  guide-book,  that 
this  is  only  true  of  the  southernmost  stem,  and  that  one  of  the  masses 
still  standing  does  show  bark  all  round  it,  which  would  of  course  prove 
it  to  be  a  separate  tree.  Of  the  other  large  chestnuts  on  Etna  the  Cas- 
tagna del  Nave  is  rather  larger  than  the  Tortworth  specimen,  while 
the  Castagna  della  Galea  is  seventy-six  feet  at  two  feet  from  the 
ground.  The  rich  soil  of  pulverized  volcanic  ash  combined  with 
decomposed  vegetable  matter  probably  enabled  them  to  attain  their 
present  size  within  a  shorter  period  than  would  be  implied  by  such 
dimensions  elsewhere  ;  but  whether  they  are  five  centuries  or  ten  it  is 
absolutely  impossible  to  conjecture. 

The  great  variability  in  the  rate  of  growth  in  trees  of  the  same 
species  is  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  thing  afforded  by  statistics. 
We  say,  for  instance,  roughly,  that  the  beech  grows  twice  as  fast  as 
an  oak  ;  but  take  four  beeches  mentioned  by  Loudon,  placing  their 
years  in  one  column  and  their  circumference  in  another  : 

One  in  King's  County  at    60  years  was  17  feet. 

One  at  Foster  Hall  "   100      "       "    12    " 

One  at  Courtachy  Castle  "    102      "       "18    " 

One  in  Callendar  Park  "   200      "       "17    " 

So  that  of  three  beeches  nearly  the  same  in  size  one  was  only  sixty, 
another  one  hundred  and  two,  and  another  as  much  as  two  hundred. 
And  this  variability  of  rate  is  still  more  conspicuous  in  the  oak.  De 
Candolle,  who  counted  the  rings  of  several  oaks  that  had  been  felled, 
found  one  that  at  two  hundred  years  had  only  the  same  circumference 
that  another  had  attained  at  fifty.  Some  had  grown  slowly  at  first, 
and  then  rapidly  ;  others,  like  bad  racers,  had  begun  fast  and  ended 
slowly.  And  even  the  diminished  rate  of  growth  would  not  seem  to 
be  an  invariable  rule,  for  one  oak  of  three  hundred  and  thirty-three 
years  was  shown  to  have  increased  as  much  between  three  hundred 


58 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


and  twenty  and  three  hundred  and  thirty  as  it  had  between  ninety  and 
one  hundred. 

This  reduces  the  computation  of  the  age  of  an  oak  to  little  more 
than  guess-work.  The  Cowthorpe  oak,  the  largest  existing  in  Eng- 
land, reached  at  one  time  seventy-eight  feet  in  circumference.  Da- 
mory's  oak,  in  Dorsetshire,  was  only  ten  feet  less  when  it  was  so 
decayed  that  it  was  cut  up  and  sold  for  fire-wood  in  1755  ;  and  the 
Boddington  oak,  in  the  vale  of  Gloucester,  was  fifty-four  feet  at  the 
base  when  it  was  burned  down  in  1790.  It  is  needless  to  mention  other 
English  oaks  which  are  also  claimants  to  a  remote  antiquity  ;  but  it  is 
obvious,  from  the  very  variable  rate  of  the  growth  of  oaks,  that  size 
establishes  no  indisputable  title,  and  that  the  Cowthorpe  oak  need  not 
therefore  be  the  oldest  English  oak  because  it  is  the  largest  recorded. 
From  Loudon's  statistics  of  oaks  are  extracted  the  following  notices 
of  trees,  according  to  their  age  and  girth  : 


Tears. 

40.. 

83... 
100.. 
100.. 
100. 
120.. 
180.. 


Feet  of 
circumference. 

8 


12 
12 
18 
21 
14 
15 


Years. 
200.. 
200.. 
201.. 
220.. 
250.. 
300.. 
330.. 


Feet  of 
circumference. 

...     7i 

...25 

...21 

...20 

.  . .  19i 

...33 

...27 


This  table  not  only  shows  the  great  variability  of  growth,  but,  if  we 
take  the  three  specimens  of  one  hundred  years  old,  gives  us  the  high 
average  of  seventeen  feet  as  that  of  only  the  first  century.  Taking, 
then,  as  usual,  the  third  as  the  average  growth,  we  should  require 
rather  more  than  eight  centuries  for  an  oak  of  fifty  feet,  which  re- 
duces to  a  very  small  number  the  oaks  in  England  that  can  claim  a 
thousand  years. 

When,  therefore,  Gilpin,  in  his  "  Forest  Scenery,"  speaks  of  nine 
hundred  years  as  of  no  great  age  for  an  oak,  it  must  be  said  that  very 
few  oaks  can  be  named  which  by  measurement  would  sustain  their 
title  to  that  age.  Tradition,  which  is  always  sentimental,  leans  nat- 
urally to  the  side  of  exaggerated  longevity.  William  of  Wainfleet 
gave  directions  for  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  to  be  built  near  the 
great  oak  which  fell  suddenly  in  the  year  1788,  and  out  of  which  the 
president's  chair  was  made,  in  memory  of  the  tree.  Gilpin  assumes 
that  for  the  tree  to  have  been  called  great  it  must  have  been  five  hun- 
dred years  old,  and,  therefore,  perhaps  standing  in  the  time  of  King 
Alfred.  But  it  is  clear  that  it  need  not  have  been  a  century  old  to 
have  fairly  earned  the  title  of  great,  and  that,  therefore,  a  period  of 
six  centuries  may  have  covered  its  whole  term  of  existence. 

We  are  certainly  apt  to  underrate  the  possible  rate  of  growth 
where  a  tree  meets  with  altogether  favorable  conditions.  The  silver 
fir  was  only  introduced  into  England  in  the  seventeenth  century  by 


THE  AGE   OF  TREES,  59 

Sergeant  Newdigate ;  and  one  tree  of  his  planting  was  thirteen  feet 
round  when  Evelyn  measured  it  eighty-one  years  afterward.  A  com- 
parison of  the  statistics  of  growth,  as  above  collected  with  reference 
to  the  oak,  indicates  with  respect  to  most  trees  a  more  rapid  rate  than 
is  commonly  supposed.  Let  us  test  the  claims  of  some  of  the  oldest 
limes.  The  Swiss  used  often  to  commemorate  a  victory  by  planting  a 
lime-tree,  so  that  it  may  be  true  that  the  lime  still  in  the  square  of 
Fribourg  was  planted  on  the  day  of  their  victory  over  Charles  the 
Bold  at  Morat  in  1476.  A  youth,  they  say,  bore  it  as  a  twig  into  the 
town,  and  arriving  breathless  and  exhausted  from  the  battle  had  only 
strength  to  utter  the  word  "  Victory  !  *'  before  he  fell  down  dead.  But 
this  tree  was  only  thirteen  feet  nine  inches  in  1831,  i.  e.,  three  hundred 
and  fifty-five  years  afterward,  and  it  would  be  extraordinary  if  a  lime 
had  not  attained  in  that  period  greater  bulk  than  even  an  oak  might 
have  reached  in  a  century.  The  large  lime  at  Neustadt,  in  Wiirtera- 
berg,  mentioned  by  Evelyn  as  having  its  boughs  supported  by  columns 
of  stone,  was  twenty-seven  feet  when  he  wrote  (1664),  and  in  1837  it 
was  fifty-four,  so  that  within  a  period  of  one  hundred  and  seventy- 
three  years  it  had  gained  as  much  as  twenty-seven  feet.  Conse- 
quently, making  allowance  for  diminished  growth,  we  may  fairly 
assume  that  two  hundred  years  would  have  been  more  than  enough 
for  the  attainment  of  the  circumference  of  the  first  twenty-seven  feet 
which  it  had  reached  in  the  time  of  Evelyn.  N^o  English  lime  appears 
to  have  reached  such  dimensions  as  would  imply  a  growth  of  more 
than  three  centuries,  though  the  lime  at  Depeham,  near  Norwich, 
which  was  forty-six  feet  when  Sir  Thomas  Browne  sent  his  account  of 
it  to  Evelyn,  sufficiently  dispels  the  legend  that  all  limes  in  this  coun- 
try have  come  from  two  plants  brought  over  by  Sir  John  Spelman, 
who  introduced  the  manufacture  of  paper  into  England  from  Ger- 
many, and  to  whom  Queen  Elizabeth  granted  the  manor  of  Port- 
bridge. 

It  would  be  natural  to  expect  the  greatest  longevity  in  indigenous 
trees,  and,  though  it  has  been  much  disputed  what  kinds  are  native  to 
the  English  soil,  etymology  alone  would  indicate  that  the  following 
trees  were  of  Roman  importation  :  the  elm  {ulmus)^  the  plane  {^pla- 
tanus)^  the  poplar  (populus),  the  box  (buxus),  the  chestnut  (castanea). 
The  yew,  on  the  contrary,  is  probably  indigenous,  though  its  opponents 
find  some  reason  for  their  skepticism  in  the  fact  that  its  larger  speci- 
mens are  chiefly  found  in  church-yards  and  artificial  plantations.  In 
favor  of  its  claim  is  the  fact  that  its  pretensions  to  longevity  seem  to 
be  better  founded  than  those  of  any  other  English  tree,  not  even  ex- 
cluding the  oak.  A  yew  that  was  dug  up  from  a  bog  in  Queen's 
County  was  proved  by  its  rings  to  have  been  five  hundred  and  forty- 
five  years  of  age  ;  yet  for  the  last  three  hundred  years  of  its  life  it  had 
grown  so  slowly  that  near  the  circumference  one  hundred  rings  were 
traceable  within  an  inch.    Some  great  and  sudden  change  for  the  worse 


6o  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

in  the  external  conditions  may  have  accounted  for  so  slow  a  rate ;  but 
it  would  hardly  be  safe,  with  such  evidence  before  us,  to  allow  more 
than  three  feet  a  century  as  the  normal  growth  of  a  yew,  in  which  case 
the  Fortingal  yew  in  Scotland,  fifty-six  feet  round  in  1769,  may  have 
lived  more  than  eighteen  centuries  ;  and  a  longevity  in  proportion  must 
be  accorded  to  the  yews  at  Fountain's  Abbey,  or  to  the  Tisbury  yew 
in  Dorsetshire,  which  boasts  of  thirty-seven  feet  in  circumference. 
Hence  tradition  in  this  case  would  seem  to  contain  nothing  incredible 
when  it  asserts  that  the  yews  on  Kingley  Bottom,  near  Chichester, 
were  on  their  present  site  when  the  sea-kings  from  the  North  landed 
on  the  coast  of  Sussex. 

It  is,  however,  but  seldom  that  any  real  aid  can  be  derived  from 
tradition  in  estimating  the  longevity  of  trees.  We  have  even  to  be 
on  our  guard  against  it,  especially  when  it  associates  the  general  claim 
to  antiquity  by  a  specific  name  or  event.  In  the  classical  period  the 
tendency  was  as  strong  as  it  is  still ;  and  we  should  look  to  our  own 
legends  when  tempted  to  smile  at  the  Delian  palm  mentioned  by  Pliny 
as  coeval  with  Apollo,  or  at  the  two  oaks  at  Heraclea  as  planted  by 
Hercules  himself.  Pausanias,  traveling  in  Greece  in  the  second  century 
of  our  era,  saw  a  plane-tree  which  was  said  to  have  been  planted  by 
Menelaus  when  collecting  forces  for  the  Trojan  war,  whence  Gilpin 
gravely  iuferred  that  the  tree  must  have  been  thirteen  centuries  old 
when  Pausanias  saw  it.  Tacitus  calculated  that  a  fig-tree  was  eight 
hundred  and  forty  years  old  because  tradition  accounted  it  the  tree 
whereunder  the  wolf  nursed  Romulus  and  Remus.  Nor  was  Pliny's 
inference  more  satisfactory,  that  three  hollies  still  standing  in  his  day 
on  the  site  of  Tibur  must  have  been  older  than  Rome  itself,  inasmuch 
as  Tibur  was  older  than  Rome,  and  they  were  the  very  trees  on 
which  Tiburtus,  the  founder  of  the  former,  saw  the  flight  of  birds 
descend  which  decided  him  on  the  site  of  his  city.  There  is  of  course 
no  more  reason  to  believe  in  the  reality  of  Tiburtus  than  of  Francion, 
the  mythical  forefather  of  France,  or  of  Brute  the  TrojaD,  the  reputed 
founder  of  the  British  Empire. 

These  things  suffice  to  justify  suspicion  of  trees  associated  with  par- 
ticular names,  such  as  Wallace's  Oak,  or  trees  claiming  to  have  been 
planted  by  St.  Dominic  or  Thomas  Aquinas.  Our  only  safe  guide  is 
measurement,  applied  year  by  year  to  trees  alike  of  known  and  of  un- 
known age,  of  insignificant  as  of  vast  dimensions,  and  recorded  in  some 
central  annual  of  botanical  information,  facilitating  the  work  of  com- 
parison and  the  arrival  at  something  like  trustworthy  averages.  The 
experiment,  moreover,  has  not  been  sufficiently  tried  whether  our  old- 
est trees  are  capable  of  an  increased  rate  of  growth  by  the  application 
of  fresh  earth  round  their  roots,  favorable  though  the  case  of  the  Tort- 
worth  chestnut  is  to  the  probability  of  such  a  result.  Until,  therefore, 
such  statistics  are  more  numerous  than  at  present,  we  must  be  content 
to  rest  in  the  uncertainty  with  regard  to  the  ages  of  trees  which  the 


SOME    UNSOLVED   PROBLEMS  IN  GEOLOGY,        61 

preceding  attempt  to  estimate  them  makes  sufficiently  manifest,  and  to 
arrive  at  no  more  definite  conclusion  than  was  long  ago  arrived  at  by- 
Pliny,  that  "  vita  arborum  quarundam  immensa  credi  potest  "  ("  The 
life  of  some  trees  may  be  believed  to  be  prodigious  "). — Longman^s 
Magazine, 


SOME  UKSOLYED  PEOBLEMS  m   GEOLOGY.* 

Bv  Db.  J.  W.  DAWSON, 
II. 

AGAIN  :  we  are  now  prepared  to  say  that  the  struggle  for  existence, 
however  plausible  as  a  theory,  when  put  before  us  in  connection 
with  the  productiveness  of  animals,  and  the  few  survivors  of  their  multi- 
tudinous progeny,  has  not  been  the  determining  cause  of  the  introduc- 
tion of  new  species.  The  periods  of  rapid  introduction  of  new  forms 
of  marine  life  were  not  periods  of  struggle,  but  of  expansion — those 
periods  in  which  the  submergence  of  continents  afforded  new  and 
large  space  for  their  extension  and  comfortable  subsistence.  In  like 
manner  it  was  continental  emergence  that  afforded  the  opportunity 
for  the  introduction  of  land  animals  and  plants.  Further,  in  connec- 
tion with  this,  it  is  now  an  established  conclusion  that  the  great 
aggressive  faunas  and  floras  of  the  continent  have  originated  in  the 
north,  some  of  them  within  the  Arctic  Circle  ;  and  this  in  periods  of 
exceptional  warmth,  when  the  perpetual  summer  sunshine  of  the  Arctic 
regions  co-existed  with  a  warm  temperature.  The  testimony  of  the 
rocks  thus  is,  that  not  struggle,  but  expansion,  furnished  the  requisite 
conditions  for  new  forms  of  life,  and  that  the  periods  of  struggle 
were  characterized  by  depauperation  and  extinction. 

But  we  are  sometimes  told  that  organisms  are  merely  mechanical, 
and  that  the  discussions  respecting  their  origin  have  no  significance, 
any  more  than  if  they  related  to  rocks  or  crystals,  because  they  relate 
merely  to  the  organism  considered  as  a  machine,  and  not  to  that  which 
may  be  supposed  to  be  more  important,  namely,  the  great  determin- 
ing power  of  mind  aad  will.  That  this  is  a  mere  evasion,  by  which 
we  really  gain  nothing,  will  appear  from  a  characteristic  extract  of  an 
article  by  an  eminent  biologist,  in  the  new  edition  of  the  "  Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica  " — a  publication  which,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  instead  of 
its  proper  role  as  a  repertory  of  facts,  has  become  a  strong  partisan, 
stating  extreme  and  unproved  speculations  as  if  they  were  conclusions 
of  science.  The  statement  referred  to  is  as  follows  :  "  A  mass  of 
living  protoplasm  is  simply  a  molecular  machine  of  great  complexity, 
the  total  results  of  the  working  of  which,  or  its  vital  phenomena, 

*  Address  of  the  President  of  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Sci- 
ence, delivered  at  Minneapolis,  Augiist  15,  1883.     Reprinted  from  "Science." 


62  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

depend  on  the  one  hand  on  its  construction,  and,  on  the  other,  on  the 
energy  supplied  to  it ;  and  to  speak  of  vitality  as  anything  but  the 
name  for  a  series  of  operations  is  as  if  one  should  talk  of  the  horo- 
logity  of  a  clock."  It  would,  I  think,  scarcely  be  possible  to  put  into 
the  same  number  of  words  a  greater  amount  of  unscientific  assumption 
and  unproved  statement  than  in  this  sentence.  Is  "living  proto- 
plasm "  different  in  any  way  from  dead  protoplasm,  and,  if  so,  what 
causes  the  difference  ?  What  is  a  "  machine  "  ?  Can  we  conceive  of 
a  self -produced  or  uncaused  machine,  or  one  not  intended  to  work  out 
some  definite  results?  The  results  of  the  machine  in  question  are 
said  to  be  "  vital  phenomena  "  ;  certainly  most  wonderful  results,  and 
greater  than  those  of  any  machine  man  has  yet  been  able  to  construct ! 
But  why  "  vital "  ?  If  there  is  no  such  thing  as  life,  surely  they  are 
merely  physical  results.  Can  mechanical  causes  produce  other  than 
physical  effects  ?  To  Aristotle,  life  was  "  the  cause  of  form  in  organ- 
isms." Is  not  this  quite  as  likely  to  be  true  as  the  converse  proposi- 
tion ?  If  the  vital  phenomena  depend  on  the  "  construction  "  of  the 
machine,  and  the  "  energy  supplied  to  it,"  whence  this  construction, 
and  whence  this  energy  ?  The  illustration  of  the  clock  does  not  help 
us  to  answer  this  question.  The  construction  of  the  clock  depends  on 
its  maker,  and  its  energy  is  derived  from  the  hand  that  winds  it  up. 
If  we  can  think  of  a  clock  which  no  one  has  made  and  which  no  one 
winds — a  clock  constructed  by  chance,  set  in  harmony  with  the  uni- 
verse by  chance,  wound  up  periodically  by  chance — we  shall  then 
have  an  idea  parallel  to  that  of  an  organism  living,  yet  without  any 
vital  energy  or  creative  law  ;  but  in  such  a  case  we  should  certainly 
have  to  assume  some  antecedent  cause,  whether  we  call  it  "  horologi- 
ty  "  or  by  some  other  name.  Perhaps  the  term  "  evolution  "  would 
serve  as  well  as  any  other,  were  it  not  that  common  sense  teaches  that 
nothing  can  be  spontaneously  evolved  out  of  that  in  which  it  did  not 
previously  exist. 

There  is  one  other  unsolved  problem,  in  the  study  of  life  by  the 
geologist,  to  which  it  is  still  necessary  to  advert.  This  is  the  inability 
of  paleontology  to  fill  up  the  gaps  in  the  chain  of  being.  In  this  re- 
spect, we  are  constantly  taunted  with  the  imperfection  of  the  record  ; 
but  facts  show  that  this  is  much  more  complete  than  is  generally  sup- 
posed. Over  long  periods  of  time  and  many  lines  of  being,  we  have 
a  nearly  continuous  chain  ;  and,  if  this  does  not  show  the  tendency 
desired,  the  fault  is  as  likely  to  be  in  the  theory  as  in  the  record.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  abrupt  and  simultaneous  appearance  of  new  types 
in  many  specific  and  generic  forms,  and  over  wide  and  separate  areas 
at  one  and  the  same  time,  is  too  often  repeated  to  be  accidental. 
Hence  paleontologists,  in  endeavoring  to  establish  evolution,  have  been 
obliged  to  assume  periods  of  exceptional  activity  in  the  introduction 
of  species,  alternating  with  others  of  stagnation — a  doctrine  differing 
very  little  from  that  of  special  creation  as  held  by  the  older  geologists. 


SOME   UNSOLVED  PROBLEMS  IN  GEOLOGY.       63 

The  attempt  has  lately  been  made  to  account  for  these  breaks  by 
the  assumption  that  the  geological  record  relates  only  to  periods  of 
submergence,  and  gives  no  information  as  to  those  of  elevation.  This 
is  manifestly  untrue.  In  so  far  as  marine  life  is  concerned,  the  periods 
of  submergence  are  those  in  which  new  forms  abound  for  very  obvi- 
ous reasons  already  hinted.  But  the  periods  of  new  forms  of  land 
and  fresh-water  life  are  those  of  elevation,  and  these  have  their  own 
records  and  monuments,  often  very  rich  and  ample  ;  as,  for  example, 
the  swamps  of  the  carboniferous,  the  transition  from  the  cretaceous 
subsidence  to  the  Laramie  elevation,  the  tertiary  lake-basins  of  the 
West,  the  terraces  and  raised  beaches  of  the  pleistocene.  Had  I  time 
to  refer  in  detail  to  the  breaks  in  the  continuity  of  life,  which  can  not 
be  explained  by  the  imperfection  of  the  record,  I  could  show  at  least 
that  nature,  in  this  case,  does  advance  per  saltum — by  leaps,  rather 
than  by  a  slow,  continuous  process.  Many  able  reasoners,  as  Le  Conte 
in  this  country,  and  Mivart  and  Collard  in  England,  hold  this  view. 

Here,  as  elsewhere,  a  vast  amount  of  steady  conscientious  work  is 
required  to  enable  us  to  solve  the  problems  of  the  history  of  life. 
But,  if  so,  the  more  the  hope  for  the  patient  student  and  investigator. 
I  know  nothing  more  chilliug  to  research,  or  unfavorable  to  progress, 
than  the  promulgation  of  a  dogmatic  decision  that  there  is  nothing  to 
be  learned  but  a  merely  fortuitous  and  uncaused  succession,  amenable 
to  no  law,  and  only  to  be  covered,  in  order  to  hide  its  shapeless 
and  uncertain  proportions,  by  the  mantle  of  bold  and  gratuitous 
hypothesis. 

So  soon  as  we  find  evidence  of  continents  and  oceans,  we  raise  the 
question,  *'  Have  these  continents  existed  from  the  first  in  their  pres- 
ent position  and  form,  or  have  the  land  and  water  changed  places  in 
the  course  of  geological  time  ?  "  In  reality  both  statements  are  true 
in  a  certain  limited  sense.  On  the  one  hand,  any  geological  map 
whatever  suffices  to  show  that  the  general  outline  of  the  existing  land 
began  to  be  formed  in  the  first  and  oldest  crumplings  of  the  crust. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  greater  part  of  the  surface  of  the  land  consists 
of  marine  sediments  which  must  have  been  derived  from  land  that 
has  perished  in  the  process,  while  all  the  continental  surfaces,  except, 
perhaps,  some  high  peaks  and  ridges,  have  been  many  times  sub- 
merged. Both  of  these  apparently  contradictory  statements  are  true  ; 
and,  without  assuming  both,  it  is  impossible  to  explain  the  existing 
contours  and  reliefs  of  the  surface. 

In  the  case  of  ]N"orth  America,  the  form  of  the  old  nucleus  of  Lau- 
rentian  rock  in  the  north  already  marks  out  that  of  the  finished  conti- 
nent, and  the  successive  later  formations  have  been  laid  upon  the  edges 
of  this,  like  the  successive  loads  of  earth  dumped  over  an  embankment. 
But,  in  order  to  give  the  great  thickness  of  the  palaeozoic  sediments, 
the  land  must  have  been  again  and  again  submerged,  and  for  long 
periods  of  time.     Thus,  in  one  sense,  the  continents  have  been  fixed  ; 


64  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

in  another,  they  have  been  constantly  fluctuating.  Hall  and  Dana 
have  well  illustrated  these  points  in  so  far  as  Eastern  North  America 
is  concerned.  Professor  Hull,  of  the  Geological  Survey  of  L*eland,  has 
recently  had  the  boldness  to  reduce  the  fluctuations  of  land  and  water, 
as  evidenced  in  the  British  Islands,  to  the  form  of  a  series  of  maps 
intended  to  show  the  physical  geography  of  each  successive  period. 
The  attempt  is  probably  premature,  and  has  been  met  with  much  ad- 
verse criticism  ;  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  has  an  element  of 
truth.  When  we  attempt  to  calculate  what  could  have  been  supplied 
from  the  old  eozoic  nucleus  by  decay  and  aqueous  erosion,  and  when 
we  take  into  account  the  greater  local  thickness  of  sediments  toward 
the  present  sea-basins,  we  can  scarcely  avoid  the  conclusion  that  ex- 
tensive areas  once  occupied  by  high  land  are  now  under  the  sea.  But 
to  ascertain  the  precise  areas  and  position  of  these  perished  lands  may 
now  be  impossible. 

In  point  of  fact,  we  are  obliged  to  believe  in  the  contemporaneous 
existence  in  all  geological  periods,  except  perhaps  the  very  oldest,  of 
three  sorts  of  areas  on  the  surface  of  the  earth  :  1.  Oceanic  areas  of 
deep  sea,  which  must  always  have  occupied  the  bed  of  the  present 
ocean,  or  parts  of  it ;  2.  Continental  plateaus,  sometimes  existing  as 
low  flats  or  as  higher  table-lands,  and  sometimes  submerged  ;  3.  Areas 
of  plication  or  folding,  more  especially  along  the  borders  of  the  oceans, 
forming  elevated  lands  rarely  submerged,  and  constantly  affording  the 
material  of  sedimentary  accumulations. 

Every  geologist  knows  the  contention  which  has  been  occasioned 
by  the  attempts  to  correlate  the  earlier  palaeozoic  deposits  of  the  At- 
lantic margin  of  Korth  America  with  those  forming  at  the  same  time 
on  the  interior  plateau,  and  with  those  of  intervening  lines  of  plication 
and  igneous  disturbance.  Stratigraphy,  lithology,  and  fossils  are  all 
more  or  less  at  fault  in  dealing  with  these  questions  ;  and,  while  the 
general  nature  of  the  problem  is  understood  by  many  geologists,  its 
solution  in  particular  cases  is  still  a  source  of  apparently  endless  de- 
bate. 

The  causes  and  mode  of  operation  of  the  great  movements  of  the 
earth's  crust  which  have  produced  mountains,  plains,  and  table-lands, 
are  still  involved  in  some  mystery.  One  patent  cause  is  the  unequal 
settling  of  the  crust  toward  the  center ;  but  it  is  not  so  generally  un- 
derstood as  it  should  be  that  the  greater  settlement  of  the  ocean-bed 
has  necessitated  its  pressure  against  the  sides  of  the  continents  in  the 
same  manner  that  a  huge  ice-floe  crushes  a  ship  or  a  pier.  The  geo- 
logical map  of  North  America  shows  this  at  a  glance,  and  impresses 
us  with  the  fact  that  large  portions  of  the  earth's  crust  have  not  only 
been  folded,  but  bodily  pushed  back  for  great  distances.  On  looking 
at  the  extreme  north,  we  see  that  the  great  Laurentian  mass  of  cen- 
tral Newfoundland  has  acted  as  a  protecting  pier  to  the  space  imme- 
diately west  of  it,  and  has  caused  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence  to  re- 


SOME    UNSOLVED   PROBLEMS  IN  GEOLOGY,       65 

main  an  undisturbed  area  since  palaeozoic  times.  Immediately  to 
the  south  of  this,  Nova  Scotia  and  New  Brunswick  are  folded  back. 
Still  farther  south,  as  Guyot  has  shown,  the  old  sediments  have  been 
crushed  in  sharp  folds  against  the  Adirondack  mass,  which  has  shel- 
tered the  table-land  of  the  Catskills  and  of  the  Great  Lakes.  South  of 
this,  again,  the  rocks  of  Pennsylvania  and  Maryland  have  been  driven 
back  in  a  great  curve  to  the  west.  Nothing,  I  think,  can  more  forci- 
bly show  the  enormous  pressure  to  which  the  edges  of  the  continents 
have  been  exposed,  and  at  the  same  time  the  great  sinking  of  the 
ocean-beds.  Complex  and  difficult  to  calculate  though  these  move- 
ments of  plication  are,  they  are  more  intelligible  than  the  apparently 
regular  pulsations  of  the  flat  continental  areas,  whereby  they  have 
alternately  been  below  and  above  the  waters,  and  which  must  have 
depended  on  somewhat  regularly  recurring  causes,  connected  either 
with  the  secular  cooling  of  the  earth,  or  with  the  gradual  retardation 
of  its  rotation,  or  with  both.  Throughout  these  changes,  each  succes- 
sive elevation  exposed  the  rocks  for  long  ages  to  the  decomposing  in- 
fluence of  the  atmosphere.  Each  submergence  swept  away,  and  de- 
posited as  sediment,  the  material  accumulated  by  decay.  Every 
change  of  elevation  was  accompanied  with  changes  of  climate  and 
with  modifications  of  the  habitats  of  animals  and  plants.  Were  it 
possible  to  restore  accurately  the  physical  geography  of  the  earth  in 
all  these  respects,  for  each  geological  period,  the  data  for  the  solution 
of  many  difficult  questions  would  be  furnished. 

It  is  an  unfortunate  circumstance  that  conclusions  in  geology,  ar- 
rived at  by  the  most  careful  observation  and  induction,  do  not  remain 
undisturbed,  but  require  constant  vigilance  to  prevent  them  from  being 
overthrown.  Sometimes,  of  course,  this  arises  from  new  discoveries 
throwing  new  light  on  old  facts  ;  but  when  this  occurs  it  rarely  works 
the  complete  subversion  of  previously  received  views.  The  more  usual 
case  is,  that  some  over-zealous  specialist  suddenly  discovers  what  seems 
to  him  to  overturn  all  previous  beliefs,  and  rushes  into  print  with  a 
new  and  plausible  theory,  which  at  once  carries  with  him  a  host  of 
half -informed  people,  but  the  insufficiency  of  which  is  speedily  made 
manifest. 

Had  I  written  this  address  a  few  years  ago,  I  might  have  referred 
to  the  mode  of  formation  of  coal  as  one  of  the  things  most  surely  set- 
tled and  understood.  The  labors  of  many  eminent  geologists,  micro- 
scopists,  and  chemists  in  the  Old  and  the  New  Worlds  had  shown  that 
coal  nearly  always  rests  upon  old-soil  surfaces  penetrated  with  roots, 
and  that  coal-beds  have  in  their  roofs  erect  trees,  the  remains  of  the 
last  forests  that  grew  upon  them.  Logan  and  I  have  illustrated  this 
in  the  case  of  the  series  of  more  than  sixty  successive  coal-beds  exposed 
at  the  South  Joggins,  and  have  shown  unequivocal  evidence  of  land- 
surfaces  at  the  time  of  the  deposition  of  the  coal.  Microscopical  ex- 
amination has  proved  that  these  coals  are  composed  of  the  materials 

VOL.  XXIV. — 5 


66  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

of  the  same  trees  whose  roots  are  found  in  the  under-clays,  and  their 
stems  and  leaves  in  the  roof-shales  ;  that  much  of  the  material  of  the 
coal  has  been  subjected  to  sub-aerial  decay  at  the  time  of  its  accumula- 
tion ;  and  that  in  this,  ordinary  coal  differs  from  bituminous  shale, 
earthy  bitumen,  and  some  kinds  of  cannel,  which  have  been  formed 
under  water  ;  that  the  matter  remaining  as  coal  consists  almost  en- 
tirely of  epidermal  tissues,  which,  being  suberose  in  character,  are 
highly  carbonaceous,  very  durable,  and  impermeable  by  water,*  and 
are  hence  the  best  fitted  for  the  production  of  pure  coal ;  and  finally 
that  the  vegetation  and  the  climatal  and  geographical  features  of  the 
coal  period  were  eminently  fitted  to  produce  in  the  vast  swamps  of 
that  period  precisely  the  effects  observed.  All  these  points  and  many 
others  have  been  thoroughly  worked  out  for  both  European  and  Ameri- 
can coal-fields,  and  seemed  to  leave  no  doubt  on  the  subject.  But  sev- 
eral years  ago  certain  microscopists  observed  on  slices  of  coal  layers 
filled  with  spore-cases — a  not  unusual  circumstance,  since  these  were 
shed  in  vast  abundance  by  the  trees  of  the  coal-forests,  and  because 
they  contain  suberose  matter  of  the  same  character  with  epidermal 
tissues  generally.  Immediately  we  were  informed  that  all  coal  con- 
sists of  spores  ;  and,  this  being  at  once  accepted  by  the  unthinking, 
the  results  of  the  labors  of  many  years  are  thrown  aside  in  favor  of 
this  crude  and  partial  theory.  A  little  later,  a  German  microscopist 
has  thought  proper  to  describe  coal  as  made  up  of  minute  algse,  and 
tries  to  reconcile  this  view  with  the  appearances,  devising  at  the  same 
time  a  new  and  formidable  nomenclature  of  generic  and  specific  names, 
which  would  seem  largely  to  represent  mere  fragments  of  tissues. 
Still  later,  some  local  facts  in  a  French  coal-field  have  induced  an  emi- 
nent botanist  of  that  country  to  revive  the  drift  theory  of  coal,  in  op- 
position to  that  of  growth  in  situ,  A  year  or  two  ago,  when  my  friend 
Professor  Williamson,  of  Manchester,  informed  me  that  he  was  pre- 
paring a  large  series  of  slices  of  coal  with  the  view  of  revising  the 
whole  subject,  I  was  inclined  to  say  that,  after  what  had  been  done  by 
Lyell,  Goeppert,  Logan,  Hunt,  Newberry,  and  myself,  this  was  scarcely 
necessary  ;  but,  in  view  of  what  I  have  just  stated,  it  may  be  that  all 
he  can  do  will  be  required  to  rescue  from  total  ruin  the  results  of  our 
labors. 

An  illustration  of  a  different  character  is  afforded  by  the  contro- 
versy now  raging  with  respect  to  the  so-called  f ucoids  of  the  ancient 
rocks.  At  one  time  the  group  of  fucoids,  or  alga;,  constituted  a  gen- 
eral place  of  refuge  for  all  sorts  of  unintelligible  forms  and  markings  ; 
graptolites,  worm-trails,  crustacean  tracks,  shrinkage-cracks,  and,  above 
all,  rill-markings,  forming  a  heterogeneous  group  of  fucoidal  remains 
distinguished  by  generic  and  specific  names.  To  these  were  also  added 
some  true  land-plants  badly  preserved,  or  exhibiting  structures  not 
well  understood  by  botanists.  Such  a  group  was  sure  to  be  eventually 
*  "  Acadian  Geology,"  third  edition,  supplement,  p.  68. 


SOME    UNSOLVED   PROBLEMS  IN  GEOLOGY.        67 

dismembered.  The  writer  has  himself  done  something  toward  this,* 
but  Professor  Nathorst  has  done  still  more  ;  \  and  now  some  intelligi- 
ble explanation  can  be  given  of  many  of  these  forms.  Quite  recently, 
however,  the  Count  de  Saporta,  in  an  elaborate  illustrated  memoir,^ 
has  come  to  the  defense  of  the  fucoids,  more  especially  against  the 
destructive  experiments  of  Nathorst,  and  would  carry  back  into  the 
vegetable  kingdom  many  things  which  would  seem  to  be  mere  trails 
of  animals.  While  writing  this  address,  I  have  received  from  Pro- 
fessor Crie,  of  Rennes,  a  paper  in  which  he  not  only  supports  the  algal 
nature  of  rusichnites,  arthrichnites,  and  many  other  supposed  fucoids, 
but  claims  for  the  vegetable  kingdom  even  receptaculites  and  archaeo- 
cyathus.  It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  some  of  the  facts  which  he  cites, 
respecting  the  structure  of  the  siphoniae  and  of  certain  modern  incrust- 
ing  algae,  are  very  suggestive,  though  I  can  not  agree  with  his  conclu- 
sions. My  own  experience  has  convinced  me  that,  while  non-botanical 
geologists  are  prone  to  mistake  all  kinds  of  markings  for  plants,  even 
good  botanists,  when  not  familiar  with  the  chemical  and  mechanical 
conditions  of  fossilization,  and  with  the  present  phenomena  of  tidal 
shores,  are  quite  as  easily  misled,  though  they  are  very  prone,  on  the 
other  hand,  to  regard  land-plants  of  some  complexity,  when  badly  pre- 
served, as  mere  algae.  In  these  circumstances  it  is  very  difficult  to 
secure  any  consensus,  and  the  truth  is  only  to  be  found  by  careful 
observation  of  competent  men.  One  trouble  is,  that  these  usually 
obscure  markings  have  been  despised  by  the  greater  number  of  paleon- 
tologists, and  probably  would  not  now  be  so  much  in  controversy  were 
it  not  for  the  use  made  of  them  in  illustrating  supposed  phylogenies 
of  plants. 

It  would  be  wrong  to  close  this  address  without  some  reference  to 
that  which  is  the  veritable  pons  asinorum  of  the  science,  the  great 
and  much-debated  glacial  period.  I  trust  that  you  will  not  suppose 
that,  in  the  end  of  an  hour's  address,  I  am  about  to  discuss  this  vexed 
question.  Time  would  fail  me  even  to  name  the  hosts  of  recent  au- 
thors who  have  contended  in  this  arena.  I  can  hope  only  tf  point  out 
a  few  landmarks  which  may  aid  the  geological  adventurer  in  travers- 
ing the  slippery  and  treacherous  surface  of  the  hypothetical  ice-sheet 
of  pleistocene  times,  and  in  avoiding  the  yawning  crevasses  by  which 
it  is  traversed. 

No  conclusions  of  geology  seem  more  certain  than  that  great 
changes  of  climate  have  occurred  in  the  course  of  geological  time  ; 
and  the  evidence  of  this  in  that  comparatively  modern  period  which 
immediately  preceded  the  human  age  is  so  striking  that  it  has  come 
to  be  known  as  pre-eminently  the  ice  age,  while,  in  the  preceding  ter- 

*  "  Footprints  and  Impressions  on  Carboniferous  Rocks,"  "  American  Journal  of  Sci- 
ence," 1873. 

f  Royal  Swedish  Academy,  Stockholm,  1881. 
:]:  '*  A  propos  des  Algues  Fossiles,"  Paris,  1883. 


68  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

tiary  periods,  temperate  conditions  seem  to  have  prevailed  even  to  the 
pole.  Of  the  many  theories  as  to  these  changes  which  have  been 
proposed,  two  seem  at  present  to  divide  the  suffrages  of  geologists, 
either  alone,  or  combined  with  each  other.  These  are — 1.  The  theory 
of  the  precession  of  the  equinoxes  in  connection  with  the  varying  ec- 
centricity of  the  earth's  orbit,  advocated  more  especially  by  CroU  ; 
and,  2.  The  different  distribution  of  land  and  water  as  affecting  the 
reception  and  radiation  of  heat  and  the  ocean-currents — a  theory  ably 
propounded  by  Lyell,  and  subsequently  extensively  adopted,  either 
alone  or  with  the  previous  one.  One  of  these  views  may  be  called  the 
astronomical ;  the  other,  the  geographical.  I  confess  that  I  am  in- 
clined to  accept  the  second  or  Lyellian  theory,  for  such  reasons  as  the 
following  :  1.  Great  elevations  and  depressions  of  land  have  occurred 
in  and  since  the  pleistocene,  while  the  alleged  astronomical  changes 
are  not  certain,  more  especially  in  regard  to  their  probable  effect  on 
the  earth.  2.  When  the  rival  theories  are  tested  by  the  present  phe- 
nomena of  the  southern  polar  region  and  the  North  Atlantic,  there 
seem  to  be  geographical  causes  adequate  to  account  for  all  except  ex- 
treme and  unproved  glacial  conditions.  3.  The  astronomical  cause 
would  suppose  regularly  recurring  glacial  periods  of  which  there  is  no 
evidence,  and  it  would  give  to  the  latest  glacial  age  an  antiquity  which 
seems  at  variance  with  all  other  facts.  4.  In  those  more  northern  re-  • 
gions  where  glacial  phenomena  are  most  pronounced,  the  theory  of 
floating  sheets  of  ice,  with  local  glaciers  descending  to  the  sea,  seems 
to  meet  all  the  conditions  of  the  case  ;  and  these  would  be  obtained,  in 
the  North  Atlantic  at  least,  by  very  moderate  changes  of  level,  caus- 
ing, for  example,  the  equatorial  current  to  flow  into  the  Pacific,  instead 
of  running  northward  as  a  gulf  stream.  5.  The  geographical  theory 
allows  the  supposition  not  merely  of  vicissitudes  of  climate  quickly 
following  each  other  in  unison  with  the  movements  of  the  surface,  but 
allows  also  of  that  near  local  approximation  of  regions  wholly  covered 
with  ice  and  snow,  and  others  comparatively  temperate,  which  we  see 
at  present  in  the  north. 

If,  however,  we  are  to  adopt  the  geographical  theory,  we  must 
avoid  extreme  views  ;  and  this  leads  to  the  inquiry  as  to  the  evidence 
to  be  found  for  any  such  universal  and  extreme  glaciation  as  is  de- 
manded by  some  geologists. 

The  only  large  continental  area  in  the  northern  hemisphere  sup- 
posed to  be  entirely  ice-  and  snow-clad  is  Greenland  ;  and  this,  so  far 
as  it  goes,  is  certainly  a  local  case,  for  the  ice  and  snow  of  Greenland 
extend  to  the  south  as  far  as  60°  north  latitude,  while  both  in  Norway 
and  in  the  interior  of  North  America  the  climate  in  that  latitude  per- 
mits the  growth  of  cereals.  Further,  Grinnell  Land,  which  is  separated 
from  North  Greenland  only  by  a  narrow  sound,  has  a  comparatively 
mild  climate,  and,  as  Nares  has  shown,  is  covered  with  verdure  in 
summer.     Still  further,  Nordenskiold,    one  of  the  most   experienced 


SOME   UNSOLVED  PROBLEMS  IN  GEOLOGY.        69 

Arctic  explorers,  holds  that  it  is  probable  that  the  interior  of  Green- 
land is  itself  verdant  in  summer,  and  is  at  this  moment  preparing  to 
attempt  to  reach  this  interior  oasis.  Nor  is  it  difficult,  with  the  aid  of 
the  facts  cited  by  Woeickoff  and  Whitney,*  to  perceive  the  cause  of 
the  exceptional  condition  of  Greenland.  To  give  ice  and  snow  in 
large  quantities,  two  conditions  are  required — first,  atmospheric  hu- 
midity ;  and,  secondly,  cold  precipitating  regions.  Both  of  these 
conditions  meet  in  Greenland.  Its  high  coast-ranges  receive  and  con- 
dense the  humidity  from  the  sea  on  both  sides  of  it  and  to  the  south. 
Hence  the  vast  accumulation  of  its  coast  snow-fields,  and  the  intense 
discharge  of  the  glaciers  emptying  out  of  its  valleys.  When  extreme 
glacialists  point  to  Greenland,  and  ask  us  to  believe  that  in  the  glacial 
age  the  whole  continent  of  North  America  as  far  south  as  the  latitude 
of  40°  was  covered  with  a  continental  glacier,  in  some  places  several 
thousands  of  feet  thick,  we  may  well  ask,  first,  what  evidence  there  is 
that  Greenland,  or  even  the  Antarctic  Continent,  at  present  shows  such 
a  condition  ;  and,  secondly,  whether  there  exists  a  possibility  that  the 
interior  of  a  great  continent  could  ever  receive  so  large  an  amount  of 
precipitation  as  that  required.  So  far  as  present  knowledge  exists,  it 
is  certain  that  the  meteorologist  and  the  physicist  must  answer  both 
questions  in  the  negative.  In  short,  perpetual  snow  and  glaciers  must 
be  local,  and  can  not  be  continental,  because  of  the  vast  amount  of 
evaporation  and  condensation  required.  These  can  only  be  possible 
where  comparatively  warm  seas  supply  moisture  to  cold  and  elevated 
land  ;  and  this  supply  can  not,  in  the  nature  of  things,  penetrate  far 
inland.  The  actual  condition  of  interior  Asia  and  interior  America  in 
the  higher  northern  latitudes  affords  positive  proof  of  this.  In  a  state 
of  partial  submergence  of  our  northern  continents,  we  can  readily 
imagine  glaciation  by  the  combined  action  of  local  glaciers  and  great 
ice-floes  ;  but,  in  whatever  way  the  phenomena  of  the  bowlder  clay 
and  of  the  so-called  terminal  moraines  are  to  be  accounted  for,  the 
theory  of  a  continuous  continental  glacier  must  be  given  up. 

I  can  not  better  indicate  the  general  bearing  of  facts,  as  they  pre- 
sent themselves  to  my  mind  in  connection  with  this  subject,  than  by 
referring  to  a  paper  by  Dr.  G.  M.  Dawson  on  the  distribution  of  drift 
over  the  great  Canadian  plains  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  f  I  am 
the  more  inclined  to  refer  to  this,  because  of  its  recency,  and  because 
I  have  so  often  repeated  similar  conclusions  as  to  Eastern  Canada  and 
the  region  of  the  Great  Lakes. 

The  great  interior  plain  of  Western  Canada,  between  the  Lauren- 
tian  axis  on  the  east  and  the  Rocky  Mountains  on  the  west,  is  seven 
hundred  miles  in  breadth,  and  is  covered  with  glacial  drift,  presenting 
one  of  the  greatest  examples  of  this  deposit  in  the  world.     Proceed- 

*  "  Memoir  on  Glaciers,"  Geological  Society  of  Berlin,  1881 ;  "  Climatic  Changes," 
Boston,  1883. 

t  "  Science,"  July  1,  1883. 


70  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

ing  eastward  from  the  base  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  surface,  at 
first  more  than  four  thousand  feet  above  the  sea-level,  descends  by- 
successive  steps  to  twenty-five  hundred  feet,  and  is  based  on  creta- 
ceous and  Laramie  rocks,  covered  by  bowlder  clay  and  sand,  in  some 
places  from  one  hundred  to  two  hundred  feet  in  depth,  and  filling  up 
pre-existing  hollows,  though  itself  sometimes  piled  into  ridges.  Xear 
the  Rocky  Mountains  the  bottom  of  the  drift  consists  of  gravel  not 
glaciated.  This  extends  to  about  one  hundred  miles  east  of  the  moun- 
tains, and  must  have  been  swept  by  water  out  of  their  valleys.  The 
bowlder  clay  resting  on  this  deposit  is  largely  made  up  of  local  dehris 
in  so  far  as  its  paste  is  concerned.  It  contains  many  glaciated  bowd- 
ders  and  stones  from  the  Laurentian  region  to  the  east,  and  also  smaller 
pebbles  from  the  Rocky  Mountains  ;  so  that  at  the  time  of  its  forma- 
tion there  must  have  been  driftage  of  large  stones  for  seven  hundred 
miles  or  more  from  the  east,  and  of  smaller  stones  from  a  less  distance 
on  the  west.  The  former  kind  of  material  extends  to  the  base  of  the 
mountains,  and  to  a  height  of  more  than  four  thousand  feet.  One 
bowlder  is  mentioned  as  being  forty-two  by  forty  by  twenty  feet  in 
dimensions.  The  highest  Laurentian  bowlders  seen  were  at  an  eleva- 
tion of  forty-six  hundred  and  sixty  feet,  on  the  base  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains.  The  bowlder  clay,  when  thick,  can  be  seen  to  be  rudely 
stratified,  and  at  one  place  includes  beds  of  laminated  clay  with  com- 
pressed peat,  similar  to  the  forest-beds  described  by  Worthen  and 
Andrews  in  Illinois,  and  the  so-called  interglacial  beds  described  by 
Hinde  on  Lake  Ontario.  The  leaf -beds  on  the  Ottawa  River  and  the 
drift-trunks  found  in  the  bowlder  clay  of  Manitoba  belong  to  the 
same  category,  and  indicate  that  throughout  the  glacial  period  there 
were  many  forest  oases  far  to  the  north.  In  the  valleys  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  opening  on  these  plains  there  are  evidences  of  large  local 
glaciers  now  extinct,  and  similar  evidences  exist  on  the  Laurentian 
highlands  on  the  east. 

Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  feature  of  the  region  is  that  immense 
series  of  ridges  of  drift  piled  against  an  escarpment  of  Laramie  and 
cretaceous  rocks,  at  an  elevation  of  about  twenty-five  hundred  feet, 
and  known  as  the  "  Missouri  Coteau."  It  is  in  some  places  thirty 
miles  broad  and  a  hundred  and  eighty  feet  in  height  above  the  plain 
at  its  foot,  and  extends  north  and  south  for  a  great  distance  ;  being, 
in  fact,  the  northern  extension  of  those  great  ridges  of  drift  which 
have  been  traced  south  of  the  Great  Lakes,  and  through  Pennsylvania 
and  New  Jersey,  and  which  figure  on  the  geological  maps  as  the  edge 
of  the  continental  glacier — an  explanation  obviously  inapplicable  in 
those  Western  regions  where  they  attain  their  greatest  development. 
It  is  plain  that  in  the  North  it  marks  the  western  limit  of  the  deep 
water  of  a  glacial  sea,  which  at  some  periods  extended  much  farther 
west,  perhaps  with  a  greater  proportionate  depression  in  going  west- 
ward, and  on  which  heavy  ice  from  the  Laurentian  districts  on  the 


SOME   UNSOLVED  PROBLEMS  IN  GEOLOGY,       71 

east  was  wafted  southwestward  by  the  Arctic  currents,  while  lighter 
ice  from  the  Rocky  Mountains  was  being  borne  eastward  from  these 
mountains  by  the  prevailing  westerly  winds.  "We  thus  have  in  the 
West,  on  a  very  wide  scale,  the  same  phenomena  of  varying  submer- 
gence, cold  currents,  great  ice-floes,  and  local  glaciers  producing  ice- 
bergs, to  which  I  have  attributed  the  bowlder  clay  and  upper  bowl- 
der drift  of  Eastern  Canada. 

A  few  subsidiary  points  I  may  be  pardoned  for  mentioning  here. 
The  rival  theories  of  the  glacial  period  are  often  characterized  as  those 
of  land  glaciation  and  sea-borne  icebergs.  But  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  those  who  reject  the  idea  of  a  continental  glacier  hold  to 
the  existence  of  local  glaciers  on  the  highlands  more  or  less  exten- 
sive during  different  portions  of  the  great  pleistocene  submergence. 
They  also  believe  in  the  extension  of  these  glaciers  seaward  and 
partly  water-borne,  in  the  manner  so  well  explained  by  Mattieu  Will- 
iams ;  in  the  existence  of  those  vast  floes  and  fields  of  current-and 
tide-borne  ice  whose  powers  of  transport  and  erosion  we  now  know  to 
be  so  great ;  and  in  a  great  submergence  and  re-elevation  of  the  land, 
bringing  all  parts  of  it  and  all  elevations  up  to  five  thousand  feet  suc- 
cessively under  the  influence  of  these  various  agencies,  along  with  those 
of  the  ocean-currents.  They  also  hold  that,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
glacial  submergence,  the  land  was  deeply  covered  by  decomposed 
rock,  similar  to  that  which  still  exists  on  the  hills  of  the  Southern 
States,  and  which,  as  Dr.  Hunt  has  shown,  would  afford  not  only 
earthy  debris,  but  large  quantities  of  bowlders  ready  for  transporta- 
tion by  ice. 

I  would  also  remark  that  there  has  been  the  greatest  possible  ex- 
aggeration as  to  the  erosive  action  of  land-ice.  In  1865,  after  a  visit 
to  the  Alpine  glaciers,  I  maintained  that  in  these  mountains  glaciers 
are  relatively  protective  rather  than  erosive  agencies,  and  that  the 
detritus  which  the  glacier  streams  deliver  is  derived  mostly  from  the 
atmospherically  wasted  peaks  and  cliffs  that  project  above  them. 
Since  that  time  many  other  observers  have  maintained  like  views,  and 
very  recently  Mr.  Davis,  of  Cambridge,  and  Mr.  A.  Irving  have  ably 
treated  this  subject.*  Smoothing  and  striation  of  rocks  are  undoubt- 
edly important  effects,  both  of  land-glaciers  and  heavy  sea-borne  ice  ; 
but  the  leveling  and  filling  agency  of  these  is  much  greater  than  the 
erosive.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  as  Newberry,  Hunt,  Belt,  Spencer,  and 
others  have  shown,  the  glacial  age  has  dammed  up  vast  numbers  of 
old  channels  which  it  has  been  left  for  modern  streams  partially  to 
excavate. 

The  till,  or  bowlder  clay,  has  been  called  a  "  ground  moraine," 
but  there  are  really  no  Alpine  moraines  at  all  corresponding  to  it.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  more  or  less  stratified,  often  rests  on  soft  materi- 

*  "  Proceedings  of  the  Boston  Society  of  Natural  History,"  xxii ;  "  Journal  of  the 
Geological  Society  of  London,"  February,  1883. 


72  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

als  which  glaciers  would  have  swept  away,  sometimes  contains  marine 
shells,  or  passes  into  marine  clays  in  its  horizontal  extension,  and  in- 
variably in  its  imbedded  bowlders  and  its  paste  shows  an  unoxidized 
condition,  which  could  not  have  existed  if  it  had  been  a  sub-aerial 
deposit.  When  the  Canadian  till  is  excavated,  and  exposed  to  the 
air,  it  assumes  a  brown  color,  owing  to  oxidation  of  its  iron  ;  and 
many  of  its  stones  and  bowlders  break  up  and  disintegrate  under  the 
action  of  air  and  frost.  These  are  unequivocal  signs  of  a  sub-aqueous 
deposit.  Here  and  there  we  find  associated  with  it,  and  especially 
near  the  bottom  and  at  the  top,  indications  of  powerful  water-action, 
as  if  of  land-torrents  acting  at  particular  elevations  of  the  land,  or 
heavy  surf  and  ice  action  on  coasts  ;  and  the  attempts  to  exj^lain 
these  by  glacial  streams  have  been  far  from  successful.  A  singular 
objection  sometimes  raised  against  the  sub-aqueous  origin  of  the  till  is 
its  general  want  of  marine  remains,  but  this  is  by  no  means  universal ; 
and  it  is  well  known  that  coarse  conglomerates  of  all  ages  are  gener- 
ally destitute  of  fossils,  except  in  their  pebbles  ;  and  it  is  further  to 
be  observed  that  the  conditions  of  an  ice-laden  sea  are  not  those  most 
favorable  for  the  extension  of  marine  life,  and  that  the  period  of  time 
covered  by  the  glacial  age  must  have  been  short,  compared  with  that 
represented  by  some  of  the  older  formations. 

This  last  consideration  suggests  a  question  which  might  afford 
scope  for  another  address  of  an  hour's  duration — the  question  how 
long  time  has  elapsed  since  the  close  of  the  glacial  period.  Recently 
the  opinion  has  been  gaining  ground  that  the  close  of  the  ice  age  is 
very  recent.  Such  reasons  as  the  following  lead  to  this  conclusion  : 
The  amount  of  atmospheric  decay  of  rocks  and  of  denudation  in  gen- 
eral, which  have  occurred  since  the  close  of  the  glacial  period,  are 
scarcely  appreciable  ;  little  erosion  of  river-valleys  or  of  coast-terraces 
has  occurred.  The  calculated  recession  of  water-falls  and  of  produc- 
tion of  lake-ridges  lead  to  the  same  conclusion.  So  do  the  recent  state 
of  bones  and  shells  in  the  pleistocene  deposits  and  the  perfectly  mod- 
ern facies  of  their  fossils.  On  such  evidence  the  cessation  of  the  gla- 
cial cold  and  settlement  of  our  continents  at  their  present  levels  are 
events  which  may  have  occurred  not  more  than  six  thousand  or  seven 
thousand  years  ago,  though  such  time  estimates  are  proverbially  un- 
certain in  geology.  This  subject  also  carries  with  it  the  greatest  of 
all  geological  problems,  next  to  that  of  the  origin  of  life  ;  namely,  the 
origin  and  early  history  of  man.  Such  questions  can  not  be  discussed 
in  the  closing  sentences  of  an  hour's  address.  I  shall  only  draw  from 
them  one  practical  inference.  Since  the  comparatively  short  post-gla- 
cial and  recent  periods  apparently  include  the  whole  of  human  history, 
we  are  but  new-comers  on  the  earth,  and  therefore  have  had  little 
opportunity  to  solve  the  great  problems  which  it  presents  to  us.  But 
this  is  not  all.  Geology  as  a  science  scarcely  dates  from  a  century 
ago.     We  have  reason  for  surprise,  in  these  circumstances,  that  it  has 


INLETS  FOR  INFECTION.  73 

learned  so  much,  but  for  equal  surprise  that  so  many  persons  appear 
to  think  it  a  complete  and  full-grown  science,  and  that  it  is  entitled  to 
speak  with  confidence  on  all  the  great  mysteries  of  the  earth  that  have 
been  hidden  from  the  generations  before  us.  Such  being  the  newness 
of  man  and  of  his  science  of  the  earth,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
humility,  hard  work  in  collecting  facts,  and  abstinence  from  hasty 
generalization,  should  characterize  geologists,  at  least  for  a  few  gen- 
erations to  come. 

In  conclusion,  science  is  light,  and  light  is  good  ;  but  it  must  be 
carried  high,  else  it  will  fail  to  enlighten  the  world.  Let  us  strive  to 
raise  it  high  enough  to  shine  over  every  obstruction  which  casts  any 
shadow  on  the  true  interests  of  humanity.  Above  all,  let  us  hold  up 
the  light,,  and  not  stand  in  it  ourselves. 


INLETS   FOR   INFECTIO]^.* 

By  E.  THOENE  THOENE,  F.  E.  C.  P. 

IN  selecting  a  subject  to  bring  before  you,  I  felt  that  I  should  not 
be  trespassing  beyond  the  lines  indicated  by  the  committee  who 
have  organized  this  series  of  lectures  if  I  addressed  my  remarks  to 
some  points  connected  with  those  specific  fevers  the  prevention  of 
which  must  be  regarded  as  coming  within  the  scope  of  sanitary  ad- 
ministration. I  may,  perhaps,  indicate  the  importance  of  such  a  sub- 
ject by  quoting  a  few  figures  from  the  reports  of  the  Registrar- General 
of  England.  Limiting  myself  to  those  diseases  the  spread  of  which 
is  admittedly  to  be  controlled  by  the  adoption  either  of  efiicient  sani- 
tary works,  or  of  such  sanitary  measures  as  isolation  and  disinfection, 
I  find  that  during  1871-80  the  following  deaths  were  registered  in 
England  and  Wales  :  From  typhus  fever,  13,975  ;  from  enteric  or  ty- 
phoid fever,  78,421  ;  from  simple  continued  fever,  which  when  fatal 
is  probably  nothing  less  than  an  ill-defined  form  of  enteric  fever,  25,- 
643  ;  from  diphtheria,  29,425  ;  and  from  scarlet  fever,  otherwise  called 
scarlatina,  174,232.  These  deaths  are  essentially  due  to  diseases  which 
may  be  called  preventable,  and  they  amount  in  all  to  321,696  in  the 
ten  years.  But  the  influence  of  these  diseases  upon  the  population  can 
not  be  judged  of  by  the  death-roll  alone.  For  every  fatal  case  there 
have  probably  occurred  at  least  ten  non-fatal  attacks,  and  thus  we 
come  to  be  confronted  with  a  total  of  8,538,656  attacks  from  the  pre- 
ventable specific  fevers.  Mr.  Simon,  C.  B.,  F.  R.  S.,  in  dealing  with 
such  death  returns,  has  said  :  "  Of  the  incalculable  amount  of  physical 
suffering  and  disablement  which  they  occasion,  and  of  the  sorrows  and 

*  Abridged  from  a  lecture  delivered  at  Cheltenham,  March  15,  1883,  and  published 
in  "The  Practitioner." 


74  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

anxieties,  the  often  permanent  darkening  of  life,  the  straitened  means 
of  subsistence,  the  very  frequent  destitution  and  pauperism,  which 
attend  or  follow  such  suffering,  death  statistics,  to  which  alone  I  can 
refer,  testify  only  in  sample  or  by  suggestion." 

The  means  by  which  infection  is  likely  to  be  conveyed  to  house- 
holds are  far  too  numerous  to  be  dealt  with  in  a  single  lecture,  and  I 
have  thought  it  best  to  select  for  consideration  three  or  four  of  what 
I  feel  to  be  among  the  more  important,  and  to  deal  with  these  in 
detail. 

In  a  report  on  an  epidemic  of  enteric  fever  at  Croydon,  in  1875,  Dr. 
Buchanan,  F.  R.  S.,  makes  use  of  the  following  words  :  "  The  air  of 
the  sewers  is,  as  it  were,  *  laid  on '  to  houses."  That  significant  ex- 
pression "  laid  on  "  comes  in  aptly,  as  giving  prominence  to  the  special 
features  of  one  of  the  channels  for  conveying  infection  to  households, 
to  which  I  propose  drawing  your  attention.  From  the  inside  of  every 
ordinary  dwelling-house  there  pass  certain  waste-pipes  intended  to 
convey  liquid  refuse,  first  to  the  house-drains  without,  and  thence  to 
the  public  sewers.  It  is  the  custom  to  regard  these  conduits  as  pass- 
ing from  house  to  sewer,  but  this  evening  I  would  ask  you  to  compare 
them  with  the  pipes  for  the  supply  of  coal-gas,  and  to  view  them 
rather  as  passing  from  the  sewer  as  a  center  to  the  periphery  within 
our  dwelling-houses.  In  our  comparison  the  public  sewer  may  be  re-- 
garded  as  corresponding  with  the  gasometer  ;  the  house-drain  and  the 
waste-pipes  as  representing  the  service-pipes  for  gas  ;  and  the  so-called 
"  trap  "  indoors  as  taking  the  place  of  the  metal  tap  found  in  connec- 
tion with  each  gas-bracket.  Sewer-air,  even  in  its  normal  state,  is  a 
grave  source  of  danger  to  health  ;  but  when  the  sewers  receive  in 
their  course  along  the  streets  the  infectious  refuse  discharged  from 
houses  where  specific  disease  prevails,  then  the  sewer-air  —  harmful 
hitherto — is  changed  into  an  intense  poison. 

How  is  it  usually  sought  to  debar  this  poisonous  agent  from  dwell- 
ings ?  The  sole  means  adopted,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  consists  in 
placing  at  some  point  of  the  pipe  which  connects  the  interior  of  the 
house  with  the  interior  of  the  sewer  a  small  body  of  water  which  is 
known  as  a  "  trap,"  and  which  is  designed  to  act  as  a  barrier  to  the 
passage  of  all  sewer-air.  The  contrivance  most  commonly  resorted  to 
is  the  so-called  bell-trap,  an  apparatus  in  which  the  rim  of  a  bell- 
shaped  cup  is  suspended  in  a  small  body  of  water  contained  within  a 
circular  depression.  This  form  of  trap  is  of  all  the  least  efficient ;  it 
is  not  only  one  in  which  the  water-lock  constituting  the  trapping  may 
at  any  moment  be  entirely  removed  at  the  will  of  the  individual,  but 
at  its  best  it  provides  between  the  house  and  the  sewer  a  layer  of 
water  only  about  one  half  or  three  quarters  of  an  inch  in  depth.  Even 
the  most  efficient  of  all  traps,  the  so-called  "  siphon-bend,"  is  not  much 
better.  Dr.  Andrew  Fergus  maintains  that  trapping  has  but  little 
effect  in  keeping  sewer-air  out  of  houses,  as  the  entrance  of  the  con- 


INLETS  FOR  INFECTION, 


75 


taminating  air  is  not  so  much  due  to  occasional  and  temporary  failure 
in  the  efficacy  of  the  trap  as  to  an  almost  constant  absorption  of  sewer- 
air  by  the  water  on  the  sewer-side  of  the  trap,  and  its  subsequent  dis- 
charge from  the  house-side.  Dr.  Fergus  has  made  a  series  of  experi- 
ments in  a  glass  tube  so  bent  as  to  resemble  the  ordinary  "  siphon  " 
trap,  and  charged  with  water.  Certain  gases  were  evolved  on  what 
we  may  call  the  sewer-side  of  the  trap  {b),  and  tests  were  applied  to 
ascertain  whether  the  gases  succeeded  in  passing  through  the  water. 
The  results  as  tabulated  by  Dr.  Fergus  are  as  follows  : 


GAS. 

Sp.gr. 

Source. 

Test. 

Time  for  reaction  to  show. 

Ammonia 

•50 
•50 

2-25 
1-25 

2-50 
2^50 

1^50 
1-50 

Solution. 

« 

(( 
u 

Generated 

Litmus. 
Nesslcr. 

Litmus. 
Lead  paper. 
Iodide  of  starch  paper. 
Litmus-water  in  trap. 

Lime-water  in  trap. 
Litmus        suspended 
over  water  in  trap. 

15  minutes. 

u 

30  minutes.    Ate  through 

Sulphurous  acid  .  •. 

Sulphuretted  hydrogen 
Chlorine 

a  small  wire  in  less  than 
24  hours. 
I  hour. 

3  to  4  hours. 

4  hours. 

n 

Beo'an  to  show  in  a  few 

Carbonic  acid 

minutes.     In   half    an 
hour    the    whole    was 
bleached. 
W  hour. 

a 

3  hours. 

It  was,  however,  urged  that  the  results  would  probably  be  different 
if  the  trap  were  ventilated.  A  ventilating-shaft  (c)  was,  therefore, 
inserted  in  the  upper  part  of  the  bend  on  the 
sewer-side,  and  the  experiments  were  repeated. 
"The  results,"  says  Dr.  Fergus,  "were  much 
the  same,  except  that  the  reaction  was  a  little 
longer  in  showing  itself." 

Ordinary  sewer-air  may  be  taken  to  contain 
in  every  hundred  parts  about  seventy-nine  parts 
of  nitrogen,  nearly  twenty  of  oxygen,  not  quite 
half  a  part  of  carbonic  acid,  and  traces  of  sul- 
phuretted hydrogen,  marsh-gas,  and  ammonia. 
These  gases,  however,  when  inhaled  in  the  pro- 
portions indicated,  can  hardly  be  regarded  as 
materially  affecting  health.  Sewer-air  also  con- 
tains organic  matter  in  the  form  of  vapor,  and 
of  definite  particles  ;  but  doubts  have  been  ex- 
pressed as  to  whether  these  organic  particles 
succeed  in  making  their  way  through  water- 
traps,  and  some  carefully  executed  experiments 
of  Dr.  Neil  Carmichael,  of  Glasgow,  have  gone  far  to  show  that  they 
do  not  do  so. 

There  are  other  ways,  however,  in  which  danger  comes  about. 
The  water  in  traps  is  apt  to  be  sucked  out  by  siphon-action,  as  the 


u 


Pro.  1. 


^e  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

result,  for  example,  of  a  rapid  flow  along  the  drain  into  which  the 
waste-pipes  discharge,  and,  under  these  circumstances,  sewer-air  and 
its  organic  ingredients  pass  unhindered  into  our  houses.  So,  also,  traps 
are  liable  to  be  forced  by  the  pressure  of  the  sewer-air  upon  them. 
Having  regard  to  some  of  Dr.  CarmichaeFs  experiments,  it  might  at 
first  sight  be  supposed  that  organic  particles  contained  in  bubbles  of 
air  would  be  detained  in  their  passage  through  a  water-trap.  This, 
however,  is  by  no  means  the  case.  In  certain  experiments  carried  out 
at  the  Royal  Institution  by  Professor  Tyndall,  F.  R.  S.,  it  was  found 
that  air,  passing  through  an  experimental  tube,  carried  with  it  "  a  con- 
siderable amount  of  mechanically  suspended  matter."  Dr.  Carmichael 
freely  admits  the  inadequacy  of  water-traps  as  they  exist,  and  points 
out  many  dangers  attendant  upon  them.  He  enforces  the  caution  he 
gives  by  a  case  related  in  a  report  of  Dr.  J.  B.  Russell,  Medical  Offi- 
cer of  Health  for  Glasgow.  In  certain  tenements  of  one  apartment, 
having  no  connection  with  the  sewer,  there  had  been  a  death-rate  from 
diphtheria  of  12,  and  from  enteric  fever  of  24*9,  per  hundred  thousand 
inhabitants.  The  introduction  of  a  sink  increased  the  diphtheria 
death-rate  to  25-3 — i.  e.,  110  per  cent — and  from  enteric  fever  to  67*7 
— i.  e.,  171  per  cent — the  rate  of  mortality  from  certain  allied  diseases 
also  undergoing  a  corresponding  increase.  Not  knowing  whether  there 
were  other  circumstances  that  favored  this  special  incidence  of  disease 
upon  these  tenements,  I  should  find  some  difficulty  in  asserting  that 
the  drain-connection  was  the  cause  of  the  whole  of  the  increase  in  the 
diseases  specified  ;  nevertheless.  Dr.  Russell's  opinion  that  it  was,  car- 
ries great  weight. 

One  striking  instance,  which  further  illustrates  this  point,  came  un- 
der my  own  cognizance.  Some  years  ago  I  received  instructions  to 
inquire  into  the  cause  of  an  outbreak  of  enteric  fever  in  a  small  town- 
ship in  Yorkshire.  The  main  incidence  of  the  disease  was  upon  a 
group  of  houses,  which  formed  an  irregular  square,  containing  twenty- 
three  cottages,  occupied  by  eighty-eight  persons.  Up  to  the  first 
week  in  June  the  inhabitants  of  this  locality  had  been  free  from  fever, 
but  at  that  date  a  series  of  attacks  of  well-marked  enteric  fever  oc- 
curred almost  simultaneously  in  a  number  of  houses,  fresh  attacks  tak- 
ing place  day  by  day  until,  in  the  space  of  a  few  weeks,  one  or  more 
inmates  in  fifteen  out  of  the  twenty-three  cottages  had  been  attacked, 
the  number  of  patients  amounting  to  thirty-five.  Now,  when  the  con- 
tagium  of  enteric  fever  is  conveyed  by  water,  the  persons  attacked  are 
generally  attacked  almost  simultaneously.  There  is,  however,  in  the 
case  of  enteric  fever,  a  definite  interval,  generally  of  some  ten  to  four- 
teen days,  between  the  reception  of  the  poison  into  the  system  and 
the  occurrence  of  symptoms  of  the  disease.  The  water-supply  which 
these  families  generally  used  in  common  was  a  well  in  the  neighbor- 
ing field  ;  but  this  had  been  disused  for  a  period  which  more  than 
covered  the  "  period  of  incubation  "  above  referred  to. 


INLETS  FOR  INFECTION. 


77 


In  the  course  of  my  investigations  I  entered  a  wash-house  belong- 
ing to  one  group  of  the  houses  in  question.  I  was  followed  in  by  its 
owner,  an  old  lady,  who  sought  at  once  to  satisfy  my  curiosity  by 
assuring  me  that  the  building  was  rarely  used  ;  indeed,  that  the  last 
time  it  was  used  was  six  weeks  ago,  at  which  date  she  had  washed 
some  linen  there  for  a  young  man  who  had  been  very  ill,  and  who 
lived  some  distance  away.  I  had  before  this  noticed  that  all  the  cot- 
tages were  provided  with  sinks  in  their  living-rooms,  and  that  by  means 
of  these  sink-pipes,  which  were  in  unbroken  communication  with  a 
drain  outside,  offensive  effluvia  at  times  made  their  way  into  the  dwell- 
ings, these  having  been  especially  noticed  toward  evening,  when  the 
houses  were  shut  up  and  the  fires  were  lighted.  It  at  once  occurred 
to  me  that  if  the  sick  man  referred  to  had  suffered  from  enteric  fever, 
and  if  the  drains  for  the  several  parts  of  the  square  all  communicated 


E  J  r.r.fHi^^^^tK:nr,^.^  ^•dVM-^te^7 


Fia.  2. 


with  the  sewer  by  which  the  liquid  refuse  from  the  wash-house  was 
conveyed  away,  then  a  specifically  contaminated  sewer-air  had  replaced 
the  ordinary  foul  effluvia,  and  that  in  this  way  infection  had  been 
"  laid  on  "  to  the  several  households.     I  found  that  the  young  man 


78  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

had  indeed  suffered  from  enteric  fever,  and,  laborers  having  laid  bare 
the  drains,  these  were  all  seen  to  communicate  with  the  sewer  above 
mentioned,  this  being  further  of  such  faulty  construction  as  to  be 
little  better  than  an  elongated  cesspool. 

In  view  of  the  danger  of  direct  communication  between  a  sewer 
and  our  dwellings,  "  What,"  you  may  fairly  ask,  "  is  the  remedy  ?  "  I 
answer  that  the  remedy  is  simply  breaking  the  direct  connection  which 
has  been  referred  to.  In  the  case  of  a  waste-pipe  from  a  sink,  the 
pipe  should  be  brought  through  the  wall  into  the  outer  air,  and  there 
be  cut  off,  its  contents  flowing  to  a  trapped  drain-inlet  outside  the 
dwelling.  (This  point  was  explained  by  means  of  diagrams.)  This 
principle  of  disconnection  is,  however,  of  much  wider  application  than 
I  have  as  yet  indicated.  All  waste-pipes  coming  from  lavatories,  baths, 
water-closets,  etc.,  as  also  the  overflow-pipes  from  cisterns,  and  the 
rain-pipes,  especially  such  as  have  their  heads  anywhere  near  windows, 
or  beneath  overhanging  eaves,  should,  like  the  sink-pipes,  have  an  air- 
space intervening  between  them  and  the  drain-inlets  into  which  they 
empty. 

There  is  exceptional  danger  in  the  direct  connection  which  is  often 
maintained  between  houses  and  the  sewers  by  means  of  the  overflow- 
pipes  of  cisterns.  These  pipes  are  very  generally  provided  with  a 
"  siphon-bend,"  but  the  water  constituting  the  trapping  is  often  ab- 
sent. The  ball-cock  of  the  cistern  is  intentionally  so  contrived  as  to 
prevent  overflow,  and  hence,  when  once  evaporation  of  the  water  in 
the  trap  has  taken  place,  sewer-air  passes  through  it  without  let  or 
hindrance. 

Adapting  the  principle  of  disconnection  to  the  house-drain  itself, 
I  would  further  urge  that  an  air-break  should  always  be  contrived 
between  the  end  of  the  drain  and  a  trapped  inlet  leading  to  the 
public  sewer ;  the  more  so  as  when  this  is  effected  a  further  safe- 
guard can  be  insured,  namely,  two  ventilating  apertures  to  the  drain, 
and  the  maintenance  of  a  constant  current  of  air  through  its  entire 
length. 

(The  conveying  of  infection  by  means  of  an  "  intermittent  water- 
supply  "  was  next  described.) 

I  feel  sure  that  many  other  methods  by  which  water  can  act  as  a 
vehicle  for  conveying  infection  will  occur  to  you.  Milk,  also,  must  be 
regarded  as  at  least  an  equally  important  medium  for  the  transmission 
of  infection.  I  shall,  however,  ask  your  further  consideration  only  of 
certain  distributions  of  ice  and  cream  as  forming  channels  by  which 
disease  may  be  conveyed  to  households. 

I  believe  that  the  first  instance  in  which  the  consumption  of  ice 
was  shown  to  have  been  followed  by  an  outbreak  of  disease  is  that  re- 
corded in  the  "  Seventh  Annual  Report  of  the  State  Board  of  Health 
of  Massachusetts."  The  occurrence  took  place  in  one  of  the  large 
hotels  at  Rye  Beach,  New  Hampshire.    At  the  beginning  of  the  season 


INLETS  FOR  INFECTION.  79 

of  1875  about  a  thousand  visitors  were  assembled  at  Rye  Beach,  and 
a  considerable  number  were  attacked  with  a  series  of  symptoms  which 
led  to  the  suspicion  that  they  had  consumed  some  noxious  article.  The 
incidence  of  the  disease  was  entirely  confined  to  three  hundred  persons 
occupying  one  of  the  large  hotels.  The  sanitary  state  of  this  hotel  is 
said  to  have  been  exceptionally  good,  and,  although  suspicion  seemed 
at  first  to  attach  to  the  water-supply,  yet  the  disease  was  found  to  have 
affected  many  who,  "having  apprehended  trouble  from  the  use  of 
the  water,"  which  was  strongly  impregnated  with  salts  of  lime  and 
magnesia,  "  had  carefully  limited  themselves  since  their  arrival  to  other 
beverages."  Indeed,  as  the  result  of  a  careful  process  of  elimination, 
suspicion  came  at  last  to  be  directed  to  the  ice  furnished  to  the  house. 
The  water  obtained  by  melting  the  ice  was  discolored  and  charged 
with  suspended  matter,  and  gave  off  a  decidedly  disagreeable  odor ; 
the  atmosphere  of  the  ice-house  was  offensive,  and  some  persons  who 
had  used  the  ice  away  from  the  hotel  were  found  to  have  suffered  in 
the  same  way  from  violent  illness.  The  ice  in  question  had  been  de- 
rived from  a  local  pond,  the  water  of  which  was  found  to  have  become 
foul  from  long-continued  stagnation  ;  one  portion  of  the  pond,  measur- 
ing about  five  hundred  feet  in  length  and  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet 
in  width,  was  occupied  by  "  a  homogeneous  mass  of  putrescent  mat- 
ter." A  piece  of  ice,  carefully  cleansed  from  all  surface  impurities, 
was  then  melted,  and  the  water  thus  obtained  was  submitted  to  chemi- 
cal analysis,  the  result  being  the  detection  in  it  of  a  quantity  of  "  de- 
caying organic  matter."  The  use  of  the  ice  had  also  in  the  mean  time 
been  discontinued,  and  coincident  with  its  disuse  "  there  was  observed 
an  abrupt  amelioration  in  the  symptoms  of  nearly  all  who  had  hitherto 
been  ill."  So,  also,  no  fresh  attacks  occurred  during  the  remainder  of 
the  season. 

Even  among  the  more  educated  classes  there  prevails  an  impres- 
sion that  even  if  water  is  contaminated  it  is  purified  by  freezing. 
Many  experiments  have,  however,  shown  the  fallacy  of  this  view.  In 
some  of  these  made  recently  by  Mr.  C.  P.  Pengra,  an  American  chem- 
ist, various  organic  matters  (urea,  albumen,  etc.)  were  mixed  with 
water,  and  the  specimens  were  gradually  frozen.  A  certain  amount 
of  purification  did  take  place — the  ice  containing  thirty  and  even  forty 
per  cent  less  organic  matter  than  the  unfrozen  liquid.  But  a  large 
amount  of  the  added  pollution  remained,  and  the  investigator,  though 
expressing  surprise  that  the  purification  had  been  as  great  as  it  was, 
says  that  the  experiments  afford  abundant  proof  that  we  ought  not  to 
tolerate  the  indiscriminate  collection  of  ice. 

These  experiments  do  not,  however,  prove  that  the  contagium  of 
an  infectious  fever  can  withstand  the  process  of  freezing,  but  as  to 
this  we  are  not  left  in  doubt.  Dr.  E.  Klein,  F.  R.  S.,  thus  reports  the 
results  of  some  of  his  experiments  in  freezing  bacillus  anthracis :  "  I 
have  exposed  in  a  capillary  pipette  fluid  full  of  spores  to  the  influence 


8o  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

of  ether  spray,  and,  having  thus  kept  the  liquid  frozen  for  several 
minutes,  have  injected  it  into  the  Guinea-pig  and  rabbit  with  fatal 
result.  ...  I  then  placed  a  capillary  tube  filled  with  spores  in  a  mix- 
ture of  ice  and  salt,  and  kept  it  there  for  one  hour  exposed  to  a  tem- 
perature of  12°  to  15°  Cent,  below  freezing-point ;  after  thawing,  the 
material  was  injected  into  the  subcutaneous  tissue  of  a  Guinea-pig. 
This  animal  died  of  typical  anthrax  on  the  third  day." 

We  are  thus  bound  to  accept  the  position  that  the  morbific  organ- 
isms, the  introduction  of  which  into  the  human  system  produces  spe- 
cific infectious  diseases,  are  not  destroyed  by  freezing,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, that  ice  collected  from  an  infected  water  and  supplied  to  house- 
holds would  act  as  a  vehicle  for  the  introduction  of  the  poison  of  those 
diseases.  In  short,  a  wholesome  ice  can  be  derived  only  from  a  whole- 
some water. 

I  now  pass  to  my  last  point.  On  the  9th  of  June,  1875,  a  party  of 
sixteen  persons  sat  down  to  dinner  at  a  house  in  South  Kensington, 
and  later  on  in  the  evening  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  additional 
guests  assembled  with  the  family  of  the  host  and  hostess  in  the  draw- 
ing-room ;  the  service  of  the  house  was  also  re-enforced  for  the  even- 
ing by  seven  extra  servants.  Within  five  days  eighteen  of  the  assem- 
bled guests  suffered  from  more  or  less  well-marked  attacks  of  scarlet 
fever  ;  two  others  had  "  sore  throats  "  ;  one  of  the  waiters  had  scarlet 
fever  ;  and  a  few  days  later  a  lady,  not  at  the  house  on  the  9th, 
but  who  lunched  there  the  next  day,  was  found  to  be  suffering  from 
a  distinct  attack  of  the  disease.  In  all,  twenty -two  persons  were 
attacked. 

The  circumstances  of  the  outbreak  were  investigated  by  Dr.  Bu- 
chanan, F.  R.  S.,  and  his  report  on  it  is  specially  instructive  as  indicating 
the  method  in  which  such  an  inquiry  should  be  conducted.  It  was 
ascertained  that  the  scarlet  fever  could  not  have  been  communicated 
by  any  of  the  guests,  by  any  member  of  the  host's  family,  nor  by  any  of 
the  servants,  nor  indeed  did  the  circumstances  of  the  outbreak  suggest 
infection  from  such  a  source.  On  the  other  hand,  strong  circumstan- 
tial evidence  was  forthcoming  in  favor  of  the  infection  having  been 
communicated  by  means  of  some  article  of  food  or  drink. 

The  dinner  guests  were  the  principal  ones  affected  ;  several  of  the 
household  who  could  not  have  touched  any  of  the  articles  of  food 
served  up  escaped  altogether,  and  there  was  a  marked  incidence  of  the 
disease  on  those  who  had  several  opportunities  of  eating  certain  ex- 
ceptional articles  supplied  on  that  day.  Up  to  this  point,  however, 
no  one  article  of  food  had  come  under  suspicion. 

Two  special  supplies  of  cream  were  delivered  at  the  house  on  the 
day  of  the  entertainment  ;  one,  which  arrived  at  4  r.  m.,  was  "  double 
cream  "  from  a  London  dairy,  and  was  used  for  ice-puddings,  custards, 
and  "creams"  ;  the  other,  arriving  at  5  p.  m.,  was  from  a  Hampshire 
dairy,  and  was  mainly  used  as  cream.    The  latter  supply  was  generally 


INLETS  FOR  INFECTION.  81 

used  by  all  the  evening  guests,  among  whom  there  was  but  little  scar- 
let fever ;  the  former,  or  four-o'clock,  cream  was  distributed  essen- 
tially to  the  family  and  to  the  dinner  guests.  It  was  again  used  at 
luncheon  the  next  day,  and  thirteen  persons  who  were  known  to  have 
had  opportunity  of  partaking  of  it  suffered  from  scarlet  fever  within 
five  days.  The  bulk  of  this  four-o'clock  cream  was  used  in  the  prep- 
aration of  articles  which  had  to  be  boiled  previous  to  their  being  used 
in  a  cool  or  frozen  form,  and  those  persons  who  partook  of  such  articles 
alone  were  not  specially  attacked.  But  of  this  cream  some  that  was 
in  excess  of  the  cook's  requirements  was  put  into  at  least  one  jug 
along  with  the  five-o'clock  cream. 

This  mingling  of  the  two  creams  added  materially  to  the  difficulty 
of  the  investigation,  because  it  was  that  remnant  of  the  four-o'clock 
cream  which  had  not  been  boiled  previous  to  use  to  which  interest  was 
now  found  specially  to  attach.  For  "  no  less  than  seven  ladies  who 
were  at  the  dinner,  and  who  took  cream  in  their  coffee  in  the  drawing- 
room,  afterward  became  ill,  none  of  them  who  took  that  cream  hav- 
ing escaped."  There  was,  however,  no  such  incidence  of  disease  on  the 
gentlemen  who  took  coffee  down-stairs.  And  further,  whereas  all  who 
partook  of  cream  on  the  day  following  the  dinner  were  ill,  none  of 
those  who  did  not  partake  of  it  s,uffered.  Now,  it  was  known  that  it 
was  the  four-o'clock  cream  that  was  used  at  the  luncheon  on  the  10th, 
and  if  it  so  happened  that  the  cream  which  was  sent  up  into  the  draw- 
ing-room with  coffee  for  the  ladies  who  had  left  the  dinner-table  was 
the  jug  of  mingled  cream,  then  that  four-o'clock  supply  from  the  Lon- 
don dairy  comes  strongly  under  suspicion. 

The  complicated  nature  of  the  conditions  which  had  to  be  con- 
tended with  in  pursuing  such  an  investigation  in  the  metropolis  for- 
bade any  conclusive  demonstration  as  to  the  exact  method  by  which 
this  special  cream-supply  may  have  become  infected.  It  was,  how- 
ever, ascertained  that  upon  one  section  of  the  London  dairyman's  cus- 
tomers there  had  been  a  large  incidence  of  scarlet  fever,  and  a  suspi- 
cious history  as  to  scarlet  fever  in  the  person  of  one  of  the  dairy-staff 
who  was  engaged  in  milking  and  carrying  out  the  milk  was  also 
elicited.  In  short,  there  is  little  doubt  that  the  cream  supplied  from 
this  dairy  was  the  vehicle  by  which  the  infection  of  scarlet  fever  was 
conveyed  to  that  household  in  South  Kensington. 

Some  years  ago  I  conducted  a  somewhat  similar  inquiry.  The 
same  disease  had  attacked  a  large  proportion  of  persons  who  had  met 
at  a  London  dinner-table,  and  the  source  of  infection  must  have  been 
some  article  of  food.  In  this  case,  fruit  as  well  as  cream  came  under 
suspicion,  and  the  employment  as  strawberry-gatherers  of  persons  in 
the  desquamative  stage  of  scarlet  fever  seemed  as  likely  a  source  of 
infection  as  that  which  might  have  operated  through  the  agency  of  a 
dairy.  The  circumstances  were,  however,  too  complex  to  be  unraveled, 
and  further  inquiry  was  abandoned. 

TOL.  XXIV. — 6 


82  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

In  considering  each  of  the  previous  channels  of  infection  I  have 
pointed  to  some  remedy.  That  which  promises  most  in  dealing  with 
infection  conveyed  in  the  manner  just  indicated  is  the  early  isolation 
of  persons  suffering  from  the  several  infectious  fevers. 


KEMAEKS   OX  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  SCIENCE.* 

By  LESLIE  STEPHEN. 

^*  "TF  it  were  a  qualification  for  his  office,"  Mr.  Stephen  remarked,  "  to 
-L  be  impartial  in  the  sense  of  not  having  an  opinion  on  the  matter, 
it  would  have  been  hardly  possible  to  select  a  less  qualified  chairman 
in  all  London  than  himself.  He  believed  that  the  spread  of  scientific 
influence  had  not  only  not  been  bad,  but  that  the  thing  of  which  we 
stand  most  in  need  is  a  great  deal  more  scientific  thought  and  method 
in  every  direction.  He  felt,  however,  that  his  case  was  so  sti'ong  that 
he  could  afford  to  give  points  to  the  opposite  side  ;  and  for  this  rea- 
son, and  because  to  a  certain  extent  he  was  prepared  to  go  with  the 
opener  in  his  remarks,  he  hoped  to  be  able  to  point  out  fairly  where 
the  various  arguments  which  had  been  used  found  their  proper  place. 
The  only  definition,  or  rather  description,  of  science  which  ever  ap- 
peared satisfactory  to  him  was,  that  Science  is  that  body  of  truths 
which  may  be  held  to  be  definitely  established,  so  that  no  reasonable 
person  doubts  them.  To  speak  of  mischievous  science  is,  therefore,  to 
assert  that  truth  is  mischievous,  an  assertion  to  which  no  one  would 
be  likely  to  seriously  agree,  especially  in  such  a  place  as  University 
College.  If  it  is  to  be  supposed  that  science  is  mischievous,  it  must 
either  be  meant  that  certain  false  .theories  which  call  themselves  sci- 
ence are  wrongful,  which  may  well  be  the  case,  or  that  the  scientific 
progress  at  the  present  time  happens  to  be  exercising  a  mischievous 
influence. 

"  No  one  denies  that  science  may  accidentally  lead  to  a  large  num- 
ber of  our  particular  mischiefs,  as  in  the  case  of  the  invention  of 
dynamite  ;  but  it  can  not  in  any  way  be  admitted  on  that  account  that 
science  is  mischievous.  For  the  question  arises,  If  science  is  bad,  w  hat 
can  be  substituted  for  it  ?  and  in  what  way  will  these  mischiefs  be 
remedied  if  we  are  not  scientific  ?  It  is  impossible  to  say  that  erro- 
neous impressions  will  make  us  better  off  than  correct  ones.  For 
instance,  the  old  belief  in  medicine  subjected  people  to  years  of  tor- 

*  Remarks  by  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  in  summing  up  a  tlebate  at  University  College,  Lon- 
don, on  the  motion  by  Mr.  B.  Paul  Newman :  "  That  the  spread  of  scientific  thought  and 
method  has,  on  the  whole,  exercised  an  injurious  influence  on  English  society."  The  mo- 
tion was  supported  by  Mr.  N.  Mickleman,  and  opposed  by  the  Rev.  A.  Capes  Tarbolton 
and  Mr.  J.  G.  Pease. 


REMARKS    OJV  THE  INFLUENCE   OF  SCIENCE,      83 

ture  because  of  supposed  witchcraft.  In  India  it  is  still  believed  in 
some  parts  that  small-pox  is  a  demon,  and  efforts  are  made  to  pro- 
pitiate it,  so  that,  if  unnecessary  torture  and  small-pox  are  evils,  we 
are  better  for  the  light  which  the  scientific  man  has  thrown  on  these 
subjects.  Still,  it  must  be  admitted  that  in  particular  ways  the  de- 
velopment of  science  has  produced  new  evils  as  well  as  new  benefits, 
and  for  that  matter  no  sort  of  progress  is  made  without  collateral  evils. 
But  the  question  then  remained  as  to  the  remedy,  and  in  his  opinion 
that  remedy  could  be  very  shortly  described  as  more  science  and 
not  less.  There  is  no  sort  of  conflict  between  a  scientific  and  a 
literary  education.  Everybody  ought  to  have  some  literary  knowl- 
edge, and  everybody  ought  to  be  taught  the  first  principles  of  science  ; 
even  a  smattering  of  chemistry  might  be  useful  in  a  literary  pursuit. 
He  himself  had  found  what  little  smattering  of  science  he  had  ac- 
quired at  Cambridge  and  elsewhere  of  the  greatest  use  in  every  other 
kind  of  study.  The  habits  of  thought  and  feeling  acquired  by  the 
study  even  of  mathematics,  which  he  took  to  be  the  most  uninterest- 
ing science  there  is  to  most  individuals,  are  very  useful  when  one 
comes  to  need  accurate  thinking  anywhere,  even  in  matters  purely 
literary. 

"It  had  been  urged  that  science  prevents  a  man  from  taking  the 
same  sort  of  pleasure  in  nature  as  he  would  do  without  it.  Words- 
worth was  very  fond  of  saying  this,  and  of  denouncing  generally  the 
scientific  position.  But  the  reason  of  that  was,  that  Wordsworth 
knew  nothing  about  science.  The  result  was,  that  there  is  no  other 
instance  of  so  great  a  poet  leaving  off  writing  great  poems  so  early 
in  his  career.  All  his  finest  poems  were  written  in  his  early  life  ;  and 
the  reason  is,  that  he  went  mooning  about  the  mountains  by  himself, 
and  did  not  get  any  new  thoughts.  In  contrast  to  him  Goethe  stands 
out  as  a  man  great  in  both  science  and  poetry,  and  is  a  typical  example 
of  the  way  in  which  they  react  on  one  another.  Whenever  it  was  sug- 
gested that  science  is  opposed  to  a  love  of  nature,  the  speaker  always 
thought  of  the  greatest  man  of  science  of  modern  times,  Mr.  Darwin, 
whose  books  are,  apart  from  their  scientific  value,  quite  delightful  in 
their  literary  style.  No  one,  for  instance,  could  read  his  *  Voyage  in 
the  Beagle '  without  seeing  that  Darwin's  love  of  science  was  only  a 
part  of  his  love  of  nature.  There  is,  indeed,  no  conflict  between  the 
two,  and  a  man  can  not  strengthen  the  one  side  of  his  nature  without 
at  the  same  time  contributing  to  strengthen  the  other.  Indeed,  the 
reason  why  so  many  of  our  living  poets  are  inferior  to  those  who  wrote 
at  the  beginning  of  this  century,  or  to  those  of  an  earlier  generation 
still,  is  just  that  they  have  not  had  the  pluck  to  look  science  in  the 
face,  but  have  only  taken  a  passing  and  sideway  glance  at  it. 

"  An  important  point  in  the  argument — namely,  the  relation  of  sci- 
ence to  morality — was  suggested  by  the  remarks  that  had  been  made 
on  the  subject  of  vivisection.     The  vivisection  question,  in  the  first 


84  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

place,  did  not  seem  to  him  to  be  quite  fairly  stated.  People  speak  as 
though  vivisection  were  a  recent  practice,  just  introduced  by  a  hard- 
hearted scientific  generation.  But,  in  point  of  fact,  vivisection  had 
been  going  on  for  many  centuries.  The  thing  which  was  new  was  the 
objection  to  it.  The  stock  argument  in  favor  of  vivisection — that  by 
it  the  discovery  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood  was  made — is  only  one 
of  many  instances. 

"  It  had  been  remarked  by  a  previous  speaker,  with  whom  he  was 
inclined  to  agree,  that  there  had  been  a  great  increase  in  humanity  in 
modern  times,  and  that  this  increase  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  growth 
of  science.  It  is  not  true,  for  instance,  to  say  that  the  abolition  of 
excessive  and  cruel  punishments  has  been  due  to  the  action  of  a  few 
energetic  but  unscientific  individuals.  They  were,  on  the  contrary,  put 
down  by  the  growth  of  the  scientific  spirit  of  the  age — a  spirit  closely 
allied  to  humanity,  and  which  showed  itself  in  the  philosophy  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  especially  in  the  writings  of  Hume  and  Bentham. 
They  gave  up  the  idea  of  punishment  as  simply  a  revenge  to  gratify 
the  feelings  of  the  punishers,  and  took  the  utilitarian  ground  that  it 
must  only  be  administered  in  so  far  as  it  is  beneficial  to  society.  They 
were  thus  inevitably  drawn  into  denouncing  excessive  punishments. 
Romilly,  who  had  been  cited  by  the  other  side,  was  probably  a  pupil 
of  that  school  ;  and  certainly  Bentham  and  Mill  were,  who  really 
spread  the  principles  which  led  to  the  abolition  of  excessive  punish- 
ment. And  those  principles  were  only  the  principles  of  science  ap- 
plied to  morality. 

"  Though  he  admired  our  ancestors  of  the  sixteenth  century,  he 
felt  bound  to  admit  that  they  were  a  brutal  lot.  An  instance  of  how 
far  we  have  improved  in  point  of  humanity  is  to  be  seen  in  *  Roder- 
ick Random.'  After  having  reduced  his  young,  amiable,  and  beloved 
hero  to  very  great  straits  through  *  dissipation,'  Smollett  makes  him 
go  to  India  to  purchase  a  lot  of  slaves,  whom  he  sells  in  America  at  a 
large  profit.  This  we  should  consider  brutal  and  degrading  conduct, 
and  the  fact  that  we  do  so  consider  it  marks  the  great  improvement 
which  has  taken  place  in  our  morality.  It  is  quite  true  that  it  is  not 
merely  the  growth  of  science,  but  the  general  intellectual  develop- 
ment of  the  country,  which  has  put  a  stop  to  cruelty  ;  but  it  is  equally 
true  that  the  growth  of  science  is  an  integral  part  of  that  development, 
and  one  that  can  not  be  separated  from  it.  None  of  these  things 
would  have  been  possible  unless  the  intellect  had  widened ;  and  sci- 
ence has  helped  to  do  this.  We  may  hope  for  similar  good  results 
from  the  application  of  science  to  other  things  ;  for  example,  to  poli- 
tics, where  there  is  little  enough  of  scientific  principles  at  present. 

"  On  the  religious  question  I  can  only  say  this,"  Mr.  Stephen  re- 
marked in  conclusion,  "  that  you  have  got  this  plain  dilemma  to  face, 
which  can  not  be  avoided.  In  the  first  place,  if  any  religion,  or  reli- 
gious belief,  is  true,  what  can  the  holders  of  it  have  to  fear  from  the 


A  HOME-MADE  TELESCOPE,  85 

growth  of  truth,  which  you  call  scientific  truth  ?  If  these  beliefs  are 
destroyed,  is  it  not  a  conclusive  proof  that  they  may  be  false,  or  at 
least  contain  an  element  of  untruth  ?  The  religion  may,  indeed,  have 
been  very  useful,  although  not  true,  and  not  qualified  to  satisfy  all  the 
aspirations  of  a  cultivated  mind.  You  may  see,  when  a  civilized  race 
comes  in  contact  with  a  lower  race,  that  the  effect  of  the  sudden  con- 
tact may  be  to  destroy  the  religion  and  the  rule  of  life  of  the  inferior 
race,  without  putting  anything  in  its  place.  Evils  of  that  kind  have 
been  caused  by  modern  science.  It  is  destroying  inevitably  many  be- 
liefs which  people  have  lived  under  well  and  happily.  It  is  undeniable 
that  this  causes  pain,  and  that  it  may  be  injurious  to  their  morality  I 
shall  not  attempt  to  deny.  But  when  I  am  asked  to  say  that  therefore 
science  is  injurious,  I  have  to  come  back  to  my  original  proposition — 
the  remedy  is  more  science.  The  only  way  out  of  the  difficulty  is 
this  :  we  are  here,  and  we  have  got  to  go — forward.  And  the  only 
way  is,  to  apply  the  test  of  truth  to  all  our  beliefs.  This  effects  a  cer. 
tain  amount  of  pain,  as  every  other  kind  of  progress  does ;  but  the 
only  other  way  is  to  go  on  believing  what  you  know  to  be  lies.  And, 
without  saying  which  are  true  and  which  are  false,  I  can  not  see  w^ho 
any  person  can  wish  to  do  anything  else  but  increase  the  amount  of 
truth,  the  only  satisfactory  cure." — Knowledge. 


A  HOME-MADE  TELESCOPE. 

By  Dr.  GEORGE  PYBUEN. 

TO  render  easier  of  attainment  instruments  which  assist  in  the  in- 
vestigation or  contemplation  of  natural  phenomena,  and  which 
supplement  man's  sense-organs,  is  to  forward  by  so  much  the  diffusion 
of  real  knowledge,  and  to  aid  the  work  of  human  enlightenment  and 
progress.  Indeed,  it  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  the  popularizing  of 
instrumental  aids  for  experimentally  verifying  the  teachings  of  scien- 
tific discoverers  will  form  a  notable  part  of  the  work  of  the  future 
schoolmaster. 

A  few  years  ago  I  derived  great  pleasure  from  successfully  con- 
structing a  home-made  microscope,  guided  by  directions  contained  in 
"  The  Popular  Science  Monthly,"  at  a  time  when  my  means  did  not 
enable  me  to  purchase  a  good  instrument  from  the  optician.  I  now 
lay  before  my  fellow-readers  the  following  directions  which,  step  by 
step,  I  myself  have  put  in  practice,  in  making  a  really  serviceable 
achromatic  telescope,  which  will  exhibit  the  moon's  surface  magnifi- 
cently, and  show  very  satisfactorily  the  spots  on  the  sun's  disk,  the 
satellites  of  Jupiter,  and  other  celestial  phenomena. 

Some  people  conclude  that,  if  they  can  not  possess  a  first-class  in- 


86  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

strument  of  this  or  that  kind,  they  are  better  off  without  any  ;  but 
a  moment's  consideration  will  show  the  fallacy  of  this  conclusion, 
and  that,  on  the  contrary,  even  a  very  poor  instrument  of  observation 
or  precision,  or  generally  of  research,  in  aid  of  the  senses — ^be  it  tele- 
scope, microscope,  spectroscope,  balance,  thermometer,  chronometer, 
or  chemical  reagent — is  vastly  better  than  none.  We  have  but  to 
remember  the  great  strides  made  in  the  acquisition  of  knowledge  by 
the  aid  of  the  very  imperfect  first-forms  of  every  instrument  which 
has  been  invented,  to  be  assured  of  this.  Moreover,  reflect ! — so  far  as 
vision  is  concerned,  men,  on  an  average,  without  instrumental  assist- 
ance, are  inexorably  kept  at  a  distance  from  "  things  "  of  ten  inches, 
and  must  view  them  under  the  angle  thence  subtended.  But  the 
use  of  a  simple  lens  of  two  and  a  half  inches  focus  annihilates  three 
fourths  of  this  distance,  quadruples  the  angle  of  vision,  and  enables 
us  to  see  objects  only  one  sixteenth  as  large  as  the  least  we  can 
see  with  the  naked  eye.  And  for  some  purposes  a  poor  instrument 
is  as  good  as  the  best :  an  ^^^  or  a  potato  gives  the  housewife  all 
the  advantages,  in  measuring  the  density  of  her  brine,  which  she 
would  derive  from  the  most  skillfully-constructed  hydrometer,  or  the 
most  accurate  balance  and  specific-gravity  bottle.  Galileo,  with  his 
simple-lens  telescope,  saw  what,  perhaps,  never  man  before  saw — viz., 
the  moons  of  Jupiter  ;  and  by  exhibiting  the  partial  illumination  of 
Venus,  with  the  same  imperfect  instrument,  he  removed  one  of  the 
strongest  objections  raised  against  the  heliocentric  theory  of  Coperni- 
cus. A  word  to  the  wise  is  enough.  To  my  fellow-students  I  say  : 
Whatever  may  be  your  several  lines  of  study,  get  real  knowledge, 
where  possible,  by  seeing  and  handling  things  for  yourselves  ;  and,  if 
you  can  not  possess  or  have  the  use  of  a  good  instrument,  do  not 
therefore  refuse  the  assistance  of  a  poor  one  ;  but  in  all  cases  get  and 
use  the  best  you  can.  Rembrandt  made  pictures  with  a  burned  stick 
before  ever  he  possessed  pigment  or  pencil. 

The  lenses  requisite  for  such  a  telescope  as  I  have  constructed,  and 
shall  describe,  can  be  purchased  of  an  optician  by  those. who  live  in 
large  cities  ;  those  who  reside  at  a  distance  may  have  them  sent  by 
mail  at  a  trifling  additional  cost.  They  are  :  1.  An  achromatic  object- 
glass,  one  and  a  half  inch  diameter,  with  a  focus  of  thirty  inches. 
2.  Two  plano-convex  lenses  of  the  respective  foci  of  two  inches  and 
three  fourths  of  an  inch.  The  object-glass  will  cost  about  two  dollars, 
and  the  other  two  lenses  about  seventy-five  cents  each. 

Now  procure  a  straight  cylindrical  roller  of  pine,  two  and  five 
eighths  inches  in  diameter,  and  thirty  inches  long  ;  procure  also  a 
roller  seven  eighths  of  an  inch  in  diameter,  and  fifteen  or  sixteen 
inches  long.  These  are  for  forming  the  tubes  on.  Take  stout  brown 
wrapping-paper,  and,  with  book-binder's  paste,  form  a  tube,  twenty- 
nine  inches  long,  on  the  large  roller.  Spread  the  paste  on  evenly,  and 
rub  the  several  layers  of  paper  down  smoothly  with  a  cloth.     Nine  or 


'  A  HOME-MADE   TELESCOPE.  87 

ten  thicknesses  of  paper  will  form  a  tube  sufficiently  thick  and  firm 
for  our  purpose  ;  but  only  three  or  four  layers  should  be  laid  at  one 
time,  and,  when  these  are  dry,  three  or  four  more  may  be  added,  and 
so  on,  until  the  requisite  thickness  is  attained.  When  thoroughly  dry, 
which  will  be  in  three  or  four  days,  you  will  have  a  stiff,  straight, 
and  light  tube,  the  ends  of  which  must  be  neatly  and  squarely  cut  off 
with  a  sharp  knife,  so  as  to  leave  it,  when  finished,  exactly  twenty- 
eight  inches  long.  With  a  bit  of  sponge  tied  on  the  end  of  a  stick, 
and  some  common  or  India  ink,  black  the  whole  inside  of  the  tube,  and 
set  it  aside,  on  end,  until  the  other  parts  are  ready. 

Next  form  a  tube  on  the  smaller  roller,  with  only  four  or  five 
thicknesses  of  paper,  fifteen  inches  in  length.  When  this  is  dry,  pro- 
ceed to  form  a  third  tube,  over  this  second  one  as  a  roller,  using  six 
or  seven  thicknesses  of  paper  in  its  formation.  This  last  is  to  be  used 
as  a  draw-tube  for  focusing  with,  and  must  be  cut  neatly  and  squarely 
off  at  the  ends  to  a  length  of  fifteen  inches.  A  portion  of  the  inner 
tube  on  which  this  was  formed  will  be  required  for  the  eye-piece, 
directions  for  making  which  I  shall  give  further  on.  Blacken  the  in- 
sides  of  both  tubes,  and  set  them  aside,  on  end. 

One  more  tube  is  required,  viz.,  that  in  which  the  draw-tube  shall 
slide.  It  needs  to  be  only  six  inches  long,  but,  in  order  to  smooth 
working,  should  be  lined  inside  with  fine  cloth  or  cotton-velvet.  Pro- 
cure, therefore,  a  piece  of  black  broadcloth,  six  inches  long,  and  of 
sufficient  width  to  fit  easily  and  accurately  around  the  draw-tube. 
Then,  using  the  latter  as  a  roller,  first  neatly  fit  the  cloth  thereon  as  a 
first  layer  ;  next  paste  or  gum  the  back  of  the  cloth,  and,  with  this  for 
the  innermost  layer,  form  a  short  tube,  six  inches  long,  with  paper  and 
paste,  as  before  directed,  using  here  not  more  than  six  thicknesses.  The 
draw-tube  will  now  be  found  to  move  easily  and  smoothly  back  and 
forth  in  this  cloth-lined  sheath  ;  but,  for  fear  that  the  gum  or  paste 
should  have  penetrated  the  cloth  lining,  and  should  stick  the  tube 
and  its  sheath  together,  it  will  be  safer  to  draw  them  apart  before 
drying,  and  thus  save  needless  trouble  and  annoyance. 

On  comparing  the  external  diameter  of  this  sheath  with  the  in- 
terior diameter  of  the  large  tube  first  made,  it  will  be  found  that 
some  packing  is  required,  to  hold  the  former  steadily  and  concen- 
trically within  the  latter.  Take,  therefore,  some  three-quarters  inch 
strips  of  brown  paper,  and,  having  pasted  them,  wind  around  the 
sheath  at  each  end,  to  form  rings  or  collars  of  equal  thickness,  and 
large  enough  to  fit  snugly  within  the  main  tube.  The  appearance  of 
the  sheath  when  completed  will  be  as  shown  in  Fig.  1,  where  a  a'  are 
the  collars  just  described. 

Now  take  the  compound  object-glass,  consisting  of  a  double-convex 
crown-glass  lens,  A  (Fig.  2),  and  a  plano-convex  flint-glass  lens,  B. 
They  will  come  from  the  optician's  shop  separate,  but  loosely  fitted 
into  each  other.    Be  careful  to  see  that  their  several  surfaces  are  bright 


88 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY 


and  free  from  specks,  and,  in  handling  them,  touch  only  their  edges. 
Remember,  also,  that  the  double-convex  lens  must  be  outside  when  the 
telescope  is  fitted  up.  Have  ready  a  strip  of  tissue-paper,  just  the 
width  of  the  thickness  of  the  lenses  at  the  edges  :  gum  this  on  one 
side,  and,  holding  the  two  lenses  together  with  the  fingers  of  the  left 


FiG.l. 


Fig.  2. 


hand,  wind  the  strip  around  the  edges,  so  as  to  fix  them  together,  and 
thus  make  a  single  piece  which  can  be  easily  handled.  When  this  is 
dry,  take  a  strip  of  brown  paper  one  and  a  quarter  inch  wide,  and  with 
paste  form  a  short  tube  or  cell,  C,  around  the  object-glass,  using  (say) 
five  thicknesses.     Fig.  2  shows  the  object-glass  and  cell  in  section. 

To  form  the  eye-piece  :  cut  off  a  portion  of  the  smallest  tube — that 
on  which  the  draw-tube  was  rolled — one  and  three-eighths  inch  in 
length,  and  make  the  ends  even  and  square.  Make,  now,  two  disks  of 
blackened  cardboard,  of  the  diameters  respectively  of  seven-eighths 
inch  and  one  inch.  Punch  or  cut  out  exactly  in  the  center  of  each 
disk  an  aperture  one  quarter  inch  in  diameter.  Gum  the  edges  of  the 
smaller  disk,  and  fit  it  into  the  tube,  exactly  three  quarters  of  an  inch 
from  one  end,  and,  of  course,  five  eighths  of  an  inch  from  the  other  end. 
Then  take  the  two-inch  plano-convex  lens,  and,  having  made  it  per- 
fectly clean,  cement  it  on  to  the  end  of  the  tube  nearest  the  perforated 
disk,  with  the  plane  surface  inward.  Use  shellac  varnish,  or  gold-size, 
for  cementing  the  lens  on  to  the  edge  of  the  tube.  Cement  the  three- 
quarters  inch  plano-convex  on  to  the  one-inch  perforated  disk,  centrally 
over  the  aperture,  and  with  the  plane  surface  next  the  card.     When 

the  cement  on  both  lenses  is  dry,  which 
will  be  in  a  day  or  two,  fasten  this  one- 
inch  disk  to  the  open  end  of  the  tube, 
keeping  the  lens  inside.  A  single  layer 
of  tissue-paper,  gummed  on  to  the  out- 
side of  the  tube,  and  turned  down  about 
one  sixteenth  of  an  inch  all  around  the 
edge  of  the  two-inch  lens,  and  around 
the  disk  at  the  other  end,  will  now  serve 
as  a  sort  of  fastener  to  both,  and  will  complete  the  eye-piece,  which  is 
shown  in  full  size  in  section.  Fig.  3.  The  smaller  lens  a  must  be  next 
the  eye  when  the  telescope  is  fitted  up  ;  the  larger  lens  b,  called  the 
field-glass,  will  be  inside  and  facing  the  object-glass. 

For  fitting  together  the  various  parts  now  completed  few  directions 


Fig.  3. 


A  HOME-MADE  TELESCOPE. 


89 


are  needed.  The  cell  containing  the  object-glass  must  first  be  slid  into 
one  end  of  the  large  tube,  and  made  to  fit  neatly,  by  even-wrapping 
with  tissue-paper  or  other  soft  material.  The  sheath  (Fig.  1)  must 
now  be  slid  into  the  other  end  of  the  large  tube,  and  fitted  in  a  similar 
manner.  Now  push  the  draw-tube  into  the  sheath,  and  slide  the  eye- 
piece about  half-way  into  the  end  of  the  draw-tube,  and  the  telescope 
is  completed.  Those  who  are  aesthetically  inclined  may  give  an  extra 
finish  to  the  main  tube,  and  also  to  the  draw-tube  and  eye-piece,  by 
using  for  the  outermost  layers  gilt-paper,  or  other  smooth  and  colored 


W 


Fio.  4. 


material.  A  sun-shade,  consisting  of  a  wide  tube,  three  inches  long, 
may  also  be  made  to  slide  over  the  object-end  of  the  telescope  ;  and  a 
cap  may  be  added  to  this  to  keep  out  dust.  A  kind  of  cap,  perforated 
with  an  aperture  one  quarter  of  an  inch  in  diameter,  may  also  be  con- 


90  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

structed  for  slipping  over  the  eye-piece,  so  as  to  preserve  the  proper 
distance  between  the  eye  and  the  eye-lens  when  making  observations  ; 
and  a  second  similar  cap  should  be  made,  and  furnished  with  a  disk 
of  black  or  red  glass,  for  protecting  the  eye  when  viewing  the  sun. 
For  myself,  I  use  a  disk  of  thin  microscopic  glass,  smoked  and  fast- 
ened in  a  cap  which  slips  over  the  eye-piece. 

But  a  telescope,  even  such  as  I  have  described,  and  which  has  a 
power  of  only  twenty-five  or  twenty-six  diameters,  needs  a  stand,  and 
this  can  be  constructed  easily  and  cheaply  of  one-inch  pine  and  a  few 
nails  and  screws,  something  after  the  pattern  shown  in  Fig.  4.  By 
laying  the  telescope  on  the  two  end -supports,  T  Y',  greater  steadiness 
is  secured  than  by  using  a  single  support  in  the  center  ;  and  the  rods 
y  y'  are  easily  raised  or  lowered,  and  may  be  fixed  in  their  positions 
by  the  little  wedges  w  w'.  The  stand  is  thirty  inches  high,  sixteen 
inches  broad,  and  twenty-five  inches  long.  The  rods  y  y'  are  forty 
inches  and  sixty  inches  long  respectively.  The  blocks  B  B'  are  built 
up  of  pieces  of  one-inch  board,  nailed  together ;  then  an  auger-hole 
is  bored  through  the  whole,  so  as  to  form  a  sheath  or  tube  in  which 
the  rods  may  slide  easily,  but  without  so  much  lateral  motion,  or 
"  wiggle,"  as  they  would  have  if  they  only  passed  through  one  thick- 
ness of  board. 

By  following  these  directions  you  will  have  a  really  useful  achro- 
matic telescope  ;  small,  indeed,  and  insignificant  when  compared  with 
the  six-foot  reflector  of  Lord  Rosse,  or  with  one  of  Clark's  twenty-six- 
inch  refractors  ;  but,  nevertheless,  a  veritable  Jacob's  ladder,  by  which 
you  can  ascend — if  not  iyito — at  least  twenty-five  twenty-sixths  of  the 
way  toward  heaven  ;  a  perpetual  source  of  pleasure,  to  a  family  of  in- 
telligent children,  on  moonlight  nights  and  on  occasions  of  eclipses  ; 
worth  a  whole  year's  "  schooling  "  as  an  incentive  and  help  to  the  study 
of  the  universe,  and  a  practical  realization  of  an  answer  to  the  oft- 
mouthed  prayer — 

"  I^earer,  mj  God,  to  thee !  " 


THE  UTILITY  OF  SCHOOL-EECESSES. 

By  JOSEPH  CARTER. 

THERE  is  a  growing  tendency  to  abandon  the  school-recess.  The 
editor  of  the  Boston  "  Journal  of  Education "  says  of  the  no- 
recess  experiment,  adopted  in  Rochester,  New  York,  that  it  has  given 
"  perfect  satisfaction."  Among  the  advantages  gained,  he  mentions, 
"  a  continuous  school-session  without  interruptions  in  school-work "  ; 
"  better  health  of  pupils,  on  account  of  freedom  from  exposure  to  cold 
and  wet  weather  in  the  midst  of  each  session  "  ;  "  discipline  easier,  on 


THE   UTILITY'  OF  SCHOOL-RECESSES.  91 

account  of  freedom  from  recess-troubles  "  ;  "  more  time  for  teachers," 
etc.  ;  "  less  tardiness  and  absenteeism "  ;  and  less  frequent  opportu- 
nities for  vicious  pupils  to  come  in  contact  with  and  corrupt  other 
pupils."  Believing  that  these  reasons  are  unsatisfactory,  and  that  the 
tendency  is  a  bad  one,  I  propose  to  offer  some  general  considerations 
that  weigh  strongly  against  it. 

The  schools  are  utilitarian  in  their  aim  ;  to  fit  the  child  for  living 
successfully  is  the  object  of  their  existence.  As  animal  strength  is 
the  foundation  of  all  moral  and  physical  welfare,  and  is  the  chief 
condition  of  success  in  all  the  pursuits  of  life,  the  future  welfare 
of  the  child  in  every  way  depends  upon  the  normal  development  of 
his  body. 

An  effeminate  man  is  half  sick  ;  and  when  it  comes  to  any  of  the 
severer  trials  of  life,  either  physical  or  moral,  where  great  endurance 
or  courage  is  required,  the  weakest  must  inevitably  be  the  first  to 
succumb.  This  is  as  true  of  moral  trials  as  of  physical,  for  moral 
cowardice  often  results  from  physical  feebleness.  It  is  to  be  doubted 
if  anything  that  is  taught  in  the  schools  is  of  so  much  value  to  a 
child  that  it  would  not  better  be  foregone  than  to  be  obtained  by 
the  loss  of  any  physical  vigor  whatever.  Taken  in  the  truest  sense, 
that  city  has  the  best  schools  where  the  school  restraints  have  least 
effect  upon  the  physical  growth  and  normal  development  of  the 
pupils,  and  not  the  one  where  the  pupils  show  the  greatest  proficiency 
in  acquiring  in  a  memoriter  way  a  few  fragments  of  conventional 
facts  which  happen  irrationally  to  pass  current  for  an  education. 
But  because  in  so  many  schools  the  test  to  be  applied  at  the  end  of 
the  term,  or  at  the  end  of  the  course,  is  the  memoriter  one,  and  be- 
cause no  teacher  expects  her  pupils  to  be  examined  as  to  their  health, 
or  as  to  whether  they  are  forming  habits  of  life  that  will  be  conducive 
to  health  fulness,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  all  the  plans  of  the 
teacher  look  more  to  the  development  of  conventional  proficiency  than 
to  the  infinitely  more  important  matter  of  health. 

Under  our  present  standard  for  successful  teaching,  it  is  a  necessity 
that  the  teacher  bend  all  her  energies  to  the  attainment  of  those  things 
which  are  to  be  measured  by  a  technical  school  examination,  and  that 
the  matter  of  health  be  entirely  ignored  ;  in  fact,  it  is  a  thing  rather 
to  be  shunned,  for,  as  a  rule,  the  nervous,  sallow-cheeked,  flat-chested 
boy  or  girl,  with  the  attenuated  skeleton,  will  vanquish  his  more  robust 
and  healthful  brother  in  one  of  these  examination-jousts  ;  and  that 
teacher  whose  school  contains  the  largest  per  cent  of  the  former  class 
may  reasonably  expect  to  obtain  the  greatest  per  cent  from  the  ex- 
amination by  the  superintendent.  Hence  it  is  that  the  "  no-recess  " 
plan  will  frequently  meet  with  great  favor  among  teachers  who  are 
most  zealous  and  honest  in  doing  their  duty  as  they  understand  it. 

There  is  already  too  strong  a  tendency,  under  our  mode  of  civili- 
zation, to  form  troglodytic  habits.     This  is  shown  by  the  number  of 


92  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

people  who  flock  to  the  cities,  by  the  number  of  boys  who  seek  in-door 
employment,  and  by  the  prevalent  sentiment  that  any  person  who  is 
properly  educated  will  secure  something  to  do  where  he  may  stay  in 
the  shade  and  away  from  the  weather.  That  the  abandonment  of  the 
out-door  recess  in  our  schools  will  strengthen  this  tendency  to  an  in- 
door life,  and  weaken  the  disposition,  born  with  every  child  having  a 
normal  development,  to  get  out-of-doors,  can  not  be  doubted.  That 
this  "no-recess"  plan  is  in  direct  opposition  to  all  the  instincts  of 
the  child's  nature,  ought  to  insure  its  immediate  condemnation. 

Muscular  action  for  the  health  of  a  growing  child  is  a  necessity, 
and  the  amount  of  exercise  that  a  child  will  take,  when  permitted  to 
roam  out-of •  doors  with  congenial  company  at  his  own  sweet  will,  is  a 
quantity  of  vast  magnitude.  Muscular  action  is  and  should  be  a  thing 
for  which  the  child  has  an  appetite,  a  craving,  as  intense  as  any  he 
ever  feels  for  food  or  fruit,  and  no  school  discipline  should  be  allowed 
to  interfere  with  its  necessary  gratification.  The  play-ground  is  more 
of  a  necessity  to  a  school  of  young  children  than  any  of  the  other 
school  appliances. 

Recognizing  the  violence  that  the  no-recess  plan  is  doing  to  the 
future  well-being  of  their  pupils,  some  superintendents  have  invented 
a  series  of  in-door  games,  which  are  played  for  a  few  minutes,  at  short 
intervals,  in  the  school-room,  under  the  charge  of  the  teacher,  such  as 
tossing  little  bags  of  beans,  marching,  exercises  with  the  arms  and 
legs,  and  the  like.  The  best  of  such  exercises  fall  very  far  short  of 
the  real,  soul-stirring,  cheek-glowing,  muscle  and  brain  making  exer- 
cise of  the  play-ground  ;  while  the  poorest  of  them — and  all  are  poor 
when  they  take  the  place  of  the  open-air  recess  —  are  the  severest 
trial  of  the  day,  both  to  the  nerves  and  the  amiability  of  teacher  and 
pupils.  As  a  rule,  there  is  no  other  school  exercise  in  which  there  is  so 
much  friction  between  teacher  and  pupils,  none  other  where  so  fre- 
quent appeals  are  made  to  higher  authority,  and  none  other  from 
which  the  pupil  so  often  tries  to  escape,  as  this  gymnastics.  The 
law  of  physics,  that  all  bodies  move  in  the  direction  of  least  resistance, 
ought  to  show  teachers  that  this  plan,  in  its  present  form,  should  be 
abandoned.  Children  do  not  like  to  be  marched  around  under  the 
direction  of  a  teacher  who  needs  the  exercise  more  than  they,  and  who 
sits  or  stands  still  while  they  are  marching.  During  a  five  years'  mili- 
tary service,  the  hardest  campaign  I  went  through  was  a  three  months' 
drill,  and  I  never  saw  a  regiment  but  would  sooner  undertake  a  week 
of  severest  marching  than  a  week  of  camp-drilling.  That  gymnastics 
can  be,  and  sometimes  is,  made  of  great  benefit  to  the  pupils,  is  true, 
but  the  teachers  who  have  the  skill,  ability,  and  enthusiasm  requisite 
for  the  work  are  very  rare.  Children  have  a  desire  to  manage  for 
themselves.  How  often  do  we  observe  their  impatience  at  our  open- 
ing some  box  or  package  of  theirs  that  they  wish  to  open  for  them- 
selves !     And,  if  the  teacher  were  competent  to  enter  thoroughly  into 


THE    UTILITY   OF  SCHOOL-BECESSES,  93 

the  spirit  of  the  in-door  game,  the  children  would  still  prefer  to  man- 
age it  in  their  own  way. 

But  if  the  exercise  in  the  house,  so  far  as  muscular  action  is  con- 
cerned, answered  every  purpose,  it  would  still  be  unwise,  because  it 
begets  the  habit  of  in-door  life,  and  this  is  destructive  of  all  educa- 
tional development  except  in  a  few  very  narrow  lines,  and  it  is  ques- 
tionable if  these  lines  are  educational  in  any  true  sense.  A  child  with 
the  in-door  habit  may  be  an  adept  at  parsing,  he  may  be  skillful  in 
translating  Latin  and  Greek,  and  be  able  to  follow  in  the  beaten  track 
of  mathematics  ;  but  when  it  comes  to  any  of  the  sciences,  when  he 
attempts  any  of  the  studies  which  relate  to  the  phenomena  of  the  liv- 
ing world,  or  of  the  objective  world  about  him,  because  he  has  never 
observed  these  phenomena  himself,  he  will  fail.  He  will  fail  because 
in  what  he  has  seen  and  experienced  there  is  nothing  by  which  he  will 
be  able  to  translate  to  himself  the  words  or  the  pictures  of  the  text- 
book. In  all  the  branches  of  natural  history  he  can  learn  nothing  but 
the  words  of  the  book.  What  the  science  of  chromatics  would  be  to 
a  blind  child,  or  acoustics  to  a  deaf  one,  is  the  greater  part  of  our  sci- 
ence-teaching, in  cities  especially,  to  the  boys  and  girls — Kaspar  Hau- 
sers — whose  life  is  spent  in  the  house.  Knowing  so  little  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  world,  they  are,  of  course,  unable  to  comprehend  any 
of  the  grand  generalizations  which  follow  a  knowledge  of  their  causes 
and  sequences  ;  and,  being  deprived  of  this,  they  are  without  both  the 
powers  of  observation  and  of  the  deeper  reasoning  which  can  come 
only  as  a  result  of  facts  obtained  by  observations  of  their  own  and  kin- 
dred ones  of  others.  To  teach  such  children  text-book  science  is  not 
only  a  waste  of  the  time  of  the  child,  but  it  is  a  very  great  damage  to 
him,  both  because  it  will  have  a  stultifying  effect  upon  his  mental 
powers,  and  because  it  will  make  him  believe — if  he  learns  the  words 
and  secures  a  fair  per  cent  from  his  teacher — that  he  has  an  under- 
standing of  the  subject,  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  knows  nothing 
of  it  but  the  words  in  which  the  thoughts  are  expressed,  while  the 
very  existence  of  the  true  thoughts  is  all  unknown  to  him. 

To  speak  of  the  advantages  of  an  out-of-door  life  seems  almost  like 
stating  truisms  universally  accepted  ;  and  yet  the  great  mortality  among 
the  dwellers  in-doors,  their  precarious  tenure  of  life,  the  prevalence  of 
nervous  diseases  among  them,  and  the  tendency  to  crime,  all  show  that 
it  is  still  necessary  to  refer  to  the  ruddy  health  of  the  farmer,  to  his 
greatly  prolonged  life,  to  his  freedom  from  insomnia,  to  his  immunity 
from  pulmonary  complaints,  and  to  his  absence  both  from  the  prison 
and  the  almshouse,  as  a  proof  that  out-door  life  is  necessary  to  health 
and  to  happiness.  The  tendency  of  book-learning,  under  the  most  fa- 
vorable conditions,  is  to  too  much  in-door  life,  and,  when  this  tendency 
receives  the  additional  influence  of  the  no-recess  plan,  it  certainly  has 
a  powerful  hold  upon  the  young  person  just  emerging  from  the  school- 
room.    Is  Solomon's  injunction,  to  "train  up  a  child  in  the  way  he 


94  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

should  go,"  sufficiently  heeded  ?  Dr.  Oswald  says  :  "  Early  impres- 
sions are  very  enduring,  and  can  make  evil  habits  as  well  as  useful 
ones  a  sort  of  second  nature.  In  order  to  forestall  the  chief  danger  of 
an  in-door  life,  make  your  children  love-sick  for  fresh  air  ;  make  them 
associate  the  idea  of  fusty  rooms  with  prison-life,  punishment,  and  sick- 
ness." So  at  school,  the  deprivation  of  the  regular  recess  ought  to  be 
as  severe  a  punishment  as  the  criminal  code  of  the  school  permits,  and 
to  be  sent  to  the  school-room  from  the  play -ground  should  be  a  suffi- 
cient penalty  for  the  worst  offense,  and  is  a  punishment  that  should  be 
administered  to  the  juvenile  offender  only  for  offenses  of  a  nature  simi- 
lar to  those  which  in  the  adult  offender  are  punished  by  incarceration 
in  the  jail  or  bridewell. 

Our  physical  constitution  was  never  intended  for  the"  sluggish  in- 
activity of  our  sedentary  and  bookish  school-life,  and  we  sin  against 
the  laws  of  our  being  w^hen  we  forego  necessary  physical  exercise. 
Sloth  is  not  one  of  our  original  sins,  but  an  acquired  one,  and  perhaps 
in  no  other  place  is  its  acquisition  so  rapid  as  in  a  modern  school-room, 
where  pencils  and  paper  are  passed  to  the  pupils,  and  every  move- 
ment must  be  quiet,  subdued,  and  noiseless,  and  where  the  tempera- 
ture is  kept  at  a  uniform  degree,  so  that  not  even  the  involuntary 
muscles  get  any  exercise.  When  along  with  this  condition  come  the 
multitude  of  studies  pursued,  and  the  pressure  of  emulation,  and  upon 
all  the  abolition  of  the  regular  play-spell,  what  is  there  to  prevent  the 
boys  and  girls  from  forming  the  most  fatal  habits  of  muscular  indo- 
lence ?  A  recent  writer  in  the  "  Monthly  "  says  :  "  Where  the  chief 
danger  seems  to  lie,  in  most  schools,  is  in  the  encroachment  made  on 
the  play-hours.  In  some  schools  the  lessons  set  to  be  learned  at  home 
are  absurdly  long  and  tedious.  I  find  that  in  other  schools,  public  and 
private,  a  great  deal  of  work  is  done  during  the  period  nominally 
allotted  to  recreation  only.  This  is  a  very  important  part  of  the  act- 
ual school  system,  and  one  which  requires  great  care  on  the  part  of 
the  masters "  ("  Science  Monthly,"  March,  1880).  In  a  school  of 
eighty  pupils,  with  ages  ranging  from  twelve  to  fifteen  years,  each 
pupil  counted  his  pulsations  for  one  minute  immediately  before  and 
after  a  fifteen  minutes'  recess,  and  recorded  each  result  upon  a  card  ; 
the  recess  was  varied,  sometimes  an  out-door,  sometimes  an  in-door, 
with  light  gymnastics,  and  sometimes  the  pupils  were  advised  to  fol- 
low their  own  inclination  in  the  matter,  but  always  to  record  upon  the 
card  how  the  recess  was  passed.  These  are  some  of  the  general  aver- 
ages : 

1.  Those  pupils  who  go  out  and  engage  in  play  increase  the  num- 
ber of  pulsations  per  minute  by  13'4.  2.  Those  who  engage  in  in-door 
gymnastics  increase  the  number  by  3.  3.  Those  who  stay  in  the  school- 
room at  their  seats,  or  visiting  their  neighbors,  decrease  their  number 
by  3*8.  This  increase  of  number  of  pulsations  from  the  recess-play  is 
by  no  means  the  full  measure  of  the  benefit  derived,  for  that  increase 


THE    UTILITY   OF  SCHOOL-RECESSES.  95 

implies  a  more  rapid  flow  of  the  fluid  through  the  hemal  channels,  and, 
when  we  know  that  the  carrying  power  of  fluid  currents  increases  as 
the  sixth  power  of  their  velocities,  we  can  appreciate  with  how  much 
greater  force  these  currents  sweep  through  their  courses,  washing 
away  the  ashes,  which  have  been  made  by  previous  combustion,  from 
the  brain-hearth  and  the  muscle-hearth.  To  the  child  who  has  been 
busily  engaged  upon  his  lessons,  it  frequently  happens  that  the  further 
ability  to  accomplish  mental  work  successfully,  and  without  nervous 
debility,  depends  upon  the  thorough  removal  of  the  debris  caused  by 
cerebral  exercise.  When  this  removal  has  been  accomplished  by  rec- 
reation, the  child's  power  has  been  recreated.  That  pupils  generally 
do  their  best  school-work  just  after  recess,  and  that  they  are  less 
*'  nervous "  at  that  time,  is  because  the  exercise  has  increased  their 
nerve-power,  and  given  them  a  better  control  of  their  intellectual  fac- 
ulties, and  a  greater  willingness  to  do  hard  thinking.  Muscular  exer- 
cise, then,  becomes  a  motive  power  for  driving  forward  the  machinery 
of  thought. 

Were  there  no  other  objection  to  this  plan,  the  one  that  it  keeps 
children  away  from  the  sunlight  would  still  be  enough  to  condemn  it. 
When  we  see  the  boys  and  girls  of  this  country  gathering  at  the 
call  of  the  school-bell  at  9  a.  m.  and  remaining  till  4  p.  m.,  away  from 
the  sunlight — except  a  few  minutes'  walk  to  and  from  dinner — and 
this  continued  from  six  to  sixteen  years  of  age,  for  five  days  in  a  week 
and  ten  months  in  a  year,  how  can  we  help  fearing  that  this  school- 
life,  however  good  it  may  be  in  other  respects,  can  not  fail  to  leave  its 
pupils  with  emaciated  bodies,  attenuated  limbs,  and  with  a  general 
strength  much  below  the  average  of  what  it  should  be,  and  much  be- 
low the  average  of  what  it  must  be,  in  order  to  give  them  that  start  in 
the  struggle  for  existence  which  they  must  have  if  they  would  win  ;  it 
is  not  possible  to  save  them  from  this  competition  ;  all  must  meet  it,  and 
the  power  of  physical  endurance  is  an  absolute  necessity  for  success. 

Neither  Latin,  Greek,  grammar,  nor  geography,  can  give  this  pow- 
er ;  but  an  hour's  play  in  the  sunshine  daily,  for  this  ten  years  of  school- 
life,  might  do  so. 

Not  only  do  the  out-door  recesses  have  the  advantage  of  air  and 
sunshine  in  good  weather,  but  in  bad  weather  they  have  the  advantage 
of  exposure  also  ;  and,  contrary  to  the  commonly  accepted  theories,  ex- 
posure to  inclement  weather,  in  a  reasonable  degree  and  with  proper 
care,  is  of  very  great  advantage.  For  nine  years  past  it  has  been  my 
invariable  practice,  at  four  different  periods  daily,  for  a  time  aggre- 
gating ninety  minutes,  to  supervise  a  play-ground  where  several  hun- 
dred children  of  a  public  school  assemble.  I  have  observed  that  there 
are  certain  ones,  some  of  each  sex,  who  are  seldom  absent.  No  cold, 
except,  perhaps,  half  a  dozen  days  of  the  severest,  and  no  storm  except 
a  most  drenching  rain,  ever  drives  them  into  their  school-rooms. 
Through  all  ordinary  rains  and  snows  they  seem  to  feel  no  discomfort. 


96  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

With  lists  of  the  names  of  these  I  have  examined  the  registers  of 
daily  attendance  kept  by  the  teachers,  and,  upon  making  out  lists  of 
their  absences  from  school  on  account  of  sickness,  find  their  per  cent 
is  not  one  fifth  as  great  as  that  of  the  whole  school,  and  not  one 
twelfth  as  great  as  that  of  an  equal  number  of  pupils  of  the  same 
grade  who  are  never  seen  upon  the  play-ground  in  either  good  or  bad 
weather. 

At  first  sight  these  figures  seem  inexplicable  ;  but  when  any  one 
looks  about  his  own  town  and  sees  families  of  laboring-men  with  half 
a  dozen  children  to  each  house,  and  sees  their  houses  are  poorly  built, 
that  they  admit  the  wind  and  sometimes  the  rain,  he  sees  the  children 
running  about  in  quite  frosty  w^eather  barefoot,  he  sees  them  playing 
in  the  rain  and  storm  with  perfect  freedom  from  colds,  and  he  knows 
they  are  seldom  sick — then  if  he  looks  up  the  avenue  to  some  residence 
with  its  double  windows,  its  base-burner,  which  keeps  the  house  at  a 
uniform  temperature,  and  observes  when  the  children  come  out  how 
carefully  they  are  protected  from  the  weather,  and  how  very  delicate 
they  are,  he  will,  if  he  is  thoughtful,  soon  conclude  that  the  good 
health  of  the  children  of  the  laboring-man  is  because  they  encounter 
exposure,  and  not  that  they  encounter  exposure  because  of  their  good 
health. 

Where  school-rooms  are  warmed  by  an  abundance  of  pure,  warm' 
air,  and  where  pupils  have  perfect  liberty  to  go  at  any  time  to  the  regis- 
ters to  warm  and  dry  shoes  and  clothing,  they  will  not  suffer  by  any 
voluntary  out- door  exposure,  however  inclement  the  weather.  There 
seem  to  be  no  other  gymnastics  for  the  involuntary  muscles,  those  con- 
trolling the  vital  functions  of  respiration  and  circulation,  but  exposure 
and  vigorous  exercise.  Who  has  ever  heard  a  hale  old  man,  who  had 
long  since  passed  his  allotted  halting-place  of  threescore-and-ten,  tell 
of  his  youth,  but  could  tell  of  exposure,  constant  and  severe,  in  his 
youth  ?  Hunters,  wood-choppers,  ranchers,  and  soldiers,  are  not  afraid 
of  the  weather,  nor  are  they  subject  to  coughs  and  colds.  During  five 
years  of  army  life  as  a  trooper,  our  regiment  was  never  in  barracks, 
and  much  of  the  time  was  without  tents.  Often  we  were  wet  to  the 
skin,  and  sat  our  horses  till  our  clothes  dried  upon  us  by  the  heat  from 
our  bodies  without  feeling  any  other  effect  than  an  increased  appetite. 
By  exposure  we  were  made  water-proof  ;  and  I  believe  children  can  be 
made  largely  cold-proof,  and  sickness-proof,  by  allowing  them  their 
own  free-wills  as  to  exposure. 

Children  need  the  rough-and-tumble  of  an  out-door  recess  to  tough- 
en the  sinews  of  the  body.  Many  at  home  are  so  tenderly  cared  for 
that,  what  with  cushioned  chairs,  stuffed  sofas,  and  spring-seats  to  the 
very  carriages  in  which  they  ride  to  school,  they  are  in  danger  of  be- 
coming too  tender  for  even  this  usage  ;  and,  if  they  are  ever  to  accom- 
plish anything  in  this  world,  they  must  somewhere  acquire  the  physi- 
cal power  to  endure  many  hard  knocks  in  the  various  ways  and  sta- 


THE   UTILITY  OF  SCHOOL-RECESSES,  97 

tions  of  life.  They  can  not  always  be  held  in  theirnurses'  arms.  They 
will  meet  with  accidents  which,  if  they  are  accustomed  to  the  games 
of  the  play-ground,  will  not  affect  them  at  all,  but  which,  if  they  are 
not,  will  lay  them  up  with  a  lame  side,  a  sprained  ankle,  or  a  dislo- 
cated joint.  Falls  and  tumbles  occur  daily  upon  the  play-ground,  with 
no  injurious  effects  whatever,  which  would  put  some  of  the  tenderly 
nurtured  in  bed  for  a  week.  The  play-ground  is  the  only  place  con- 
nected with  the  schools  where  children  can  become  hardy  :  and  this 
element  of  hardiness  has  been  very  strongly  marked  in  all  successful 
men.  It  is  not  the  carpet-knights  who  to-day  rule  in  politics  or  in 
business — no,  nor  in  science  or  religion — but  the  men  who  have  grit 
and  toughness,  men  who  fear  neither  ridicule  nor  a  crowd  of  rowdies. 

Take  the  boy  who  has  a  few  companions  to  play  with  him  upon 
his  own  lawn,  and  who,  like  himself,  are  carefully  kept  from  the  soci- 
ety of  the  rougher  and  more  world-wise  boys  of  the  street,  and  how 
is  he  to  get  any  knowledge  of  the  methods  or  the  power  by  which 
these  others  are  to  be  controlled  in  after-life  ?  Yet  this  boy  and  his 
class  are  those  who  in  many  respects  ought  to  have  a  controlling  influ- 
ence on  the  destiny  of  his  neighborhood,  but,  because  he  has  no  ac- 
quaintance with  the  other  class,  because  he  does  not  know  what  are 
their  ruling  motives,  he  is  powerless  for  good  among  them.  By 
means  of  this  knowledge  those  agitators  among  the  people,  like  Moody 
and  Dennis  Kearny,  the  leading  politician  in  each  town  and  ward,  and 
the  organizers  of  strikes,  have  such  power  among  the  masses  ;  and 
their  lack  of  this  knowledge  is  the  main  cause  of  failure  of  our  citi- 
zens' social-reform  societies  and  kindred  organizations  which  attempt 
some  very  laudable  reforms.  As  the  boy  is  father  to  the  man,  so  the 
play-ground  is  the  antecedent  of  the  future  society  of  the  town  or 
ward,  and  upon  the  play-ground,  more  than  in  the  school-room,  the 
leaders  of  the  future  are  made  ;  there  the  boy  must  learn,  if  he  ever 
learn  it,  how  to  lead,  control,  and  master  the  others — boys  to-day,  but 
men  to-morrow.  The  school-room  is  an  autocracy,  with  the  teacher  for 
autocrat  and  the  pupils  for  subjects,  but  the  play-ground  is  a  pure 
democracy  :  there  each,  in  proportion  to  his  strength,  dexterity,  and 
skill,  is  equal  to  any  other  ;  there  the  egotist  learns  his  insignificance, 
the  rude  boy  gets  his  first  lessons  in  common  courtesy,  and  there  the 
bully  learns  that  his  ways  are  not  approved. 

But  the  ruling  sentiment  of  the  play-ground  must  not  be  allowed 
to  form  itself  by  accident :  children  must  not  be  left  to  themselves  at 
these  times. 

An  out-door  recess  needs  the  controlling  presence  of  the  teacher 
quite  as  much  as  an  in-door  one,  and  more  than  the  ordinary  exercise 
of  the  school-room,  and  because  this  has  been  neglected  is  the  reason 
why  some  people  have  objected  to  it.  Several  hundred  children,  after 
experiencing  the  restraint  of  the  school-room,  should  not  be  released 
upon  the  play-ground  without  supervision  competent  to  suppress  what- 

VOL.  XXIV. — 7 


98  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

ever  may  appear  that  is  pernicious.  There  is  no  other  time  in  all  the 
day  when  competent  guidance  can  do  so  much  to  make  boys  manly 
and  girls  womanly  as  when  they  are  at  their  games.  It  is  not  enough 
to  leave  the  play-ground  to  the  janitor  or  to  some  inferior  authority  ; 
it  is  the  place  where  the  principal  teacher  and  nearly  all  the  others 
are  most  needed — not  to  direct  the  games,  or  to  meddle  in  any  way 
with  the  sports,  but  to  be  ready  with  a  cheery  voice  and  an  easy 
grace  to  suggest  to  any  one  about  to  engage  in  anything  improper 
that  he  has  forgotten  himself.  Ruffianism  will  soon  disappear,  timid 
children  will  learn  to  assert  themselves,  and  an  esprit  de  corps  of  the 
play-ground  can  soon  be  formed  which  will  have  a  wonderful  influ- 
ence on  the  characters  as  well  as  the  actions  of  the  pupils.  Nor  is  the 
benefit  to  the  pupils  all  that  is  derived  from  this  plan  ;  the  teacher 
needs  such  a  recess  quite  as  much  as,  and  in  many  cases  more  than,  her 
pupils.  Fifteen  minutes  of  each  ninety  in  the  open  air,  away  from 
the  sights  and  thoughts  of  the  lessons,  will  remove  the  nervous,  tired, 
irritable,  and  almost  despondent  feeling  experienced  by  many  teachers, 
and  give  them  renewed  strength  and  cheerfulness  and  mental  elas- 
ticity for  the  remainder  of  the  session.  By  being  upon  the  play- 
ground among  her  pupils,  many  a  teacher  learns  their  character,  their 
ambitions,  the  bent  of  their  minds,  as  she  can  not  learn  them  in  the 
peculiar  position  in  the  school-room  ;  and  yet  there  are  many  children 
who,  unless  understood  in  these  particulars,  can  not  be  successfully 
taught.  To  the  teacher  who  sees  her  pupils  only  in  their  relation  of 
pupils,  the  school-work  is  very  likely  to  become  a  grind,  a  machine  at 
which  she  is  to  perform  a  regular  and  a  constant  part,  and  the  chil- 
dren are  little  else  than  so  much  raw  material  which  is  to  pass  through 
the  mill  over  which  she  presides.  She  sees  no  individuality  in  them, 
and  of  course  her  work  is  arranged  for  the  aggregate,  and  individuals 
receive  no  consideration  as  such.  To  overcome  this  error  there  is 
nothing  better  than  for  her  to  see  them  daily  at  their  sports,  for  there 
their  distinctive  characteristics  are  manifested  as  in  no  other  place. 
If  the  schools  are  to  build  character,  certainly  an  out-door  recess  is  an 
absolute  essential  for  both  teacher  and  pupils. 


THE  CHEMISTEY  OF  COOKERY. 

By  W.  MATTIEU  WILLIAMS. 

XVI. 

A  CORRESPONDENT  of  Manchester  asks  me  which  is  the  most 
nutritious,  a  slice  of  English  beef  in  its  own  gravy,  or  the 
browned  morsel  as  served  in  an  Italian  restaurant  with  the  burnt- 
sugar  addition  to  the  gravy  ? 


THE   CHEMISTRY   OF   COOKERY.  99 

This  is  a  very  fair  question,  and  not  diiEcult  to  answer.  If  both 
are  equally  cooked,  neither  over-done  nor  under-done,  they  must  con- 
tain, weight  for  weight,  exactly  the  same  constituents  in  equally  di- 
gestible form,  so  far  as  chemical  composition  is  concerned.  Whether 
they  will  actually  be  digested  with  equal  facility  and  assimilated  with 
equal  completeness  depends  upon  something  else  not  measurable  by 
chemical  analysis,  viz.,  the  relish  with  which  they  are  respectively 
eaten.  To  some  persons  the  undisguised  fleshiness  of  the  English 
slice,  especially  if  under-done,  is  very  repugnant.  To  these  the  cor- 
responding morsel,  cooked  according  to  Francatelli  rather  than  Mrs. 
Beeton,  would  be  more  nutritious.  To  the  carnivorous  John  Bull, 
who  regards  such  dishes  as  "  nasty  French  messes  "  of  questionable 
composition,  the  slice  of  unmistakable  ox-flesh  from  a  visible  joint 
would  obtain  all  the  advantages  of  appreciative  mastication  and  that 
sympathy  between  the  brain  and  the  stomach  which  is  so  powerful 
that,  when  discordantly  exerted,  may  produce  the  effects  that  are  re- 
corded in  the  case  of  the  sporting  traveler  w^ho  was  invited  by  a  Red 
Indian  chief  to  a  "  dog-fight,"  and  ate  with  relish  the  savory  dishes  at 
what  he  supposed  to  be  a  preliminary  banquet.  Digestion  was  tran- 
quilly and  healthfully  proceeding,  under  the  soothing  influence  of  the 
calumet,  when  he  asked  the  chief  when  the  fight  would  commence. 
On  being  told  that  it  was  over,  and  that  in  the  final  ragoUt  he  had 
praised  so  highly  the  last  puppy-dog  possessed  by  the  tribe  had  been 
cooked  in  his  honor,  the  normal  course  of  digestion  of  the  honored 
guest  was  completely  reversed. 

Reverting  to  the  fat  used  in  frying,  and  the  necessity  of  its  purifi- 
cation, I  may  illustrate  the  principle  on  which  it  should  be  conducted 
by  describing  the  method  adopted  in  the  refining  of  mineral  oils,  such 
as  petroleum  or  the  parafiin  distillates  of  bituminous  shales.  These 
are  dark,  tarry  liquids  of  treacle-like  consistency,  with  a  strong  and 
offensive  odor.  Nevertheless,  they  are,  at  but  little  cost,  converted 
into  the  "  crystal-oil "  used  for  lamps,  and  that  beautiful  pearly  sub- 
stance, the  solid,  translucent  parafilin  now  so  largely  used  in  the  manu- 
facture of  candles.  Besides  these,  we  obtain  from  the  same  dirty 
source  an  intermediate  substance,  the  well-known  ^'vaseline,^^  now 
becoming  the  basis  of  most  of  the  ointments  of  the  pharmacopoeia. 
This  purification  is  effected  by  agitation  with  sulphuric  acid,  which 
partly  carbonizes  and  partly  combines  with  the  impurities,  and  sepa- 
rates them  in  the  form  of  a  foul  and  acrid  black  mess,  known  technic- 
ally as  "acid  tar."  When  I  was  engaged  in  the  distillation  of  cannel 
and  shale  in  Flintshire,  this  acid  tar  was  a  terrible  bugbear.  It  found 
its  way  mysteriously  into  the  Alyn  River,  and  poisoned  the  trout ;  but 
now,  if  I  am  correctly  informed,  the  Scotch  manufacturers  have  turned 
it  to  profitable  account. 

Animal  fat  and  vegetable  oils  are  similarly  purified.  Very  objec- 
tionable refuse  fat  of  various  kinds  is  thus  made  into  tallow,  or  mate- 


loo  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

rial  for  the  soap-maker,  and  grease  for  lubricating  machinery.  Un- 
savory stories  have  been  told  about  the  manufacture  of  butter  from 
Thames  mud  or  the  nodules  of  fat  that  are  gathered  therefrom  by  the 
mud-larks,  but  they  are  all  false.  It  may  be  possible  to  purify  fatty 
matter  from  the  foulest  of  admixtures,  and  do  this  so  completely  as  to 
produce  a  soft,  tasteless  fat,  i.  e.,  a  butter  substitute,  but  such  a  curi- 
osity would  cost  more  than  half  a  crown  per  pound,  and  therefore  the 
market  is  safe,  especially  as  the  degree  of  purification  required  for 
soap-making  and  machinery-grease  costs  but  little,  and  the  demand 
for  such  fat  is  very  great. 

These  methods  of  purification  are  not  available  in  the  kitchen,  as 
oil  of  vitriol  is  a  vicious  compound.  During  the  siege  of  Paris  some 
of  the  Academicians  devoted  themselves  very  earnestly  to  the  subject 
of  the  purification  of  fat  in  order  to  produce  what  they  termed  "  siege- 
butter  "  from  the  refuse  of  slaughter-houses,  etc.,  and  edible  salad  oils 
from  crude  colza  oil,  the  rancid  fish  oils  used  by  the  leather-dresser, 
etc.  Those  who  are  specially  interested  in  the  subject  may  find  some 
curious  papers  in  the  "  Comptes  Rendus  "  of  that  period.  In  vol.  Ixxi, 
page  36,  ]\L  Boillot  describes  his  method  of  mixing  kitchen-stuff  and 
other  refuse  fat  with  lime-water,  agitating  the  mixture  when  heated, 
and  then  neutralizing  with  an  acid.  The  product  thus  obtained  is 
described  as  admirably  adapted  for  culinary  operations,  and  the  method 
is  applicable  to  the  purpose  here  under  consideration. 

Further  on  in  the  same  volume  is  a  "  Note  on  Suets  and  Alimentary 
Fats  "  by  M.  Dubrunfaut,  who  tells  us  that  the  most  tainted  of  ali- 
mentary fats  and  rancid  oils  may  be  deprived  of  their  bad  odors  by 
"appropriate  frying."  His  method  is  to  raise  the  temperature  of  the 
fat  to  140°  to  150°  Centigrade  (284°  to  302°  Fahr.)  in  a  frying-pan  ; 
then  cautiously  sprinkle  upon  it  small  quantities  of  water.  The  steam 
carries  off  the  volatile  fatty  acids  producing  the  rancidity  in  such  as 
fish-oils,  and  also  the  neutral  offensive  fatty  matters  that  are  decom- 
posed by  the  heat.  In  another  paper  by  M.  Fua  this  method  is  ap- 
plied to  the  removal  of  cellular  tissue  of  crude  fats  from  slaughter- 
houses. It  is  really  nothing  more  than  the  old  farm-house  proceeding 
of  "rendering"  lard,  by  frying  the  membranous  fat  until  the  mem- 
branous matter  is  browned  and  aggregated  into  small  nodules,  which 
constitute  the  "scratchings" — a  delicacy  greatly  relished  by  our  Brit- 
ish plowboys  at  pig-killing  time,  but  rather  too  rich  in  pork-fat  to 
supply  a  suitable  meal  for  people  of  sedentary  vocations. 

The  action  of  heat  thus  applied  and  long  continued  is  similar  to 
that  of  the  strong  sulphuric  acid.  The  impurities  of  the  fat  are  organic 
matters  more  easily  decomposable  than  the  fat  itself,  or,  otherwise 
stated,  they  are  dissociated  into  carbon  and  water  at  about  300°  Fahr., 
which  is  a  lower  temperature  than  that  required  for  the  dissociation 
of  the  pure  oil  or  fat  (see  No.  13  of  this  series).  By  maintaining  this 
temperature,  these  compounds  become  first  caramelized,  then  carbon- 


THE   CHEMISTRY  OF   COOKERY.  loi 

ized  nearly  to  blackness,  and  all  their  powers  of  offensiveness  vanish, 
as  such  offense  is  due  to  slow  decomposition  of  the  original  organic 
compounds,  which  now  exist  no  longer,  and  the  remaining  caramel  or 
carbon  cinders  being  quite  inoffensive  or  no  further  decomposable  by- 
atmospheric  agency. 

In  the  more  violent  factory  process  of  purification  by  sulphuric 
acid  the  similar  action  which  occurs  is  due  to  the  powerful  affinity  of 
this  acid  for  water  ;  this  may  be  strikingly  shown  by  adding  to  thick 
sirup  or  pounded  sugar  about  its  own  bulk  of  oil  of  vitriol,  when  a 
marvelous  commotion  occurs,  and  a  magnified  black  cinder  is  pro- 
duced by  the  separation  of  the  water  from  the  sugar. 

The  following  simple  practical  formula  may  be  reduced  from  these 
data.  When  a  considerable  quantity  of  much-used  frying  fat  is  accu- 
mulated, heat  it  to  about  300°  Fahr.,  as  indicated  by  the  crackling  of 
water  when  sprinkled  on  it,  or,  better  still,  by  a  properly  constructed 
kitchen  thermometer  graduated  to  about  400°  Fahr.  Then  pour  the 
melted  fat  on  hot  water.  This  must  be  done  carefully,  as  a  large 
quantity  of  fat  at  400°  poured  upon  a  small  quantity  of  boiling  water 
will  illustrate  the  fact  that  water  when  suddenly  heated  is  an  explo- 
sive compound.  The  quantity  of  water  should  exceed  that  of  the  fat, 
and  the  pouring  be  done  gradually.  Then  agitate  the  fat  and  water 
together,  and,  if  the  operator  is  sufiiciently  skillful  and  intelligent,  the 
purification  may  be  carried  further  by  carefully  boiling  the  water 
under  the  fat,  and  allowing  its  steam  to  pass  through  ;  but  this  is  a 
little  dangerous,  on  account  of  the  possibility  of  what  the  practical 
chemist  calls  "bumping,"  or  the  sudden  formation  of  a  big  bubble  of 
steam  that  would  kick  a  good  deal  of  the  superabundant  fat  into  the 
fire. 

Whether  this  supplementary  boiling  is  carried  out  or  not,  the  fat 
and  the  water  should  be  left  together  to  cool  gradually,  when  a  dark 
layer  of  carbonized  impurities  will  be  found  resting  on  the  surface  of 
the  water,  and  adhering  to  the  bottom  of  the  cake  of  fat.  This  may 
be  peeled  off  and  put  into  the  waste  grease-pot,  to  be  further  refined 
with  the  next  operation.  Ultimately  the  worst  of  it  will  sink  to  the 
bottom  of  the  water.  Then  it  is  of  no  further  value,  and  will  be  found 
to  be  a  mere  cinder. 

XYII. 

Regarding  the  fat  used  in  frying  as  a  medium  for  conveying  heat, 
freedom  from  any  special  flavor  of  its  own  is  a  primary  desideratum. 
Olive-oil  of  the  best  quality  is  almost  absolutely  tasteless,  and,  having 
as  high  a  boiling-point  as  animal  fats,  it  is  the  best  of  all  frying  media. 
In  this  country  there  is  a  prejudice  against  the  use  of  such  oil.  I  have 
noticed  at  some  of  those  humble  but  most  useful  establishments  where 
poor  people  are  supplied  with  penny  or  twopenny  portions  of  good  fish, 
better  cooked  than  in  the  majority  of  *'  eligible  villa  residences,"  that 


102  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

in  the  front  is  an  inscription  stating  that  "  only  the  best  beef -dripping 
is  used  in  this  establishment."  This  means  a  repudiation  of  oil.  Such 
oil  as  has  been  supplied  for  fish-frying  may  well  be  repudiated. 

On  my  first  visit  to  arctic  Norway  I  arrived  before  the  garnering 
and  exportation  of  the  spring  cod  harvest  w^as  completed.  The  packet 
stopped  at  a  score  or  so  of  stations  on  the  Lofodens  and  the  mainland. 
Foggy  weather  was  no  impediment,  as  an  experienced  pilot  free  from 
catarrh  could  steer  direct  to  the  harbor  by  "  following  his  nose."  Huge 
caldrons  stood  by  the  shore  in  which  were  stewing  the  last  batches  of 
the  livers  of  cod-fish  caught  a  month  before  and  exposed  in  the  mean 
time  to  the  continuous  arctic  sunshine.  Their  condition  must  be  im- 
agined, as  I  abstain  from  description  of  details.  The  business  then 
proceeding  was  the  extraction  of  the  oil  from  these  livers.  It  is,  of 
course,  "  cod-liver  oil,"  but  is  known  commercially  as  "  fish-oil,"  or 
"  cod-oil."  That  which  is  sold  by  our  druggists  as  cod-liver  oil  is  de- 
scribed in  Norway  as  "  medicine-oil,"  and  though  prepared  from  the 
same  raw  material,  is  extracted  in  a  different  manner.  Only  fresh 
livers  are  used  for  this,  and  the  best  quality,  the  "  cold-drawn  "  oil,  is 
obtained  by  pressing  the  livers  without  stewing.  Those  who  are  un- 
fortunately familiar  with  this  carefully  prepared,  highly  refined  prod- 
uct, know  that  the  fishy  flavor  clings  to  it  so  pertinaciously  that  all 
attempts  to  completely  remove  it  without  decomposing  the  oil  havfe 
failed.  This  being  the  case,  it  is  easily  understood  that  the  fish-oil 
stewed  so  crudely  out  of  the  putrid  or  semi-putrid  livers  must  be 
nauseous  indeed.  I  am  told  that  it  has  nevertheless  been  used  by 
some  of  the  fish-fryers,  and  I  know  that  refuse  "  Gallipoli "  (olive-oil 
of  the  worst  quality)  is  sold  for  this  purpose.  The  oil  obtained  in  the 
course  of  salting  sardines,  herrings,  etc.,  has  also  been  used. 

Such  being  the  case,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  use  of  oil  for  fry- 
ing should,  like  the  oil  itself,  be  in  bad  odor. 

I  dwell  upon  this  because  we  are  probably  on  what,  if  a  fine  writer, 
I  should  call  the  "eve  of  a  great  revolution"  in  respect  to  frying 
media. 

Two  new  materials,  pure,  tasteless,  and  so  cheap  as  to  be  capable 
of  pushing  pig-fat  (lard)  out  of  the  market,  have  recently  been  intro- 
duced. These  are  cotton-seed  oil  and  poppy-seed  oil.  The  first  has 
been  for  some  time  in  the  market  offered  for  sale  under  various  fic- 
titious names,  which  I  will  not  reveal,  as  I  refuse  to  become  a  medium 
for  the  advertisement  of  anything — however  good  in  itself — that  is 
sold  under  false  pretenses.  If  the  lamp  of  Knowledge,  more  fortu- 
nate than  that  of  Diogenes,  should  light  upon  some  honest  men  who 
will  retail  cotton-seed  oil  as  cotton-seed  oil,  I  shall  gladly  (with  the 
editor's  permission)  do  a  little  straightforward  touting  for  them,  as 
they  will  be  public  benefactors,  greatly  aiding  the  present  movement 
for  the  extension  of  the  use  of  fish-food. 

As  every  bale  of  cotton  yields  half  a  ton  of  seed,  and  every  ton  of 


THE   CHEMISTRY  OF  COOKERY,  103 

seed  may  be  made  to  yield  twenty-eight  to  thirty-two  pounds  of  crude 
oil,  the  available  quantity  is  very  great.  At  present  only  a  small  quan- 
tity is  made,  the  surplus  seed  being  used  as  manure.  Its  fertilizing 
value  would  not  be  diminished  by  removing  the  oil,  which  is  only  a 
hydro-carbon,  i.  e.,  material  supplied  by  air  and  water.  All  the  fer- 
tilizing constituents  of  the  seed  are  left  behind  in  the  oil-cake  from 
which  the  oil  has  been  pressed. 

Hitherto  cotton-seed  oil  has  fallen  among  thieves.  It  is  used  as  an 
adulterant  of  olive-oil ;  sardines  and  pilchards  are  packed  in  it.  The 
sardine  trade  has  declined  lately,  some  say  from  deficient  supplies  of 
the  fish.  I  suspect  that  there  has  been  a  decline  in  the  demand,  due  to 
the  substitution  of  this  oil  for  that  of  the  olive.  Many  people  who 
formerly  enjoyed  sardines  no  longer  care  for  them,  and  they  do  not 
know  why.  The  substitution  of  cotton-seed  oil  explains  this  in  most 
cases.  It  is  not  rancid,  has  no  decided  flavor,  but  still  is  unpleasant 
when  eaten  raw,  as  with  salads  or  sardines.  It  has  a  flat,  cold  charac- 
ter, and  an  after-taste  that  is  faintly  suggestive  of  castor-oil ;  but  faint 
as  it  is,  it  interferes  with  the  demand  for  a  purely  luxurious  article  of 
food.  This  delicate  defect  is  quite  inappreciable  in  the  results  of  its 
use  as  a  frying  medium.  The  very  best  lard  or  ordinary  kitchen  but- 
ter, eaten  cold,  has  more  of  objectionable  flavor  than  refined  cotton- 
seed oil. 

I  have  not  tasted  poppy-seed  oil,  but  am  told  that  it  is  similar  to  that 
from  the  cotton-seed.  As  regards  the  quantities  available,  some  idea 
may  be  formed  by  plucking  a  ripe  head  from  a  garden  poppy  and 
shaking  out  the  little  round  seeds  through  the  windows  on  the  top. 
Those  who  have  not  tried  this  will  be  astonished  at  the  numbers  pro- 
duced by  each  flower.  As  poppies  are  largely  cultivated  for  the  pro- 
duction of  opium,  and  the  yield  of  the  drug  itself  by  each  plant  is  very 
small,  the  supplies  of  oil  may  be  considerable  ;  571,542  cwt.  of  seeds 
were  exported  from  India  last  year,  of  which  346,031  cwt.  went  to 
France. 

Palm-oil,  though  at  present  practically  unknown  in  the  kitchen, 
may  easily  become  an  esteemed  material  for  the  frying-kettle  (I  say 
"  kettle,"  as  the  ordinary  English  frying-pan  is  only  fit  for  the  cook- 
ing of  such  things  as  barley  bannocks,  pancakes,  fladbrod,  or  oat- 
cakes). At  present,  the  familiar  uses  of  palm-oil  in  candle-making 
and  for  railway  grease  will  cause  my  suggestion  to  shock  the  nerves 
of  many  delicate  people,  but  these  should  remember  that  before  palm- 
oil  was  imported  at  all,  the  material  from  which  candles  and  soap  were 
made,  and  by  which  cart-wheels  and  heavy  machinery  were  greased, 
was  tallow — i.  e.,  the  fat  of  mutton  and  beef.  The  reason  why  our 
grandmothers  did  not  use  candles  when  short  of  dripping  or  suet  was 
that  the  mutton-fat  constituting  the  candle  was  impure  ;  so  are  the 
yellow  candles  and  yellow  grease  in  the  axle-boxes  of  the  railway  car- 
riages.    This  vegetable  fat  is  quite  as  inoffensive  in  itself,  quite  as 


104  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

wholesome,  and — sentimentally  regarded — less  objectionable,  than  the 
fat  obtained  from  the  carcass  of  a  slaughtered  animal. 

When  common  sense  and  true  sentiment  supplant  mere  unreasoning 
prejudice,  vegetable  oils  and  vegetable  fats  will  largely  supplant  those 
of  animal  origin  in  every  element  of  our  dietary.  We  are  but  just 
beginning  to  understand  them.  Chevreul,  who  was  the  first  to  teach 
us  the  chemistry  of  fats,  is  still  living,  and  we  are  only  learning  how  to 
make  butter  (not  "  inferior  Dorset,"  but  "  choice  Normandy  ")  without 
the  aid  of  dairy  produce.  There  is,  therefore,  good  reason  for  antici- 
pating that  the  inexhaustible  supplies  of  oil  obtainable  from  the  vege- 
table world  —  especially  from  tropical  vegetation  —  will  ere  long  be 
freely  available  for  kitchen  uses,  and  the  now  popular  product  of  the 
Chicago  hog  factories  will  be  altogether  banished  therefrom,  and  used 
only  for  greasing  cart-wheels  and  other  machinery. 

As  a  practical  conclusion  of  this  part  of  my  subject,  I  will  quote 
from  this  month's  number  of  "  The  Oil  Trade  Review "  the  current 
wholesale  prices  of  some  of  the  oils  possibly  available  for  frying  pur- 
poses. Olive-oily  from  £43  to  £90  per  ton  of  252  gallons  ;  Cod-oil^ 
£36  per  ton  ;  Sardine  or  train  (i.  e.,  the  oil  that  drains  from  pilchards, 
herrings,  sardines,  etc.,  when  salted),  £27  10s.  to  £28  per  ton.  Cocoa- 
nuty  from  £35  to  £38  per  ton  of  20  cwt.  (This,  in  the  case  of  oil,  is 
nearly  the  same  as  the  measured  ton.)  Palm^  from  £38  to  £40  lO^.- 
per  ton  ;  Palm-nut  or  copra^  £31  lOs.  per  ton  ;  Refined  cotton-seed, 
£30  10s.  to  £31  per  ton  ;  Lard,  £53  to  £55  per  ton.  The  above  are 
the  extreme  ranges  of  each  class.  I  have  not  copied  the  technical 
names  and  prices  of  the  intermediate  varieties.  One  penny  per  pound 
is  =  £9  6s.  8(7.  per  ton,  or,  in  round  numbers,  £1  per  ton  may  be  reck- 
oned as  one  ninth  of  a  penny  per  pound.  Thus  the  present  price  of 
best  refined  cotton-seed  oil  is  Z\d.  per  pound ;  of  cocoanut-oil,  Z\d.  ; 
palm-oil,  from  Z\d.  to  4^6?.,  while  lard  costs  6c?.  per  pound  wholesale — 
usually  ^d. 

I  should  add,  in  reference  to  the  seed-oils,  that  there  is  a  possible 
objection  to  their  use  as  frying  media.  Oils  extracted  from  seeds  con- 
tain more  or  less  of  linoleine  (so  named  from  its  abundance  in  linseed- 
oil),  which,  when  exposed  to  the  air,  combines  with  oxygen,  swells  and 
dries.  If  the  oil  from  cotton-seed  or  poppy-seed  contains  too  much  of 
this,  it  will  thicken  inconveniently  when  kept  for  a  length  of  time  ex- 
posed to  the  air.  Palm-oil  is  practically  free  from  it,  but  I  am  doubt- 
ful respecting  palm-nut-oil,  as  most  of  the  nut-oils  are  "driers." — 
iLnowledge, 


SKETCH  OF  LAMARCK.  105 


SKETCH  OF  LAMAECK. 

THERE  are  two  classes  of  scholars.  Those  of  the  one  class,  who 
travel  in  the  footsteps  of  their  predecessors,  increase  the  domain 
of  knowledge,  and  add  new  discoveries  to  those  that  were  made  before 
them  ;  their  labors  are  immediately  appreciated,  and  they  enjoy  their 
well-earned  fame  in  full  measure.  Others,  who  leave  the  trodden  ways, 
emancipate  themselves  from  traditions,  and  expose  to  the  light  of  the 
sun  the  germs  of  future  discovery  which  lie  buried  in  the  teachings 
of  the  present.  Sometimes  they  are  appreciated  at  their  full  value 
during  their  lifetime,  but  more  frequently  they  pass  away,  misun- 
derstood by  the  scientific  public  of  their  time,  which  is  incapable 
of  comprehending  and  following  them.  Indolence,  routine,  and  igno- 
rance oppose  an  invincible  resistance  against  them  during  their  career, 
and  they  die  isolated  and  forsaken.  In  the  mean  time,  science  ad- 
vances, facts  increase,  methods  are  perfected,  and  their  contempora- 
ries who  survive  them  gradually  come  up  to  the  mark  they  had  left. 
Then  all  their  forgotten  services  are  brought  into  the  light,  justice  is 
partly  done  to  their  labors,  their  genius  is  admired,  it  is  recognized 
that  they  foresaw  the  future,  and  a  tardy  posthumous  fame  comforts 
their  pupils  for  the  neglect  which  the  masters  had  to  endure  during 
the  years  of  vain  struggle  for  the  triumph  of  the  truth. 

Lamarck  belonged  to  both  of  these  classes.  By  his  descriptive 
labors  in  botany  and  zoology,  and  by  the  improvements  which  he  intro- 
duced in  the  classification  of  animals,  and  which  were  accepted  by 
his  contemporaries,  he  gained  a  first  place  among  the  naturalists  of 
his  time  ;  but  his  philosophical  views  on  organic  beings  in  general 
were  rejected,  and  did  not  even  enjoy  the  honor  of  a  sincere  testing. 
They  were  only  accorded  a  polite  silence,  or  treated  with  scornful 
irony. 

Jean  Baptist  Pierre  Antoine  de  Monet,  known  as  the  Chevalier  de 
Lamarck,  was  born  on  the  1st  of  August,  1744,  at  Bazentin,  a  little 
town  between  Albert  and  Bapaume,  in  Picardy.  He  was  the  eleventh 
child  of  Pierre  de  Monet,  lord  of  the  manor,  who  was  descended  from 
an  old  family  in  the  county  Beam,  and  called  only  a  small  hereditary 
estate  his  own.  His  father  had  designed  him  for  the  church,  then  the 
common  destination  for  the  younger  sons  of  noble  families,  and  took 
him  to  the  Jesuit  college  at  Amiens.  This,  however,  was  not  the 
natural  vocation  of  our  young  nobleman.  Everything  in  his  family 
associations  inclined  his  mind  toward  military  fame.  His  eldest  brother 
had  fallen  in  the  breach  at  the  siege  of  Berg-op-Zoom  ;  the  other  two 
brothers  were  still  in  the  service,  while  France  was  exhausting  its 
forces  in  an  unequal  contest.  His  father  opposed  his  wishes  on  this 
point ;  but,  when  the  father  died,  Lamarck,  following  his  own  inclina- 


io6  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

tion,  betook  himself  on  a  poor  horse  to  the  army,  which  was  encamped 
near  Lippstadt,  in  Westphalia.  He  was  furnished  with  a  letter  of 
introduction  from  Frau  von  Lameth,  proprietor  of  a  neighboring  es- 
tate, to  Colonel  de  Lastic,  of  the  Beaujolais  regiment.  This  officer, 
when  he  saw  the  seventeen-year-old  youth,  who  looked  much  younger, 
sent  him  to  his  quarters.  A  battle  took  place  on  the  next  day.  M.  de 
Lastic  drew  up  his  regiment,  and  noticed  his  protege  in  the  front 
rank  of  a  company  of  grenadiers.  The  French  army  was  under  the 
command  of  Marshal  Broglie  and  Prince  Soubise  while  the  allied 
troops  were  commanded  by  Prince  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick.  The 
two  French  officers,  who  did  not  agree  together,  were  killed.  The 
company  Lamarck  had  joined  was  broken  up  by  the  enemy's  fire, 
and  was  forgotten  in  the  confusion  of  the  retreat.  The  officers  and 
under-officers  were  killed,  and  only  fourteen  were  left  standing.  The 
oldest  of  these  counseled  retreat ;  Lamarck,  who  had,  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment,  improvised  himself  to  the  command,  answered  :  "  We 
have  been  assigned  to  this  position,  and  we  must  not  forsake  it  till  we 
are  relieved."  The  colonel,  who  now  remarked  that  the  company  was 
not  with  his  regiment,  recalled  it  by  an  order  which  he  managed  to 
g"et  back  to  it  by  a  secret  way.  On  the  next  day  Lamarck  was  ap- 
pointed an  officer,  and  soon  afterward  a  lieutenant.  Fortunately  for 
science,  this  brilliant  beginning  of  a  military  career  was  not  decisive 
of  the  future  of  the  youth.  After  the  conclusion  of  peace  he  per- 
formed garrison  duty  in  Toulon  and  Monaco,  till  an  inflammation  of 
the  lymphatic  glands  of  the  neck  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  go  to 
Paris  to  undergo  an  operation  by  Tenon,  the  scar  of  which  he  carried 
all  his  life. 

The  aspect  of  the  vegetation  in  the  neighborhood  of  Toulon  and  Mo- 
naco had  attracted  the  attention  of  the  young  officer,  who  had  already 
acquired  some  knowledge  of  botany  from  the  "  Traite  des  plantes 
usuelles  "  of  Chomel.  After  he  withdrew  from  the  military  service 
and  had  been  awarded  a  modest  pension  of  four  hundred  francs,  he 
became  engaged  with  a  banker  in  Paris.  Moved  by  an  irresistible 
impulse  to  the  study  of  Nature,  he  observed  from  his  attic-room  the 
forms  and  movements  of  the  clouds,  and  made  himself  acquainted  with 
plants  in  the  royal  gardens,  and  by  means  of  botanical  excursions.  He 
felt  that  he  was  on  the  right  way,  and  recalled  Voltaire's  judgment 
on  Condorcet,  that  discoveries  to  come  would  secure  him  more  fame 
with  posterity  than  a  company  of  soldiers.  Dissatisfied  with  the  bo- 
tanical systems  in  use,  he  wrote  in  a  half-year  his  "  Flore  f rangaise," 
and  published  his  "  Cle  dichotomique,"  by  the  aid  of  which  it  is  easy 
for  a  beginner  to  ascertain  the  name  of  the  plants  he  is  accustomed  to 
see.  This  was  in  1778.  Through  Rousseau  botany  became  a  fashiona- 
ble study  ;  the  lords  and  ladies  of  the  world  of  society  busied  them- 
selves with  plants  ;  Buffon  had  the  three  volumes  of  the  "  Flore  fran- 
9aise "  published  at  the  Royal  Printing-House  ;  and  in  the  next  year 


SKETCH  OF  LAMARCK,  107 

Lamarck  entered  the  Academy  of  Sciences.  Buffon,  who  wished  his 
son  to  travel,  gave  him  Lamarck  as  a  conductor,  with  a  commission 
from  the  government.  They  journeyed  through  Holland,  Germany, 
and  Hungary,  and  Lamarck  became  acquainted  with  Gleditsch  in  Ber- 
lin, Jaquin  in  Vienna,  and  Murray  in  Gottingen. 

The  "  Encyclopedic  methodique,"  begun  by  d'Alembert  and  Dide- 
rot, was  not  yet  finished.  Lamarck  composed  four  volumes  of  this 
work,  and  in  them  described  all  the  then  known  plants  the  names  of 
which  begin  with  the  letters  from  A  to  P — a  huge  work,  which  was  com- 
pleted by  Poiret,  and  included  twelve  volumes,  appearing  between 
1783  and  1817.  A  still  more  important  work,  which  also  forms  a  part 
of  the  "  Encyclopaedia,"  and  is  continually  quoted  by  botanists,  is  en- 
titled "  Illustration  des  genres  "  {"  Illustration  of  Genera  "),  in  which 
Lamarck  described  the  characteristics  of  two  thousand  species.  The 
work,  says  the  title-page,  is  illustrated  with  nine  hundred  copper-plate 
engravings.  Only  a  botanist  can  form  a  conception  of  the  researches 
in  herbaria,  gardens,  and  books,  which  such  an  undertaking  demanded. 
Lamarck  accomplished  it  all  by  means  of  the  most  restless  industry. 
If  a  traveler  came  to  Paris,  he  was  the  first  one  to  announce  himself 
to  him.  Sonnerat  returned  from  India  with  immense  collections. 
Nobody  but  Lamarck  took  the  trouble  to  look  at  them,  and  Sonnerat 
was  so  pleased  with  him  for  this  that  he  presented  the  splendid  herba- 
rium to  him.  In  spite  of  his  indefatigable  labors,  Lamarck's  situa- 
tion was  miserable  enough.  He  lived  by  his  pen,  and  in  the  service  of 
the  book-sellers.  Even  the  petty  position  of  overseer  of  the  Royal 
Herbarium  was  refused  him.  Like  the  majority  of  naturalists,  he 
contended  for  many  years  with  the  difficulties  of  life.  A  fortunate 
circumstance,  which  gave  his  activity  another  direction,  brought  im- 
provement in  his  condition.  The  convent  ruled  over  France.  Carnot 
organized  victory.  Lamarck  undertook  to  organize  the  sciences.  The 
Museum  of  Natural  History  was  founded  upon  his  motion.  They 
had  been  able  to  name  professors  for  all  the  branches  except  zoology  ; 
but,  in  those  times  of  ardent  enthusiasm,  France  found  warriors  and 
men  of  science  wherever  it  needed  them.  £tienne  Geoffroy  Saint-Hi- 
laire  was  twenty-one  years  old,  and  was  engaged  with  Haity  in  miner- 
alogy. Daubenton  said  to  him  :  "  I  take  the  responsibility  for  your 
inexperience  upon  myself  ;  I  have  the  authority  of  a  father  over  you. 
Be  so  bold  as  to  assume  the  chair  of  zoology,  and  it  may  be  said  some 
day  that  you  have  made  a  French  science  of  it."  Geoffroy  acceded, 
and  undertook  the  higher  animals.  Lakanal  had  well  comprehended 
that  a  single  professor  would  not  be  adequate  to  the  task  of  working 
out  the  whole  animal  kingdom.  Since  the  classification  of  the  verte- 
brates only  was  taken  care  of  by  Saint-Hilaire,  the  whole  list  of  inver- 
tebrates, including  the  insects,  mollusks,  worms,  zoophytes,  etc.,  still 
remained  in  chaos — in  the  unknown.  Lamarck,  says  Michelet,  under- 
took the  unknown.     He  had  busied  himself  a  little,  under  Bruguieres's 


io8  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

direction,  with  the  mollusks,  but  he  still  had  nearly  all  to  learn,  or,  to 
speak  more  accurately,  nearly  all  to  create,  in  that  uninvestigated 
world  in  which  Linnaeus  had  failed  to  introduce  the  methodical  ar- 
rangement which  he  had  been  so  successful  in  introducing  among  the 
higher  animals.  After  devoting  a  year  to  preliminary  studies,  La- 
marck began  his  lectures  in  the  Museum  in  the  spring  of  1794  ;  he 
immediately  instituted  the  great  division  of  animals  into  vertebrates 
and  invertebrates,  which  has  become  fixed  in  science.  Adhering  to 
the  Linnsean  division  of  the  vertebrates  into  mammalia,  birds,  reptiles, 
and  fishes,  he  divided  the  invertebrates  into  mollusks,  insects,  worms, 
echinoderms,  and  polyps.  In  1799  he  separated  the  order  of  crusta- 
ceans from  the  insects  with  which  it  had  been  confounded  ;  in  1800 
he  separated  the  arachnids  from  the  insects  ;  in  1802  he  set  off  the 
annelids  as  a  subdivision  of  the  worms,  and  the  radiates  as  separable 
from  the  polyps.  Time  has  confirmed  the  justice  of  his  division^  which 
depends  in  every  respect  upon  the  organization  of  the  animals.  This 
is  the  rational  method,  incorporated  in  science  by  Cuvier,  Lamarck, 
and  Geoffroy  Saint-Hilaire. 

As  our  sketch  has  so  far  dealt  only  with  Lamarck's  achievements  in 
natural  history,  we  pass  with  a  simple  mention  a  few  works  in  which 
he  treated  of  physics  and  chemistry ;  mistakes  of  a  good  intention, 
which  attempted  to  establish  truths  that  rest  exclusively  on  experi- 
ment, by  reasoning  alone,  or  to  resuscitate  old  theories  like  that  of 
phlogiston.  These  efforts  did  not  even  receive  the  honor  of  a  contra- 
diction ;  they  did  not  deserve  it ;  and  they  should  serve  as  a  warn- 
ing to  all  those  who  would  write  upon  any  science  without  being 
acquainted  with  it,  and  without  having  had  practical  experience  in  it. 

The  generalizations  of  Lamarck  in  geology  and  meteorology,  sci- 
ences which  at  the  time  he  wrote  had  hardly  come  into  existence,  were 
mistaken  in  another  sense.  They  were  premature.  Every  science 
must  begin  with  the  knowledge  of  facts  and  phenomena.  When  these 
are  numerous  enough,  a  partial  generalization  is  possible  ;  as  they  in- 
crease, the  basis  grows  broader ;  but  systems  which  can  justly  claim  to 
be  absolute  and  definitive  can  never  be,  for  they  presuppose  that  all 
the  phenomena  and  facts  are  known,  a  condition  which  will  be  impos- 
sible as  long  as  man  lives.  In  the  beginning  of  this  century  geology 
did  not  exist,  and  little  was  known  of  the  matters  of  which  it  treats  ; 
but  systems  were  created  that  included  the  whole  earth.  Lamarck 
elaborated  his  system  in  1802  ;  and  twenty- three  years  afterward  the 
clear  mind  of  Cuvier  succumbed  to  the  prevailing  tendency,  and  he 
published  his  treatise  on  the  revolutions  of  the  globe.  It  was  La- 
marck's merit  that  he  perceived  that  there  were  no  revolutions  in 
geology,  and  that  the  slow  manifestations  of  force  through  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  years  far  better  explained  the  wonderful  changes  of 
which  our  planet  has  been  the  scene  than  violent  disturbance  could  do. 
"  To  nature,"  he  said,  "  time  is  nothing  :  it  is  no  obstacle.     Nature 


SKETCH  OF  LAMARCK,  109 

always  has  time  enough  at  its  disposal ;  time  is  a  means  of  unlimited 
capacity,  through  which  it  produces  the  greatest  as  well  as  the  smallest 
effects." 

He  was  the  first  who  distinguished  the  littoral  fossils  from  the  deep- 
sea  fossils.  Yet  no  one  will  to-day  accept  his  idea  that  the  sea,  by  force 
of  its  ebb  and  flow,  could  have  hollowed  out  its  bed  and  changed  its 
local  position  on  the  surface  of  the  earth  without  altering  the  relative 
level  of  the  different  points  on  the  surface.  In  view  of  recognized 
facts,  it  is  impossible  to  ascribe  the  origin  of  all  the  valleys  to  the 
wear  of  the  waters.  Just  as  Lamarck's  conclusions  in  the  science 
of  organic  beings,  which  he  knew  so  well,  were  sharp-sighted  and  pro- 
phetic, so  were  they,  in  the  sciences  which  were  strange  to  him,  care- 
less, hazardous,  and  destined  to  be  contradicted  in  the  future.  Like 
the  metaphysicians,  he  built  in  the  air,  and  his  structure,  like  theirs, 
fell  for  want  of  a  firm  foundation.  Limited  by  his  lectures  in  the 
Museum,  and  by  the  duty  of  classifying  the  collections  to  a  definite 
scientific  work,  he  devoted  himself  entirely  to  this  double  object.  In 
1802  he  published  his  "Considerations  sur  Torganisation  des  corps 
vivants "  (Considerations  on  the  Organization  of  Living  Bodies) ;  in 
1809,  his  "  Philosophic  Zoologique  "  ("  Zoological  Philosophy  "),  an  ex- 
pansion of  the  "  Considerations,"  and  from  1816  to  1822  the  "  Histoire 
naturelle  des  animaux  sans  vertebres  "  ("  Natural  History  of  the  Inver- 
tebrate Animals  "),  in  seven  volumes.  This  was  his  principal  work,  and, 
as  it  was  exclusively  descriptive  and  systematic,  it  was  received  by  the 
learned  world  with  great  favor.  His  paper  on  the  fossil  mollusks  of 
the  neighborhood  of  Paris,  in  which  his  profound  knowledge  of  living 
mollusks  permitted  him  to  make  an  accurate  classification  of  those  re- 
mains of  animals  that  had  laid  for  thousands  of  years  in  the  bosom  of 
the  earth,  was  likewise  well  received. 

Lamarck  had  begun  his  zoological  work  when  fifty  years  old.  The 
painstaking  study  of  minute  animals,  visible  only  through  the  lens  and 
the  microscope,  wore  upon  his  eyesight,  which  grew  feebler  and  fee- 
bler till  he  became  totally  blind.  Four  times  married,  the  father  of 
seven  children,  he  saw  his  little  inheritance,  and  also  his  earlier  sav- 
ings, disappear  in  one  of  those  high-sounding  speculations  with  which 
a  credulous  public  is  often  deluded.  His  modest  salary  as  a  professor 
only  kept  him  from  want.  The  friends  of  science,  whom  his  fame  as 
a  zoologist  attracted  to  him,  were  shocked  when  they  observed  in 
what  neglect  he  lived.  He  spent  the  last  years  of  his  life  in  total 
darkness,  but  comforted  by  the  loving  care  of  his  two  daughters.  The 
elder  daughter  wrote  at  his  dictation  a  part  of  the  sixth,  and  some  of 
the  seventh,  volume  of  his  "  History  of  the  Invertebrates."  After  the 
father  could  not  leave  his  room,  the  daughter  would  not  go  out  of 
the  house  ;  and,  when  she  did  at  last  go  out,  she  could  not  endure  the 
open  air  from  which  she  had  been  excluded  so  long.  Lamarck  died 
on  the  18th  of  December,  1829,  at  the  age  of  eighty-five  years. 


no  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

It  has  been  more  the  fashion  to  condemn  Lamarck  for  his  specu- 
lations than  to  give  him  the  credit  that  is  his  due  for  his  great  work  in 
classification.  Recently,  however,  two  naturalists  have  endeavored  to 
present  these  speculations  in  a  more  favorable  light,  and,  without  de- 
nying that  they  embodied  much  that  was  not  well  enough  established, 
to  show  that  much  in  them  was  only  anticipatory  of  what  science  has 
since  accepted  :  Herr  Haeckel,  in  Germany,  who  declares  that  in  Dar- 
win, Goethe,  and  Lamarck,  "  each  of  the  three  great  civilized  nations 
of  middle  Europe  has  presented  mankind  in  the  course  of  a  hundred 
years  with  an  intellectual  hero  of  the  first  rank,  who  comprehended  in 
its  full  significance  the  fundamental  idea  of  the  concordant  develop- 
ment of  the  world  from  natural  causes "  ;  and  M.  Barthelemy,  in 
France,  who  considers  that  Lamarck  was  a  forerunner  of  Darwin,  and 
a  greater  than  he. 

M.  Barthelemy,  while  admitting  that  Lamarck's  theories  on  physics, 
chemistry,  and  meteorology  were  frequently  rash  and  lacking  the  pre- 
cision that  experiment  gives,  says  :  "  He  believed  in  natural  laws,  in 
the  unity  and  transformation  of  physical  and  physiological  forces,  be- 
cause he  attributed  a  special  signification  to  nature.  To  him  nature 
was  a  power  subordinate  to  God,  its  sublime  author,  who  must  not  be 
confounded  with  it,  and  whose  function  it  is  to  put  to  work  forces 
and  laws  which  it  has  not  made,  and  can  not  modify.  His  cosmical 
system  is  summarized  in  the  three  elements  :  God,  nature,  and  the 
universe.  Transf  ormism,  with  Lamarck,  is  not  born  of  abstract  medi- 
tations and  a  priori  conceptions,  as  has  sometimes  been  said.  It  is 
connected  with  the  whole  of  the  theories  that  precede.  He  rose  from 
the  careful  study  of  the  immense  multitude  of  beings  he  had  to  ex- 
amine to  carry  order  and  light  into  the  chaos  of  invertebrate  animals. 
In  his  first  lectures  he  began  with  the  most  rudimentary  beings,  the 
origin  of  which  he  attributed  to  physico-chemical  forces,  and  then  saw 
the  organization  and  the  circulation  of  the  fluids  become  more  com- 
j)licated  and  more  perfect  as  the  scale  of  being  rose  with  new  faculties 
resulting  from  the  acquisition  of  new  organs  derived  from  the  cellular 
tissue,  and  owing  their  origin  to  new  wants  or  new  circumstances  in 
which  the  being  found  itself  placed.  He  conceived  very  clearly  the 
influence  of  external  conditions,  and  attributed  the  modifications  of 
organisms  to  two  factors,  one  interior  and  constant  and  regular  in  its 
operation  ;  the  other  exterior  and  irregular,  and  including  modifica- 
tions of  media,  temperature,  nutrition,  etc.  He  concluded  from 
this  that  a  continuous  chain  of  beings  is  not  possible,  for,  if  such 
a  chain  existed,  it  would  quickly  be  broken  by  the  accidental  or 
irregular  circumstances  to  which  beings  are  obliged  to  adapt  them- 
selves." 

Herr  Haeckel  pronounces  Lamarck's  *'  Philosophic  Zoologique,"  in 
respect  to  its  uniform  and  complete  deduction  of  the  development 
theory,  as  well  as  to  its  many-sided  empirical  basis,  far  more  impor- 


SKETCH   OF  LAMARCK.  in 

tant  than  the  similar  efforts  of  all  his  contemporaries,  even  than  the 
similar  work  of  Geoffroy  Saint-Hilaire,  and  styles  it  "the  greatest 
production  of  the  great  literary  epoch  of  the  beginning  of  our  centu- 
ry." According  to  this  naturalist's  review  of  Lamarck's  system,  it 
supposes  that  "  all  the  forms  of  animals  and  plants  which  we  distin- 
guish as  species  have  only  a  relatively  temporary  stability,  and  the 
varieties  are  incipient  species.  Therefore  the  form-group  or  type  of 
the  species  is  just  as  much  an  artificial  product  of  our  analyzing  rea- 
son as  are  the  genus,  order,  class,  and  other  categories  of  the  system. 
Changes  in  the  conditions  of  life  on  one  side,  the  use  and  non-use  of 
the  organs  on  the  other  side,  constantly  exert  a  formative  influence  on 
the  organism  ;  through  adaptation  they  bring  about  a  gradual  meta- 
morphosis of  forms,  the  principal  features  of  which  are  transmitted 
by  inheritance  from  generation  to  generation.  The  whole  system  of 
animals  and  plants  is  thus  peculiarly  their  genealogical  tree,  and  re- 
veals to  us  the  relations  of  their  natural  blood-kinship.  The  course 
of  development  on  the  globe  has  therefore  been  continuous  and  un- 
broken, like  that  of  the  earth  itself.  .  .  .  Lamarck  regarded  life  as 
only  a  very  complicated  physical  phenomenon  ;  for  all  the  phenomena 
of  life  depend  on  mechanical  antecedents,  which  are  themselves  de- 
pendent on  the  adaptedness  of  the  organic  matter.  Even  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  mental  life  are  not  different  in  this  respect  from  the 
others.  For  the  conceptions  and  acts  of  the  mind  depend  upon  motor- 
organs  in  the  central  nerve-system."  He  did  not  shrink  from  the  solu- 
tion of  the  difficult  question  of  the  origin  of  life  on  the  globe,  and 
assumed  "  that  the  common  primitive  forms  of  all  organisms  were  ab- 
solutely simple  beings  which  originated  by  spontaneous  generation, 
under  the  combined  operation  of  different  physical  causes,  out  of  the 
inorganic  matter  in  water."  "Undoubtedly,"  adds  Herr  Haeckel, 
"  the  greatest  defect  in  Lamarck's  work  was  the  insufficient  number 
of  observations  and  experiments  which  he  adduced  in  proof  of  his 
far-reaching  theories."  A  great  part  of  Darwin's  immense  success 
was  owing  to  the  fact  that  he  was  backed  by  a  host  of  clear  and  con- 
vincing observations  and  experiments,  while  "poor  Lamarck,  trusting 
too  much  to  the  logical  acumen  of  the  naturalist,  in  great  part  neg- 
lected them." 


112 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


CORRESPONDENCE 


DS.  OSWALD  AGAIN  REPLIES  TO  DR. 
BLACK. 

Messrt.  Editors : 

DR.  J.  R.  BLACK'S  second  epistle,  pub- 
lished in  the  October  issue  of  the 
"  Monthly,"  can  hardly  have  surprised  your 
intelligent  readers,  and  may  even  have  ex- 
cited •  their  pity.  When  people  like  Dr. 
Black  see  a  way  to  achieve  publicity,  they 
must  be  pardoned  for  trying  to  make  the 
best  of  their  chance,  even  on  the  terms  ac- 
cepted by  that  Paris  quack  who  volunteered 
to  be  pilloried,  if  they  would  permit  him 
to  exhibit  himself  in  a  pair  of  canvas 
breeches,  displaying  a  printed  advertise- 
ment of  his  pills.  Besides,  the  doctor  has 
somewhat  modified  his  original  plan.  Hav- 
ing undertaken  to  pose  as  a  martyr  of  med- 
ical orthodoxy,  but  finding  his  nasal  organ 
out  of  plumb  to  a  degree  he  had  not  quite 
bargained  for,  he  now  attempts  to  effect  his 
retreat  under  a  dust-cloud  of  irrelevant  ob- 
scurities. 

After  admitting  that  dyspepsia  in  chil- 
dren can  be  explained  by  the  agency  of 
causes  distinct  from  hereditary  transmission 
(which  he  had  denied  in  his  first  letter),  he 
now  defies  me  to  prove  that,  by  moderate 
eating  and  abstinence  from  virulent  drugs, 
children  can  escape  the  disease.  Has  the 
plan  ever  failed  where  it  had  a  chance  of  a 
fair  trial,  as  in  hygienic  homes,  or  in 
Schrodt's  '*  Boarding  Kindergartens  "  ?  Or 
does  Dr.  Black  know  what  his  thesis  im- 
plies ?  He  can  not  deny — 1.  That  the  di- 
gestive organs  of  children  are  governed  by 
the  same  pathological  laws  as  those  of 
adults,  the  difference,  if  any,  being  in  favor 
of  the  children,  since  every  birth  is  a  hy- 
gienic regenesis,  and  since  diseases,  as  he 
himself  admitted  in  his  first  letter,  do  not 
exist  per  se  from  the  moment  of  birth.  2. 
That  a  correct  regimen  and  abstinence  from 
noxious  drugs  will  prevent  dyspepsia  in 
adults,  and  cure  even  far-gone  dyspeptics. 
Yet  he  holds  that  a  correct  regimen  and  ab- 
stinence from  noxious  drugs  will  not  prevent 
dyspepsia  in  children.  In  other  words,  the 
laws  of  health  hold  good  in  the  ordinary 
affairs  of  life,  but  may  be  set  aside  when  it 
comes  to  account  for  the  mortality  in  the 
infant-wards  of  an  Ohio  drug-hospital.  Dr. 
Black  informs  us  that  the  public  is  deeply 
interested  in  the  issue  of  our  controversy. 
Feverishly.  But  your  readers  can  make 
their  minds  easy.  Nature  is  not  so  incon- 
sistent as  Dr.  Black;  and  I  will  under- 
take to  insure  any  child  against  dyspepsia, 
nay,  any  cured  dyspeptic  against  a  relapse 
of  the  disease,  on  the  sole  condition  that 


they  shall  avoid  dietetic  abuses  and  Dr. 
Black's  prescriptions.  In  his  distress  to 
evade  the  logical  inference  of  his  admis- 
sions, Dr.  Black  suggests  that  some  of  my 
arguments  might  be  used  to  disprove  the 
hereditary  tendency  of  insanity  and  con- 
sumption. Before  the  doctor's  friends  per- 
mit him  to  undertake  another  pathological 
controversy,  I  would  advise  them  to  en- 
lighten his  mind  on  the  difference  between 
functional  and  organic  disorders,  and  thus 
enable  him  to  understand  the  reason  why 
consumption  or  cancer, but  not  dyspepsia,  can 
be  called  an  hereditary  disease,  and  why  he- 
reditary diseases  and  not  dyspepsia  reappear 
in  successive  generations  at  the  same  period 
of  life  when  they  were  first  contracted.  If 
I  had  ever  doubted  the  chronic  persistence 
of  mental  derangements,  I  confess  that  Dr. 
Black's  arguments  would  have  convinced 
me  of  my  error.  The  manner  of  his  attempt 
to  defend  the  drivel  of  his  first  letter  is  a 
sufficient  proof  that  the  taint  of  idiocy  is 
ineradicable. 

In  trying  to  explain  away  the  silliness  of ' 
his  soap-water  argument.  Dr.  Black  volun- 
teers the  confession  that  Nature  protests 
against  the  use  of  soap  when  the  sensitive- 
ness of  the  cutaneous  tissue  has  been  mor- 
bidly increased  by  the  influence  of  a  skin- 
disease.  In  other  words,  he  admits  that  a 
morbid  condition  increases  the  danger  of 
using  even  the  mildest  chemical  depurative. 
Yet  to  the  morbidly  sensitive  membrane  of 
the  diseased  digestive  organs  he  proposds 
to  apply  the  virulent  "  intestinal  soaps,"  as 
he  calls  his  cathartic  drugs.  The  "  striking 
benefit "  resulting  from  the  use  of  patent 
laxatives  is  too  exclusively  confined  to  the 
experience  of  the  patentee. 

Dr.  Black's  assertion  that  I  propose  to 
cure  syphilis  on  the  let-alone  plan  is  a  fic- 
tion which  can  be  pardoned  only  to  a  non- 
plused sophist  at  the  brink  of  a  reductio 
ad  absurdum.  Not  only  have  I  never  pro- 
pounded such  a  theory,  but  I  have  repeat- 
edly named  syphilis  as  the  representative 
disorder  of  the  exceptional  class  of  diseases 
which  (for  reasons  stated  on  page  '729  of 
"  The  Popular  Science  Monthly  "  for  Octo- 
ber, 1881,  and  on  page  199  of  my  work  on 
"  Physical  Education  ")  have  to  be  cured  by 
an  artificial  removal  of  the  cause. 

As  a  last  attempt  to  retrieve  the  re- 
verses of  his  game,  Dr.  Black  tries  to  score 
a  point  on  a  lexicographical  quibble.  In 
defending  my  plea  for  longer  pauses  be- 
tween meals,  he  says,  I  have  spoken  of  di- 
gestion and  assimilation  as  being  one  and 
the  same  thing.     The  truth  is,  that  I  men- 


CORRESP  ONBENGE, 


113 


tioned  thera  as  synergistic  operations.  But 
within  the  scope  of  my  argument  I  would 
have  been  justified  in  treating  them  as 
identical  functions.  Does  Dr.  Black  wish 
to  deny  that  intestinal  digestion,  in  its  nor- 
mal phases,  includes  an  assimilative  process  ? 
But,  as  in  the  case  of  dyspepsia  infantum^  the 
doctor's  experience  is  perhaps  limited  to  the 
action  of  a  drug-convulsed  system,  in  which 
case  the  activity  of  the  digestive  organs  does, 
indeed,  but  rarely  lead  to  assimilation. 

Dr.  Black's  exception-plea  in  favor  of 
the  stimulant  superstition  illustrates  only 
the  radical  confusion  of  his  pathological 
theories.  For  that  energy  of  action  which 
he  mistakes  for  a  sign  of  restored  functional 
vigor  demonstrates  nothing  but  the  urgency 
of  an  expulsive  process.  The  functional 
activity  excited  by  the  influence  of  a  drastic 
tonic  proves  only  the  virulence  of  the  drug, 
and  the  system's  eagerness  to  rid  itself  of  a 
deadly  foe.  In  my  treatises  on  "  Dyspepsia 
and  Climatic  Fevers"  I  have  exposed  the 
two  most  specious  fallacies  of  the  stimu- 
lant-delusion ;  and  there  is  an  end  to  all  in- 
ductive reasoning  if  the  analogies  of  the 
stimulant-vice  and  the  medicine-habit  do 
not  establish  my  tenet  that  the  pokon-hun- 
ger  in  all  its  forms,  whether  as  mania  a 
potu.,  or  a  hankering  after  a  digestive  excit- 
ant, is  wholly  abnormal  and  mischievous ; 
that  its  repeated  gratification  rarely  fails  to 
inoculate  the  system  with  the  seeds  of  a 
progressive  stimulant-habit ;  that  the  dys- 
peptic's dependence  upon  Dr.  Black's  calo- 
mel pillsjs  an  aggravation  of  the  original 
disease ;  and  that  even  the  temporary  results, 
effected  at  such  risk,  by  the  use  of  virulent 
drugs,  can,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  be  more 
safely  and  as  directly  attained  by  other 
means,  as  by  refrigeration  in  the  treatment 
of  malarial  fevers,  or  indirectly  by  reform 
of  the  predisposing  habits,  as  in  consump- 
tion and  various  enteric  disorders.. 

In  one  of  his  tirades  against  heretical 
theories.  Dr.  Black  carries  his  bravado  to 
the  degree  of  appealing  to  the  testimony  of 
"  stubborn  facts  " — in  other  words,  to  the 
lessons  of  experience.  I  would  advise  my 
colleague  to  avoid  that  arena.  Hospital 
statistics  might  prove  that  the  homceopa- 
thists  can  challenge  our  best  record  and  dem- 
onstrate by  proofs,  which  should  satisfy  a 
depredator  of  their  sugar-pellets,  that  they 
can  beat  it  by  total  abstinence  from  the  so- 
called  remedies  of  the  drug-shops. 

In  his  first  letter  Dr.  Black  proposed  to 
let  dyspeptics  trust  themselves  to  the  guid- 
ance of  their  morbid  appetite,  and,  after  I 
proved  that  the  absurdity  of  that  plan  could 
be  demonstrated  by  the  analogies  of  the 
alcohol-habit,  our  entrapped  medicine-man 
tries  to  slip  out  by  the  following  hole :  The 
chronic  hunger  of  the  dyspeptic,  he  informs 
us,  is  a  craving  after  food,  while  the  un- 
quenchable thirst  of  the  alcohol-drinker  is 
VOL.  XXIV. — 8 


a  craving  after  poison.  Does  that  subvert 
my  tenet  that,  in  regard  to  the  persistency 
of  the  appetite,  both  cravings  are  wholly 
abnormal  ?  For,  let  us  remember  that 
the  original  point  at  issue  was  the  question 
about  the  proper  number  of  daily  meals. 
Now,  in  pursuance  of  Dr.  Black's  plan,  his 
patients  would  have  to  eat  about  forty 
meals  a  day ;  for,  in  his  first  letter,  he  ad- 
vised dyspeptics  to  follow  the  promptings 
of  an  appetite  which  he  now  admits  to  be 
morbid  and  unappeasable,  as  caused  by  a 
chronic  state  of  semi-starvation.  Thus  Dr. 
Black  continually  shifts  his  ground,  to  dodge 
the  inferences  of  his  own  premises.  But 
the  fact  is,  that  he  never  expected  to  main- 
tain his  positions.  He  merely  wrestles 
against  time,  and  accepts  his  successive 
overthrows  in  the  secret  hope  that  the 
shrieks  of  his  afflictions  might  attract  the 
aid  of  some  brother-sophist.  Hence,  also, 
his  repeated  allusions  to  a  "  numerous  class 
of  physicians  "  whose  wrath  he  warns  me  to 
deprecate.  Like  other  champions  of  ortho- 
doxy who  find  that  their  logic  leaves  them 
in  the  lurch,  he  tries  to  retreat  behind  the 
shelter  of  a  numerical  majority. 

By  my  outspoken  denunciation  of  the 
stimulant-superstition.  Dr.  Black  holds  that 
I  have  offered  an  insult  to  that  large  body 
of  medical  men  to  whom  is  due  the  credit 
of  the  most  important  discoveries  in  hygiene, 
physiology,  surgery,  etc.  My  orthodox  con- 
temporary will  try  in  vain  to  identify  the 
interests  of  his  cause  with  the  progress  of 
those  sciences.  All  their  promoters  have 
contributed  their  share  to  undermine  the 
foundations  of  the  position  which  he  tries 
to  defend.  For  the  last  hundred  years  the 
history  of  medical  science  has  been  the  his- 
tory of  a  continued  and  increasingly  rapid 
collapse  of  the  drug -delusion — a  delusion 
whose  defenders  have  always  tarried  in  the 
rear  of  progress,  and,  after  doing  their  ut- 
most to  obstruct  the  path  of  reform,  have 
recognized  its  triumphs  only  by  sharing  the 
fruits  of  its  victories.  My  invectives  were 
not  directed  against  the  thousand  earnest 
seekers  after  truth,  not  against  its  great  dis- 
coverers, the  pioneers  of  the  true  'healing 
art,  not  against  men  like  Bichat,*  Schrodt,f 


*  "  To  what  errors  have  not  mankind  been  led 
in  the  employment  and  denomination  of  medicines ! 
They  created  deobstruents  when  the  theory  of  ob- 
struction was  in  fashion ;  and  ineisives  when  that 
of  the  thickening  of  the  humors  prevailed.  Those 
who  saw  in  diseases  only  a  relaxation  or  tension  of 
the  fibers  employed  astringents  and  relaxants. 
The  same  identical  remedies  have  been  employed 
with  all  these  opposite  views.  .  .  .  Hence  the  vague- 
ness and  uncertainty  our  science  presents  at  this 
day.  An  incoherent  assemblage  of  incoherent  opin- 
ions, it  is,  perhaps,  of  all  the  physiological  sciences, 
that  which  best  shows  the  caprices  of  the  human 
mind.  What  do  I  say  ?  For  a  methodical  mind^it 
Is  not  a  science  at  all.  It  is  a  shapeless  collection 
of  inaccurate  ideas  ;  of  observations  often  puefile  ; 
of  deceptive  remedies,  and  of  formulas  as  fantasti- 
cally conceived  as  they  are  tediously  arranged." 

t "  If  we  retlect  upon  the  obstinate  health  of 


114 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


Magendie  *  Bock,f  Jules  Virey,:^  Jennings,§ 
Rush,  I  but  against  bigots  like  Dr.  Black  ; 
against  medical  obscurantists  who  dread  the 
enlightenment  of  their  victims  as  vampires 
dread  the  dawn  of  the  morning ;  who  op- 
pose independent  thinkers  with  that  rancor- 
ous hatred  which  Jesuits  feel  toward  the 
divulgers  of  their  trade-secrets  ;  who,  by 
holding  on  to  the  last  planks  of  their  wrecked 
dogmas,  by  illogical  compromises  and  tempo- 
rizing sophisms,  are  trying  to  perpetuate  the 

animals  and  savages,  upon  the  rapidity  of  their  re- 
covery from  injuries  that  defy  all  the  mixtures  of 
materia  medica  :  also  upon  the  fact  that  the  homce- 
opathists  cure  their  patients  with  milk-sugar  and 
mummery,  the  prayer-Christians  with  mummery 
without  milk-sugar,  and  my  followers  with  a  milk- 
diet  without  sugar  or  mummerj' — the  conclusion 
forces  itself  upon  us  that  the  entire  system  of  thera- 
peutics is  foimded  upon  an  erroneous  view  of  dis- 
ease " 

* "  I  hesitate  not  to  declare,  no  matter  h(»w 
sorely  I  shall  wound  our  vanitj',  that  so  gross  is  our 
ignorance  of  the  real  nature  of  the  physiological 
disorders  called  diseases,  that  it  would  perhaps  be 
better  to  do  nothing,  and  resign  the  complaint  we 
are  called  upon  to  treat  to  the  resources  of  Nature, 
than  to  act,  as  we  are  so  often  compelled  to  do, 
without  knowing  the  why  and  the  wherefore  of  our 
conduct,  and  at  the  obvious  risk  of  hastening  the 
end  of  the  patient.'' 

t  ''  By  special  methods  of  diet  nearly  all  known 
diseases  can  be  cured  as  weU  as  caused.  .  . .  Twen- 
ty-five years'  experience  at  the  sick-bed  and  the 
dissecting-table.  in  the  nursery  and  on  the  battle- 
field, have  convinced  me  that,  with  rare  exceptions, 
tiie  disorders  of  the  human  body,  which  have  been 
treated  after  such  an  infinite  variety  of  drug-sys- 
tems, can  be  as  well  cured  without  any  drugs  at 
all." 

X  "  Our  system  of  therapeutics  is  so  shaky  "  {ta- 
cillant)  "  that  the  soimdness  of  the  basis  itself  must 
be  suspected." 

§  "  It  is  unnecessary  for  my  present  purpose  to 
give  a  particular  accoimt  of  the  results  of  homoeop- 
athy ;  .  .  .  what  I  now  claim  with  respect  to  it  is, 
that  a  wise  and  beneficent  Providence  is  using  it  to 
expose  and  break  up  a  deep  delusion.  In  the  re- 
sults of  homoeopathic  practice  we  have  evidence,  in 
amount  and  of  a  character  suflScient,  most  incontest- 
ably  to  establish  the  fact  that  disease  is  a  restorative 
operation,  or  renovating  process,  and  that  medicine 
has  deceived  us.  The  evidence  is  full  and  complete. 
It  does  not  merely  consist  of  a  few  isolated  cases, 
whose  recovery  might  be  attributed  to  fortuitous 
circumstances,  but  it  is  a  chain  of  testimony  fortified 
by  every  possible  circumstance.  ...  All  kinds  and 
grades  of  disease  have  passed  under  the  ordeal  and 
all  classes  and  characters  of  persons  have  been  con- 
cerned in  the  experiment  as  patients  or  witnesses ; 
.  .  .  while  the  process  of  infinitesimally  attenu- 
ating the  drugs  used  was  carried  to  such  a  ri- 
diculous extent  that  no  one  will,  on  sober  reflec- 
tion, attribute  any  portion  of  the  cure  to  the 
medicine.  I  claim,  then,  that  homoeopathy  may 
be  regarded  as  a  providential  sealing  of  the  fate  of 
old  medical  views  and  practices." 

I  "  I  am  here  incessantly  led  to  make  an  apology 
for  the  instability  of  the  theories  and  practice  of 
physic  ;  and  those  physicians  generally  become  the 
most  eminent  who  have  the  soonest  emancipated 
themselves  from  the  tyranny  of  the  schools  of 
physic.  Dissections  daily  convince  us  of  our  igno- 
rance of  disease,  and  cause  us  to  blush  at  our  pre- 
scriptions. What  mischief  have  we  done  under  the 
belief  of  false  facts  and  false  theories !  We  have 
assisted  in  multiplying  diseases ;  we  have  done  more, 
we  have  increased  their  mortality.  I  will  not  pause 
to  he^  pnrdon  of  the  faculty  for  acknowledging,  in 
this  public  manner,  the  weakness  of  our  profession. 
I  am  pnrsuinjr  Truth,  and  am  indiflferent  whither  I 
am  led,  if  she  only  is  my  leader." 


curse  of  a  life-blighting  delusion  ;  who  sub- 
ordinate the  interests  of  mankind  to  the 
interests  of  their  clique,  and  disparage  re- 
formers till  they  find  it  convenient  to  appro- 
priate the  credit  of  their  discoveries. 

"  Some  acute  philosophers,"  our  obliging 
correspondent  informs  us,  "  think  that  all 
the  phenomena  of  the  universe  can  be  ex- 
plained on  the  laws  of  mechanics,  from  the 
motions  of  a  molecule  up  to  those  of  the 
celestial  masses."  Just  so.  And  Dr.  Black 
might  as  well  confess  the  secret  of  his  pre- 
dilection for  that  system.  Its  application 
to  therapeutics  has  so  simplified  the  practice 
of  medicine  ;  and  its  recognition  as  the  law 
of  the  tmiverse  would  confirm  the  prestige  of 
the  orthodox  cause.  Instead  of  troubling 
himself  with  a  life-long  study  of  the  laws 
and  revelations  of  Nature,  the  lessons  of 
instinct,  the  interaction  of  the  vital  func- 
tions, their  modifications  under  abnormal 
circumstances,  the  secrets  of  the  reproduc- 
tive and  self-regulating  principle  of  the  hu- 
man organism,  our  mechanical  philosopher 
would  prefer  to  re-establish  the  system  of 
the  good  old  times,  when  he  could  consult  a 
pocket-index  of  drugs,  set  against  an  alpha- 
betical list  of  diseases,  point  to  his  diploma 
as  a  presumptive  proof  that  he  had  learned 
to  repeat  the  Latin  synonyms  and  construct 
the  pharmaceutic  symbols  of  the  various 
*'  remedial  agents,"  etc.,  and  magisterially 
reprimand  hygienic  "  idealists,"  as  a  village 
schoolmaster,  well  read  in  Genesis,  would 
reprove  an  exponent  of  the  evolution  doc- 
trine. 

"  Dr.  Oswald,"  says  our  astute  corre- 
spondent, "  is  apparently  unable  to  discern 
that  all  the  customs  and  habits  of  savages 
are  intimately  correlated  to  their  vital  or- 
ganism, and  that  for  us  to  adopt  only  one 
of  them  might  prove  murderous  to  civilized 
beings,"  Because  we  can  not  imitate  all 
the  customs  of  a  primitive  nation,  is  that  a 
reason  why  we  should  not  adopt  soiyie  of 
them  ?  With  such  arguments  our  medical 
censor  dares  to  insult  the  intelligence  of 
your  readers !  Must  we  avoid  the  unleav- 
ened bread  of  the  ancient  Hebrews  because 
we  dislike  circumcision?  Must  we  dispar- 
age Japanese  temperance,  because  we  do  not 
want  to  commit  hari-kari  /  Would  the  Sa- 
mian  water-cure  prove  more  murderous  to 
civilized  beings  than  Dr.  Black's  blue-pills  ? 
If  I  should  recommend  the  system  of  the 
medical  philosopher  Asclepiades,  who  used 
to  prescribe  a  special  course  of  gymnastics 
for  every  form  of  human  disease,  Dr.  Black 
would  try  to  retreat  behind  his  correlation- 
dodge.  "  Such  systems,"  he  would  probably 
remark,  "  were  intimately  correlated  to  the 
physical  and  social  organism  of  the  pagan 
savages  and  their  uncivilized  doctors ;  but 
nowadays  every  intelligent  druggist  would 
agree  with  me  that  it  would  never  do  to  let 
people  cure  their  diseases  with  such  reme- 


CORRESP  OJSfDENCE. 


115 


dies.  In  a  country  like  ours,"  he  would  add 
in  a  whisper,  "  the  introduction  of  such  a 
system  might  prove  murderous  to  some  civ- 
ilized beings." 

Dr.  Black  complains  of  my  supercilious- 
ness in  preferring  a  charge  of  ignorance 
against  a  contemporary  who  has  for  a  long 
series  of  years  anxiously  sought  the  solution 
of  "  the  problem  how  the  sick  can  be  made 
well."  Sad  enough  ;  but  that  is  no  reason 
why  I  should  withdraw  my  charge.  Dr. 
Black  may  have  sought  that  solution  for  a 
most  venerable  series  of  years,  but,  unless 
he  holds  his  own  time  as  cheap  as  that  of 
your  readers,  he  ought  to  seek  it  more  anx- 
iously than  ever,  for  it  is  very  evident  that 
he  has  not  yet  found  it. 

Felix  L.  Oswald. 


THE  GEOLOGICAL  DISTKIBUTION  OF 
F0REST3. 

Messrs.  Editors  : 

IX  discussing  "  The  Geological  Distribu- 
tion of  North  American  Forests,"  in  your 
August  number  (pp.  521,  522),  Mr.  Thomas 
J.  Howell  makes  the  general  statement  that 
the  loess  (or  lacustral  deposits)  of  the  cam- 
pestrian  province  "  is  devoid  of  trees,"  ex- 
cept where  cut  through  by  erosion ;  from 
which  he  infers  that  "  the  loess  is  not  ca- 
pable of  sustaining  forest-growths  for  any 
length  of  time."  By  way  of  explanation, 
he  adds  that  the  loess  "  evidently  was  tim- 
bered during  the  time  that  part  of  it  was 
covered  by  lakes  and  marshes,"  but,  "  when 
the  great  rivers  cut  their  beds  down  to 
nearly  their  present  level,  the  timber  gradu- 
ally died  out."  To  generalization,  inference, 
and  explanation,  exception  must  alike  be 
taken. 

In  much  of  Eastern  Iowa,  and  in  South- 
eastern Minnesota,  the  loess  is  confined  to 
an  irregular  zone,  five  to  fifty  miles  wide, 
flanking  the  deeply  eroded  valley  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi on  the  west,  and  overlapping  the 
glacial  drift  which  forms  the  greater  part  of 
the  surface  of  both  States.  The  western 
limit  of  this  zone  is  exceedingly  sinuous ; 
lobes  of  drift  extend  for  miles  within  its 
general  area,  and  narrow,  finger-like  belts  of 
loess,  sometimes  separating  into  isolated 
outliers,  extend  still  farther  upon  the  drift- 
plain.  Now,  this  drift-plain  is  quite  timber- 
less  ;  but  the  loess  is  naturally  wooded  to 
its  extreme  margin,  and  its  outliers  are  also 
generally  wooded.  The  coincidence  of  for- 
est-growth with  loess  is  indeed  so  perfect  in 
this  region  that  maps  showing  the  wooded 
area  indicate  with  almost  equal  accuracy  the 
loess  area.  This  is  a  region,  too,  in  which 
not  only  the  "great  rivers,"  but  many  of 
their  minor  tributaries,  have  cut  their  chan- 
nels through  the  loess,  and  far  into  the  sub- 
jacent roeks,  thus  developing  the  pictur- 
esque river  bluffs  which  lure  so  many  tourists 


to  the  upper  Mississippi  region.  A  parallel 
relation  between  loess  and  forests  obtains 
in  Central  and  Southern  Illinois.  Here  the 
loess  first  appears,  in  passing  from  north  to 
south,  as  isolated  mounds  rising  from  the 
almost  dead-level  drift-plain  ;  which  mounds, 
however  far  from  other  forests,  are  well 
wooded.  The  Missouri  River  loess-belt  is, 
it  is  true,  generally  treeless,  except  along 
water-ways,  which  may  or  may  not,  however, 
cut  through  its  deposits ;  but  natural  tim- 
ber is  far  more  abundant  than  over  con- 
tiguous drift-areas,  while  its  capability  of 
supporting  arborescent  vegetation  is  em- 
phatically attested  by  the  unprecedented 
growth  of  artificially-planted  fruit  and  for- 
est trees,  which  is  at  once  the  marvel  of 
Eastern  and  the  boast  of  Western  horticul- 
turists. The  potent  influence  of  geological 
structure  in  determining  the  flora  of  any  re- 
gion is  demonstrated  by  these  relations  of 
loess  and  forests,  especially  in  Northeastern 
Iowa ;  but  the  connection  is  directly  oppo- 
site from  that  which  Mr.  Howell  seeks  to 
establish. 

But  other  and  equally  significant  rela- 
tions exist.  Thus,  it  has  been  repeatedly 
pointed  out  by  the  director  of  the  Iowa 
"Weather  Service,  Dr.  Gustavus  Hinrichs, 
that  the  lines  of  equal  timber  in  Eastern 
Iowa  correspond  remarkably,  though  in  a 
general  way,  with  the  lines  of  equal  rainfall. 

Again,  the  origin  of  the  loess  is  yet  a 
mooted  point  in  geology,  and  the  declaration 
that  its  surface  was  once  marshy  is  scarcely 
warranted ;  while  no  unequivocal  evidence 
that  it  was  ever  more  heavily  or  continu- 
ously wooded  than  now  has  ever  been  ad- 
duced. 

The  question  as  to  the  distribution  of 
forests,  particularly  in  the  campestrian  prov- 
ince, is  inextricably  involved  with  that  of 
the  treelessness  of  the  prairies,  concerning 
which  so  much  has  been  written,  but  con- 
cerning which  it  is  evident  (since  neither  of 
the  relations  pointed  out  in  this  note  have 
ever  been  adequately  considered  by  those 
who  have  addressed  themselves  to  the  prob- 
lem) that  the  last  word  has  not  yet  been 
spoken.  Mr.  Howell  would  sever  the  Gor- 
dian  knot  at  a  stroke ;  but  certainly  some 
of  its  strands  have  escaped  his  blade. 

Yours,         W.  J.  McGee. 

"WASmNGTOK,  D.  C,  July  24, 1SS3. 


INFANTILE  DYSPEPSIA. 

Messrs.  Editors : 

Referring  to  the  very  interesting  pas- 
sage at  arras  between  Dr.  Oswald,  repre- 
senting the  natural,  and  Dr.  Black,  the  anti- 
natural  school  of  medicine,  while  not  desir- 
ing to  provoke  further  controversy,  I  beg 
leave  to  offer  a  few  remarks  upon  one  point 
at  issue,  viz.,  that  pertaining  to  the  alimen- 
tation of  infants.     Dr.  Black  (see  October 


ii6 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


'•  Popular  Science  "),  while  granting  the 
soundness  of  Dr.  Oswald's  position  as  to  the 
"  millions  of  infants  who  from  the  moment 
of  birth  are  overfed  and  drug-poisoned,"  viz., 
that  we  have  here  a  sufficient  cause  of  dys- 
pepsia, asks :  "  Well,  what  of  the  millions 
that  are  not  ?  Are  they  the  ones  who  do 
not  show  any  such  tendency,  despite  the 
tact  that  some  of  their  progenitors  do  ?  " 
Would  Dr.  Black  have  us  believe  that,  out- 
side of  "  baby -farms,''  a  single  babe,  of  all 
the  millions  who  live  to  be  born,  escapes 
being  constantly  overfed  and  (in  conse- 
quence) occasionally  medicated  ?  I  assert 
that,  as  to  the  first  count  in  the  indictment, 
an  infant  is  about  as  sure  to  be  excessively 
fed  as  he  is  to  be  born.  The  only  excep- 
tion in  general  practice  is  where  the  babe 
is  nourished  at  the  breast,  and  the  supply 
happens  to  be  short  of  an  excess,  and  even 
in  these  cases  all  haste  is  made  to  supple- 
ment his  natural  aliment  with  the  bottle ; 
for  mothers  are  unhappy  unless  their  babies 
are  growing  obese  at  the  rate  of  a  pound 
or  more  a  week.  Infants  usually  measure 
more  round  the  body,  arms,  and  legs,  and 
weigh  more,  at  some  period  during  their 
first  year — often  at  six  months — than  at  the 
age  of  two  and  a  half  or  three  years.  No 
growing  thing,  in  either  the  animal  or  vegeta- 
ble kingdom,  can,  under  natural  conditions, 
exhibit  anything  of  this  sort.  Parents,  no 
more  than  the  average  "  druggist,"  are  aware 
of  the  fact  that  the  normal  or  true  growth 
of  an  infant  is  never  more  than  three  to  five 
ounces  per  week,  and  that  all  the  gain 
above  this  is  from  fat,  representing  excess, 
though  seldom  all  of  the  excess — more  or 
less  being  daily  purged  away  by  the  bowels, 
or  excreted  through  other  outlets.  All  this 
produces  or  constitutes  disease,  leads  on  to 
sickness,  and  probably  dosing.  While  we 
have  to  admit  that  only  about  forty  or  fifty 
per  cent  are,  before  the  age  of  five  years, 
stamped  out  by  this  combination — a  method 
of  getting  rid  of  the  weakling*  far  more 
cruel  than  the  Spartan  plan,  of  freezing 
them,  or  the  African,  of  feeding  to  the 
crocodiles — ninety-nine  in  every  hundred 
are  made  sick  by  overfeeding,  and  few  of 
these  escape  being  more  or  less  drugged. 
Having  made  the  question  of  infant  die- 
tetics a  specialty  for  the  past  ten  years,  I 
find  that  to  hold  to  cow's  milk  as  the  exclu- 
sive diet  of  bottle-babes  (a  portion  of  the 
cream  to  be  removed  in  case  the  milk  is 
very  rich  in  this  constituent),  limiting  the 
number  of  meals  to  three,  and  somewhat  re- 
stricting the  amount  at  each  meal,  and  allow- 
ing nurslings  three  to  five  meals  (according 

*  Quoth  Dr.  Black,  "  Now,  we  nurse  them  (the 
^reaklinp.s)  to  adult  Hfel  "  In  fact,  only  about  fifty 
to  sixty  per  cent  of  all  infants  ari-ive  at  adult  age, 
and  these  have  been  fitly  described  as  "  too  tough 
to  kill."  Even  these,  to  the  last  one,  would  make 
he.althier  men  and  women,  if  saved  the  abuses  we 
have  named. 


as  the  breast  may  or  may  not  require  the 
"stimulation  "  of  frequent  drawing),  is  an  al- 
most absolute  guarantee  against  the  gastro- 
intestinal disorders  which  are  popularly  sup- 
posed to  be  unavoidable  at  this  period  of 
life. 

Considerable  restriction  is  essential  with 
bottle  -  babies ;  for  a  greedy  infant  will  at 
any  age  swallow  at  two  ''  sittings "  a  full 
physiological  ration  for  twenty-four  hours, 
and,  if  there  is  to  be  no  restriction  as  to  the 
quantity  taken  at  each  meal,  no  more  than 
two  should  be  offered.  Furthermore,  every 
infant  who  is  not  fed  ad  navseam  will  be 
"  greedy."  In  case  of  infants  nourished  at 
the  breast,  the  flow,  if  excessive,  must  be 
diminished  by  regulating  the  mother's  diet ; 
for  in  such  cases  the  excess  is  due  to  an 
over-stimulating  or  slop  diet,  which  affects 
the  nursing-woman  as  a  "  driving"  diet  doea 
our  dairy  cows,  causing  a  large  yield  of  un- 
naturally constituted,  though  perhaps  "rich" 
milk,  in  order  to  show  the  wide  contrast 
between  the  universal  cramming  and  a  truly 
wholesome  diet,  I  will  cite  the  case  of  my 
own  infant,  now  a  "  stout,  strapping  boy " 
of  twelve  months,  who  is  one  of  a  number 
known  to  me  as  having  enjoyed  a  really  fair 
chance  for  proving  their  fitness  to  survive. 
His  allowance  at  this  time  is  a  coffee-cup- 
ful, or  about  eighteen  tablespoonfuls,  at 
each  meal.  It  is  usual  for  infants  to  swal- 
low as  much,  often  more  tlian  three  such 
cupfuls,  every  day,  at  the  age  of  three  or 
four  months,  except  when  nausea  or  lack  of 
appetite  prevents.  They  are  either  "con- 
stantly "  fed,  or  at  least  have  a  meal  every  two 
or  three  hours.  This  is  the  practice  with  the 
"  million,"  by  which  I  presume  Dr.  Oswald 
meant  all  "civilized"  infants,  including  Dr. 
Black's,  if  he  has  been  blessed  with  such 
"  troublesome  comforts,"  as  they  are  univer- 
sally called — a  term,  by -the -way,  in  itself 
very  significant  in  this  connection ;  for,  again 
referring  to  the  few  infants  who  have  been 
exceptinoally  fed,  "  breathed,"  clad,  and 
exercised,  i.  e. — 1.  Fed  in  the  manner  I  have 
described  as  constituting  a  physiological 
diet ;  2.  Given  the  breath  of  life,  viz.,  out- 
door air  twenty-four  hours  a  day,  whether 
the  babe  is  in-doors  or  out ;  3.  Saved  from 
sweltering  clothing — allowing  the  skin  to 
"  breathe  " ;  4.  Kationally  "  neglected,"  or, 
in  other  words,  instead  of  being  constantly 
held,  tended,  or  wheeled,  early  allowed  the 
opportunity,  on  the  floor  or  lawn,  of  rolling, 
tumbling,  stretching  out,  and  learning  to 
creep  at  an  early  age,  thus  earning  a  good 
digestion,  and  avoiding  one  of  the  principal 
causes  of  infantile  dyspepsia,  by  being,  like 
kittens,  puppies,  and  young  monkeys,  large- 
ly "  self-supporting,"  and  like  them  develop- 
ing naturally  in  all  parts  of  the  frame— by 
these  means,  I  would  say,  it  has  been  shown 
to  be  entirely  practicable  to  insure  for  the 
"  infant  race  "  a  condition  as  comfortable, 


EDITOR'S    TABLE. 


117 


happy,  and  thrifty,  as  that  enjoyed  by  the 
most  fortunate  of  the  nurslings  of  our  do- 
mestic animals  or  household  pets. 

If  in  order,  I  would  also  venture  to  cite 
a  case  of  gastric  cramps  similar  to  that 
mentioned  by  Dr.  Black,  but  more  "  natural- 
ly "  cured.  I  was  called  one  day  during  the 
past  summer  to  the  bedside  of  an  old  lady 
friend,  who  is  sixty-six  years  of  age,  and 
very  frail.  She  was  suffering  intensely 
from  acute  dyspepsia.  "  Well,  doctor,"  she 
moaned,  between  the  spasms,  "you — will 
have — to — give — me — some  —  medicinethis- 
time ! "  "  Very  good,"  I  replied,  "  here  it 
is."  (Having  obtained  a  hint  from  the 
nurse  as  to  the  state  of  affairs,  I  had  or- 
dered up  a  pitcher  each  of  hot  and  cold 
water.)  "  Just  drink  this  cupful  of  warm 
water.  Take  it  right  down,  please,  as  if  it 
were  a  delicious  draught,  and  you  were  feel- 
ing very  thirsty."  This  she  did,  and  then 
another  and  another,  and  so  on  until  she 


had,  within  twenty  minutes,  taken  eight  full 
cups.  Then  I  asked  her  to  make  a  slight 
exploration  to  see  if  she  could  touch  that 
warm  water  with  her  forefinger !  She  made 
the  attempt  and  succeeded — the  water  meet- 
ing her  more  than  half-way.  Along  with 
the  water  came  the  cause  of  the  cramps,  in 
the  shape  of  undigested  food.  Directly 
after  this  she  swallowed,  though  under  pro- 
test, seven  cupfuls  more  of  the  same  safe 
remedy,  which  had  just  the  effect  I  antici- 
pated. She  soon  became  entirely  at  ease, 
rested  quietly  for  the  balance  of  the  after- 
noon, slept  soundly  that  night,  and  awoke 
next  morning  to  laugh  over  the  experience 
of  the  day  before.  There  was  no  poison 
taken  to  tax  the  organism.  The  water  did 
its  perfect  work — washing  the  stomach,  di- 
luting the  blood,  and  aiding  in  the  elimina- 
tion of  impurities,  instead  of  adding  to  them 
in  the  least  degree.  C.  E.  Page. 

New  Toek,  September  17, 1S83. 


EDITOR'S    TABLE. 


THE  CURRENT  STUDY  OF  CLASSICS  A 
FAILURE. 

PRESIDENT  PORTER  has  replied 
to  Mr.  Adams  on  the  Greek  ques- 
tion. The  President  of  Yale  College, 
we  need  not  say,  is  a  very  strong  man 
— an  eminent  scholar,  an  experienced 
educator,  a  keen  controversialist,  and 
thoroughly  familiar  with  this  subject; 
and  so  in  the  "Princeton  Review" 
for  September,  in  the  openinsf  article, 
entitled  "A  College  Fetich,"  he  has 
given  what  must  be  virtually  accepted 
as  the  official  answer  to  Mr.  Adams's 
argument.  Assuming,  then,  that  Presi- 
dent Porter  has  made  out  the  best  case 
possible,  let  us  see  whether  Mr.  Adams's 
main  position  has  been  successfully  as- 
sailed or  remains  undisturbed. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  in  his 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  address  Mr.  Adams 
arraigned  the  system  of  classical  study 
in  Harvard  College,  and  more  emphat- 
ically that  of  Greek,  as  a  failure ;  and  he 
appealed  to  his  own  experience,  and  to 
that  of  three  generations  of  his  ances- 
tors, in  proof  of  the  charge.  He  alleged 
that  the  time  spent  upon  classical  lan- 
guages was  wasted,  first,  because  he  did 


not  master  them,  and,  second,  because 
the  time  spent  upon  them  ought  to 
have  been  given  to  more  valuable  ac- 
quisitions in  preparation  for  the  duties 
and  responsibilities  of  modern  life. 

President  Porter  takes  issue  with 
Mr.  Adams  on  the  main  points  of  his 
argument.  He  holds  to  "  the  perfec- 
tion of  the  Greek  language  as  an  instru- 
ment for  the  perpetual  training  of  the 
mind  of  the  later  generations " ;  and 
maintains  that  "  the  ancient  languages, 
in  their  structure,  their  thoughts,  also 
in  the  imagery  which  their  literature 
embodies,  are  better  fitted  than  any 
modern  languages  can  be  for  the  single 
office  of  training  the  intellect,  and  the 
feehngs,  and  the  taste ;  and  in  every 
one  of  these  advantages  the  Greek  is 
pre-eminently  superior  to  the  Latin." 
As  a  consequence,  he  maintains  that 
"the  old  classical  training"  is  the  best 
preparation  for  the  intellectual  work  of 
modern  life,  the  best  corrective  of  its 
injurious  influences,  and  therefore  not 
an  educational  failure. 

But  Mr.  Adams  had  condemned  the 
system  after  trial  of  it.  He  had  dili- 
gently pursued  the  classics  as  prescribed 


ii8 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


and  taught  in  the  preparatory  schools 
and  at  Harvard  College,  and  found  that 
they  had  yielded  to  hira  none  of  the 
great  and  salutary  results  that  are 
claimed  for  them.  President  Porter 
replies  that  we  are  not  bound  to  accept 
the  cause  assigned  for  the  alleged  fail- 
ure. He  says :  "  Mr.  Adams  seems  to 
forget  that  at  least  three  solutions  may 
be  given  for  the  apparent  failure  of  his 
own  college  life,  of  which  he  has  recog- 
nized but  one :  1.  The  failure  was  only 
apparent,  but  not  real,  or  not  to  the 
extent  which  he  imagines.  He  de- 
rived more  advantage  than  he  is  now 
aware  of,  even  from  the  Greek.  ...  2. 
The  curriculum  may  have  been  wisely 
selected,  and  the  teaching  may  have 
been  imperfect.  ...  3.  The  student  may 
neglect  and  render  futile  the  most 
wisely-selected  curriculum,  even  when 
enforced  by  the  most  skillful  and  zeal- 
ous teaching." 

It  is  upon  the  first  of  these  consid- 
erations that  President  Porter  lays  the 
greatest  stress  in  his  article.  He  does 
not  urge  the  other  alternatives — either 
that  the  Harvard  teaching  was  bad,  or 
that  Mr.  Adams  was  idle  or  negligent, 
but  he  argues  that  Mr.  Adams  is  mis- 
taken in  his  assertion  that  he  derived 
no  important  benefits  from  his  classical 
studies.  He  says:  "In  judging  of  the 
effects  of  a  course  of  studies,  the  sharp 
distinction  should  be  made  between  the 
impressions  which  are  actually  received, 
and  the  reflective  recognition  of  these 
impressions  by  the  recipient  and  his  own 
consequent  estimate  of  them."  And 
again :  "  It  is  certainly  no  new  thing  for 
children,  even  those  of  an  older  growth, 
to  fail  to  appreciate  the  value  of  the 
training  to  which  they  owe  all  their 
success  in  life,  and  to  esteem  those 
features  of  it  the  least  to  which  they 
owe  the  most." 

We  have  here  the  old  stock  defense 
of  the  classical  superstition.  It  is  not  a 
failure,  because  it  exerts  certain  won- 
derful and  mysterious  influences  of 
which  the  student  may  not  be  aware, 


but  which  are  abundantly  vindicated 
by  time.  That  is,  the  student  is  not 
the  proper  judge  of  the  eff'ects  upon  his 
own  mind  of  the  leading  studies  to 
which  he  gives  the  best  years  of  his 
life.  But  it  is  proper  to  ask,  If  those 
who  have  had  experience  of  it  "  fail  to 
appreciate  the  value  of  the  training  to 
which  they  owe  all  their  success  in 
life,"  who  else  has  authority  to  speak 
in  the  matter?  The  argument  cuts 
both  ways.  If  Mr.  Adams  did  not 
know  when  he  declared  that  the  study 
of  Greek  had  in  his  case  proved  a  fail- 
ure, does  President  Porter  know  when 
he  denies  it  ?  If  the  evidence  of  expe- 
rience is  not  to  be  trusted,  what  evi- 
dence is  to  be  taken  ?  The  case  looks 
like  one  of  dogmatic  assumption  against 
positive  self-knowledge.  If  a  college 
graduate,  after  long  trial  of  his  educa- 
tion in  the  arena  of  practical  hfe,  is 
incompetent  to  decide  upon  its  adapta- 
bility and  adequacy  to  his  needs,  then 
there  are  no  valid  grounds  of  judgment 
in  the  matter.  But  the  idea  is  an  out- 
rage upon  common  sense,  and  we  might 
be  well  surprised  that  it  should  be  put 
forth  by  a  distinguished  college  presi- 
dent if  we  did  not  know  to  what  ridic- 
ulous shifts  the  classicists  are  driven  in 
defense  of  their  anomalous  traditions. 
Sydney  Smith  long  ago  declared,  in  re- 
lation to  the  classical  superstition,  that 
it  has  been  the  practice  of  the  universi- 
ties "to  take  credit  for  all  the  mind 
they  did  not  succeed  in  extinguishing." 
The  practice  lives  on  in  the  equally 
preposterous  assumption  that  all  the 
success  a  university  man  achieves  in 
life  is  duo  to  the  Greek  and  Latin  he 
learned  or  did  not  learn — whether  he 
knows  it  or  not.  That  this  nonsensical 
notion  should  be  so  all-prevalent,  and 
still  so  influential  with  multitudes,  only 
shows  how  completely  even  our  high- 
er education  is  still  in  the  fetichistic 
stage. 

What  President  Porter  had  before 
him  to  do  was  to  break  the  force  of 
Mr.  Adams's  testimony  that  his  clas- 


EDITOR'S    TABLE. 


119 


sical  education  had  proved  a  failure. 
He  first  tried  to  discredit  him  as  not 
knowing  the  difference  between  failure 
and  success,  intimating  that  Mr.  Adams 
has  been  after  all  a  very  successful  man ; 
that  he  studied  Greek ;  therefore,  by  a 
well-known  classical  formula,  his  suc- 
cess was  due  to  his  Greek.  But  Presi- 
dent Porter  is  not  entirely  satisfied  with 
the  sufficiency  of  this  logic,  and  so  he 
proceeds  to  strengthen  his  case  by  re- 
sorting to  counter-testimony.  Sudden- 
ly converted  to  the  faith  that  the  evi- 
dence of  men  of  experience  is  worth 
something — at  least  when  it  comes  on 
his  side — he  cites  repeated  cases  of 
men  who,  in  opposition  to  Mr.  Adams, 
set  a  high  value  on  their  classical  edu- 
cation. The  question,  then,  is,  to  what 
extent  is  Mr.  Adams's  view  substanti- 
ated by  the  testimony  of  others,  and 
of  those  who  must  be  regarded  as  the 
highest  authorities  ?  Let  us  rule  out  the 
enemies  of  the  classics — those  ignorant 
of  them  or  prejudiced  against  them —  j 
and  appeal  to  men  whose  sympathies 
and  predilections  are  on  the  other  side,  j 
but  who  have  had  large  opportunities  | 
of  observing  the  results  of  classical  ' 
study — eminent  educators,  college  pres- 
idents, experienced  teachers,  and  pro- 
fessors of  Latin  and  Greek,  and  those 
who  have  systematically  and  under  re- 
sponsibility inquired  into  the  general 
working  of  this  kind  of  education. 

A  conspicuous  example  of  such  testi- 
mony is  obtained  without  going  very  far. 
The  eminent  President  of  Columbia  Col- 
lege, Dr.  P.  A.  P.  Barnard,  is  a  man  of 
enlarged  experience  in  the  field  of  colle- 
giate education,  and  he  has  anticipated 
Mr.  Adams  in  the  emphatic  reproba- 
tion of  dead-language  studies,  on  the 
ground  of  their  incontestable  failure. 
In  an  address  before  the  University  Con- 
vocation a  few  years  ago  President  Bar- 
nard said :  "  What  are  in  fact  the  re- 
sults which  we  do  actually  reach  in  the 
teaching  of  the  classics  at  this  time  ? 
Are  they  in  truth  anything  like  what 
we  claim  for  them?     We  hear,  for  in- 


stance, a  great  deal  said  of  the  intel- 
lectual treasures  locked  up  in  the  lan- 
guages of  Greece  and  Kome,  which  it 
is  asserted  that  our  system  of  educa- 
tion throws  open  to  the  student  freely 
to  enjoy.  And  yet  we  know  that  prac 
tically  this  claim  is  without  foundation. 
It  will  not,  I  presume,  be  affirmed  of 
the  graduates  of  American  colleges  gen- 
erally that  they  become  familiar  with 
any  portions  of  the  literature  of  Eome 
and  Greece  which  do  not  form  part  of 
their  compulsory  reading.  It  will  hard- 
ly be  affirmed  that  one  in  ten  of  them 
does  so.  And  why  not?  The  reason 
is  twofold:  First,  there  is  hardly  one 
in  ten  in  whose  mind  the  classics  ever 
cease  to  be  associated  with  notions  of 
painful  labor.  Reading  is  not  therefore 
pursued  beyond  the  limit  of  what  is  re- 
quired, because  it  is  not  agreeable.  But, 
secondly  and  chiefly,  there  is  hardly  one 
in  ten  whose  knowledge  of  the  Latin 
or  the  Greek  is  ever  sufficiently  famil- 
iar to  give  him  the  command  of  the 
ancient  literature  which  it  is  asserted 
for  him  that  he  enjoys.  I  suppose  that, 
to  read  with  any  satisfaction  any  work 
in  any  language,  we  should  be  able  to 
give  our  attention  to  the  ideas  that  it 
conveys,  without  being  embarrassed  or 
confused  by  want  of  familiarity  with 
the  machinery  by  which  they  are  im- 
parted. It  will  not  be  for  mere  pleas- 
ure that  we  shall  pursue  our  task,  if 
every  sentence  brings  us  a  new  neces- 
sity to  turn  over  our  lexicons,  or  to  rea- 
son out  a  probable  meaning  by  the  ap- 
phcation  of  the  laws  of  syntax.  And 
yet,  if  there  be  any  of  our  graduates 
who  are  able,  without  such  embarrass- 
ments, to  read  a  classical  author,  never 
attempted  before,  the  number  must  be 
very  few.  If  there  are  any  who  can 
read  even  such  books  of  Latin  and 
Greek  as  they  have  read  before,  with 
anything  like  the  fluency  with  which 
they  read  their  mother-tongue,  the 
number  can  not  be  large ;  and  if  there 
are  any  who  can  read,  with  similar  fa- 
cility, classic  works  which  they  take  up 


120 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


for  the  first  time,  it  is  so  small  that  I 
have  never  seen  one.  .  .  . 

"  Can  a  person  be  said  to  know  a 
language  which  he  can  not  read  ?  And 
is  it  a  result  worth  the  time  and  labor 
expended  upon  it  to  attain  such  a 
doubtful  acquaintance  with  a  language 
or  anything  else,  as  that  which  the 
majority  of  our  graduates  carry  away 
with  them  of  these,  at  the  close  of 
their  educational  career?  Might  not 
the  same  amount  of  time  and  labor  dif- 
ferently employed  have  produced  at 
last  something  having  a  value  at  least 
appreciable  ?  And  is  not  the  immense 
disproportion  between  labor  expended 
and  results  obtained  itself  the  best  evi- 
dence that  this  labor  has  not  been  ex- 
pended most  wisely  for  the  accomplish- 
ment of  its  own  avowed  end?  For 
surely  there  can  not  be  any  language, 
dead  or  living,  in  the  known  world, 
which  any  intelligent  person  ought  not 
to  be  able  to  acquire,  so  as  at  least  to 
read  it,  in  a  course  of  ten  years'  study." 

But  it  may  be  said  that  the  Ameri- 
can standard  of  classical  attainment  is 
low,  and  that  we  must  go  where  the 
system  has  been  more  faithfully  tried, 
for  the  highest  evidence  of  its  advan- 
tages. Very  well,  and  it  happens  that 
this  evidence  is  abundant.  Classical 
studies  have  been  tested  upon  the  most 
extensive  scale,  and  under  all  the  most 
favorable  conditions.  For  hundreds  of 
years  tliey  have  been  the  staple  ele- 
ments of  English  culture.  The  English 
universities  and  the  great  public  schools 
of  England  form  a  consolidated  system 
devoted  for  centuries  ahnost  exclusively 
to  classical  teaching.  The  system  has 
had  the  authority  of  tradition,  it  has 
been  backed  by  abounding  wealth,  it 
has  had  the  patronage  of  church  and 
state,  and  has  been  cherished  by  insti- 
tutions of  every  grade,  which  have  been 
independent  of  all  disturbance  from 
the  caprice  of  public  opinion.  If  ''  the 
perfection  of  the  Greek  language,"  as 
President  Porter  assumes,  fits  it  as  "  an 
instrument  for  the  perpetual  training 


of  the  mind  of  the  later  generations," 
then  the  circumstances  of  English  edu- 
cation have  been  most  favorable  for 
proving  it.  But  what  is  the  result?  A 
thousand  authorities  may  be  summed 
up  in  the  following  sentence  of  a  letter 
from  Professor  Blackie,  of  Edinburgh, 
to  the  late  Dr.  Hodgson.  He  says,  "  I 
entirely  agree  with  you  that  the  present 
system  of  classical  education,  as  a  gen- 
eral method  of  training  English  gentle- 
men, is  a  superstition,  a  blunder,  and  a 
failure."  The  evidence  is  overwhelm- 
ing that  the  great  mass  of  students,  in 
the  best  English  institutions,  so  far  from 
gaining  access  to  the  sphere  of  clas- 
sical thought,  do  not  even  get  a  decent 
knowledge  of  the  bare  forms  of  the 
dead  languages  themselves.  To  such 
an  extent  had  classical  study  become 
itself  an  utter  failure,  and  to  such  an 
extent  did  it  stand  in  the  way  of  all 
other  studies,  that  it  came  to  be  widely 
denounced  as  a  scandal  to  the  nation^ 
and  the  Government  was  called  upon 
to  interfere  and  put  an  end  to  it.  They 
are  very  cautious  in  England  about 
meddling  with  old  and  venerated  things 
by  the  intervention  of  law,  but  they 
have  a  salutary  habit  of  inquiring  into 
them  with  great  thoroughness  upon 
suitable  occasions.  Parliamentary  com- 
missions were  therefore  appointed  to 
investigate  the  condition  of  education, 
both  in  the  universities  and  in  the 
great  public  schools  which  prepare 
young  men  for  the  universities.  The 
reports  that  resulted  were  monuments 
alike  of  searching  inquiry  and  the  to- 
tal failure  of  the  cherished  classical 
education.  The  London  '*  Times  "  thus 
summed  up  the  report  of  the  commis- 
sioners upon  the  teaching  of  the  pub- 
lic schools:  "In  one  word,  we  may 
say  that  they  find  it  to  be  a  failure — a 
failure,  even  if  tested  by  those  better 
specimens,  not  exceeding  one  third  of 
the  whole,  who  go  up  to  the  universi- 
ties. Though  a  very  large  number  of 
these  have  literally  nothing  to  show 
for  the  results  of  their  school-hours, 


EDITOR'S   TABLE, 


121 


from  childhood  to  manhood,  but  a 
knowledge  of  Latin  and  Greek,  with  a 
little  English  and  arithmetic,  we  have 
here  the  strongest  testimony  that  their 
knowledge  of  the  former  is  most  inac- 
curate, and  their  knowledge  of  the  lat- 
ter contemptible." 

And  now  let  us  observe  how  this 
thorough -going  system  is  characterized 
by  one  who  has  had  the  best  possible 
opportunities  for  observing  and  know- 
ing its  results.  In  a  lecture  delivered 
before  the  Royal  Institution  of  Great 
Britain,  by  the  Eev.  F.  W.  Farrar,  a 
distinguished  author  and  philologist, 
and  who  was  one  of  the  masters  of 
Harrow  School,  and  for  thirteen  years 
a  classical  teacher,  we  have  the  follow- 
ing estimate  of  the  present  value  of  the 
system.  Canon  Farrar  says  :  "  I  must, 
then,  avow  my  own  deliberate  opinion, 
arrived  at  in  the  teeth  of  the  strongest 
possible  bias  and  prejudice  in  the  op- 
posite direction — arrived  at  with  the 
fullest  possible  knowledge  of  every  sin- 
gle argument  which  may  be  urged  on 
the  other  side — I  must  avow  my  dis- 
tinct conviction  that  our  present  sys- 
tem of  exclusively  classical  education, 
as  a  whole,  and  carried  out  as  we  do 
carry  it  out,  is  a  deplorable  failure.  I 
say  it,  knowing  that  the  words  are  I 
strong  words,  but  not  without  having 
considered  them  well ;  and  I  say  it  be- 
cause that  system  has  been  '  weighed 
in  the  balance  and  found  wanting.'  It 
is  no  epigram,  but  a  simple  fact,  to  say 
that  classical  education  neglects  all  the 
powers  of  some  minds,  and  some  of  the 
powers  of  all  minds.  In  the  case  of 
the  few  it  has  a  value  which,  being 
partial,  is  unsatisfactory ;  in  the  case  of 
the  vast  multitude  it  ends  in  utter  and 
irremediable  waste." 

In  speaking  of  the  defects  in  teach- 
ing the  dead  languages.  President  Por- 
ter refers  to  the  superiority  in  some 
points  of  English  over  American  meth- 
ods. He  says  :  "  The  culture  and  ele- 
vation which  might  come  were  the 
power  of  rapid  and  facile  reading  cul- 


tivated, and  the  use  of  it,  or  the  ex- 
pression of  thought  and  feeling  appre- 
ciated, fail  in  great  measure  to  be  at- 
tained. These  mistakes  and  failures 
are  probably  more  conspicuous  in  the 
American  colleges  than  in  those  of 
England  or  Germany,  for  the  reason 
that  in  England  composition  in  prose 
and  verse  compels  to  a  certain  mastery 
of  the  vocabulary,  and  a  sense  of  the 
use  of  words  which  mere  grammatical 
analysis  can  never  impart." 

Certainly,  if  anywhere,  we  should 
expect  to  find  in  these  critical  construc- 
tive exercises  in  "composition  in  prose 
and  verse,"  which  President  Porter 
recognizes  as  a  special  excellence  of  the 
English  teaching,  the  most  successful  ex- 
emplification of  the  benefits  of  classical 
culture.  But  Canon  Farrar  refers  to 
this  very  practice  in  the  following  scath- 
ing terms  as  the  worst  failure  of  the  sys- 
tem :  ''  To  myself,  trained  in  the  system 
for  years,  and  training  others  in  it  for 
years — being  one  of  those  who  succeed- 
ed init,  if  that  amount  of  progress  which 
has  been  thought  worthy  of  high  clas- 
sical honors  in  two  universities  may 
be  called  success — influenced,  therefore, 
by  every  conceivable  prejudice  of  au- 
thority, experience,  and  personal  van- 
ity in  its  favor,  I  can  only  give  my 
emphatic  conclusion  that  every  year 
the  practice  of  it  appears  to  me  increas- 
ingly deplorable,  and  the  theory  of  it 
every  year  increasingly  absurd." 

After  giving  some  examples,  this  dis- 
gusted but  but  unusually  candid  clas- 
sical teacher  thus  proceeds:  "This 
is  the  sort  of  'kelp  and  brick-dust' 
used  to  polish  the  cogs  of  their  mental 
machinery  I  And  when,  for  a  good  dec- 
ade of  human  life,  and  those  its  most 
invaluable  years,  a  boy  has  stumbled  on 
this  dreadful  mill-round,  without  pro- 
gressing a  single  step,  and  is  plucked 
at  his  matriculation  for  Latin  prose,  we 
flatter  ourselves,  forsooth,  that  we  have 
been  giving  him  the  best  means  for 
learning  Latin  quotations,  for  improving 
taste  (or  what  passes  for  such),  for  ac- 


22 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


quiring  the  niceties  of  Greek  and  Latin 
scholarship !  W»e  resent  the  nickname 
of  the  '  Chinese  of  Europe,'  yet  our 
education  offers  the  closest  possible 
analogue  to  that  which  reigns  in  the 
Celestial  Empire,  and  for  centuries  we 
have  continued,  and  are  continuing,  a 
system  to  which  (so  far  as  I  know)  no 
other  civilized  nation  attaches  any  im- 
portance, yet  which  leaves  us  to  bor- 
row our  scholarship  second-hand  from 
them;  which  is  now  necessary  for 
the  very  highest  classical  honors  at 
the  University  of  Cambridge  alone  ;  in 
which  only  one  has  a  partial  glimmer- 
ing of  success,  for  hundreds  and  hun- 
dreds who  inevitably  fail ;  and  in  which 
the  few  exceptional  successes  are  so 
flagrantly  useless  that  they  can  only  be 
regarded  at  the  best  as  a  somewhat 
trivial  and  fantastic  fCccomplishment— 
an  accomplishment  so  singularly  bar- 
ren of  all  results  that  it  has  scarcely 
produced  a  dozen  original  poems  on 
which  the  world  sets  the  most  trifling 
value;  while  we  waste  years  in  thus 
perniciously  fostering  idle  verbal  imita- 
tions, and  in  neglecting  the  rich  fruit  of 
ancient  learning  for  its  bitter,  useless, 
and  unwholesome  husk — while  we  thus 
dwarf  many  a  vigorous  intellect,  and 
disgust  many  a  manly  mind — while  a 
great  university,  neglecting  in  large 
measure  the  literature  and  the  philoso- 
phy of  two  leading  nations,  contents  it- 
self with  being,  in  the  words  of  one  of 
its  greatest  sons,  'a  bestower  of  re- 
wards for  school-boy  merit '  —  while 
thousands  of  despairing  boys  thus  waste 
their  precious  hours  in  'contracting 
their  own  views  and  deadening  their 
own  sensibilities '  by  a  failure  in  the 
acquisition  of  the  useless — while  we 
apply  this  inconceivably  irrational  pro- 
cess to  Greek  and  Latin,  and  to  no  other 
language  ever  yet  taught  under  the  sun 
— while  we  thus  accumulate  instruction 
without  education,  and  feel  no  shame 
or  compunction  if  at  the  end  of  many 
years  we  thrust  our  youth,  in  all  their 
unwarned  ignorance,  through  the  open 


gate  of  life — while,  I  say,  such  a  system 
as  this  continues  and  flourishes,  which 
most  practical  men  have  long  scorned 
with  an  immeasurable  contempt,  do  not 
let  us  consider  that  we  have  advanced 
a  single  step  in  reforming  education,  to 
reform  which,  in  the  words  of  Leib- 
nitz, is  to  reform  society  and  to  reform 
mankind." 

This  is  sufficiently  explicit  and  em- 
phatic as  to  the  worth  of  current  clas- 
sical study,  but  the  ever-ready  objec- 
tion is,  that  all  this  condemnation  is 
only  true  of  the  bad  methods  by  which 
the  dead  languages  are  taught,  and 
that,  if  they  were  taught  as  they  should 
be  and  can  be,  there  would  be  no  basis 
for  the  charge  of  failure.  But  Mr.  Ad- 
ams's arraignment  was  of  the  existing 
practice,  and  he  did  not  deny  that 
there  may  possibly  be  a  better  practice 

^  in  which  classical  studies  shall  be  suc- 
cessful. President  Porter  does  not 
hesitate  to  fall  back  upon  the  bad 
methods  of  teaching  as  giving  some  ex- 

I  cuse  for  the  charge  of  failure.  We 
suspect,  however,  that  a  good  deal 
more  is  made  of  this  bad-method  pre- 
text than  it  will  bear,  and  that  the 
study  of  dead  languages  as  a  leading 
element  of  higher  education  in  this  age 
must  remain  a  failure,  whatever  the 
perfection  of  the  methods  employed  in 
their  acquisition.  Indeed,  it  becomes 
a  serious  question  whether,  broadly 
considered,  perfected  methods  would 
not  lead  to  worse  failure  than  the  ex- 
isting practice.  But  we  must  postpone 
this  aspect  of  the  discussion  to  another 
time. 

LITERARY  NOTICES. 

French  and  German  Socialism  in  Modern 

Times.      By  Richard  T.   Elt,   Ph.  D. 

New  York  :    Harper  &   Brothers.     Pp. 

262.     Price,  75  cents. 

Professor  Ely  has  here  presented  in 
small  compass  and  attractive  form  a  large 
amount  of  information  about  the  notable 
socialistic  and  communistic  schemes  that 
have  been  brought  forward  in  the  two  coun- 


LITERARY  NOTICES, 


123 


tries  where  most  of  such  projects  have  origi- 
nated. The  distinction  between  socialism 
and  communism  he  states  as  follows :  "  The 
central  idea  of  communism  is  economic 
equality.  It  is  desired  by  communists  that 
all  ranks  and  differences  in  society  should 
disappear,  and  one  man  be  as  good  as  an- 
other, to  use  the  popular  phrase.  The  dis- 
tinctive idea  of  socialism  is  distributive 
justice.  It  goes  back  of  the  processes  of 
modern  life  to  the  fact  that  he  who  does 
not  work  lives  on  the  labor  of  others.  It 
aims  to  distribute  economic  goods  according 
to  the  services  rendered  by  the  recipients." 
The  earliest  leader  to  receive  attention  is 
Baboeuf,  whose  career  began  about  a  hun- 
dred years  ago.  He  and  Cabet,  who  was 
bom  twenty-four  years  later,  are  described 
by  the  author  as  "  the  two  leading  French 
representatives  of  pure  communism."  Ba- 
bceuf's  plan  for  the  reorganization  of  so- 
ciety was  adapted  to  produce  a  cheerless 
monotony,  but  that  of  Cabet  is  more  attract- 
ive. Under  that  of  the  latter,  goods  and 
labor  are  common  property ;  executives  are 
chosen  by  ballot ;  marriage  and  family  are 
held  sacred.  Young  persons  may  choose 
their  own  career,  but  overcrowding  of  any 
profession  is  to  be  prevented  by  competi- 
tive examination.  Science  and  literature  are 
encouraged.  Professor  Ely  describes  the 
system  of  Count  Henry  de  Saint-Simon  as 
the  first  example  of  pure  socialism.  Saint- 
Simonism  regards  the  dead  level  of  com- 
munism as  even  more  unjust  than  the  pres- 
ent state  of  things,  and  aims  to  proportion 
each  man's  share  of  benefits  to  the  service 
he  renders  the  world.  Religion  should  be 
reformed,  not  abolished,  and  all  men  should 
regard  each  other  as  brothers.  All  privi- 
leges of  birth,  including  inheritance,  were 
to  be  abolished.  We  find  Saint-Simon  and 
Fourier  thus  compared  :  "  Each  was  re- 
quired as  a  complement  of  the  other.  The 
one  started  in  his  career  as  a  man  of  wealth 
and  social  eminence,  the  other  as  a  man 
of  the  people.  The  one  observed  society, 
studied  its  history,  its  development,  and 
sought  to  find  therein  a  clew  to  guide  him 
in  his  work  of  regenerating  the  world,  mor- 
ally and  economically ;  the  other,  regarding 
the  past  as  sueh  a  series  of  blunders  as  to 
afford  no  proper  basis  for  future  formations, 
searched  the  depths  of  his  own  conscious- 


ness, and  discovered  a  law  which  furnished 
premises  enabling  him  to  construct  deduc- 
tively an  ideal  and  perfect  society,  and  to 
explain  with  mathematical  accuracy  the 
past,  present,  and  future."  Recognizing 
the  absurdity  of  a  large  part  of  Fourier's 
writings,  our  author  maintains  that  this  is 
no  reason  for  condemning  the  social  scheme 
which  he  originated.  Chapters  are  devoted 
to  Louis  Blanc,  Proudhon,  and  to  "  Social- 
ism in  France  since  Proudhon." 

German  socialism  is  distinguished  by  its 
profundity.  "  One  of  its  leading  charac- 
teristics," says  our  author,  "  is  its  thorough- 
ly scientific  spirit.  Sentimentalism  is  ban- 
ished, and  a  foundation  sought  in  hard,  relent- 
less laws,  resulting  necessarily  from  the  phys- 
iological, psychological,  and  social  constitu- 
tion of  man  and  his  physical  environment." 
Rodbertus,  one  of  the  earliest  and  ablest  of 
German  socialists,  selects  as  the  two  chief 
economic  evils,  which  cause  most  of  the  oth- 
ers, pauperism  and  financial  crises.  These 
could  only  be  abolished  by  securing  to  labor- 
ers "  a  share  in  the  national  product,  which 
increases  pari  passu  with  increasing  produc- 
tion." A  clear  account  is  given  of  social 
democracy,  and  of  the  views  of  Karl  Marx 
and  Lassalle,  the  most  prominent  members 
of  the  party.  A  short  chapter  is  devoted  to 
the  professorial  socialists,  among  whom  Bis- 
marck is  numbered  ;  and,  lastly,  the  views  of 
the  Christian  socialists  are  presented. 

The  spirit  in  which  Professor  Ely  deals 
with  his  subject  is  most  commendable.  His 
book  is  entirely  free  from  the  partisan  views 
and  the  epithets  that  we  find  in  the  writings 
of  so  many  of  those  who  view  socialism  from 
the  outside.  It  will  do  a  great  deal  to  cor- 
rect the  ignorant  notion  that  socialists  are  a 
set  of  vagabonds  who  are  anxious  to  divide 
with  any  one  who  has  more  than  they,  and 
to  distinguish  the  views  that  some  socialists 
hold  on  other  subjects  from  socialism  itself. 

The  Vertebrates  of  the  Adirondack  Re- 
gion.   By  Clinton  Hart  Merriam,  M.  D. 
From  the  Transactions  of  the  Linnaean 
Society  of  New  York  for  1882.     Press 
of  L.  S.  Foster,  New  York. 
The  Adirondack  Mountains  have  a  more 
than  local  reputation  as  the  happy  hunting- 
ground  of  those  who  find  in  "  roughing  it " 
the  panacea  for  most    earthly  ills.     We 
have  read  much  of  the  thrilling  times  when 


124 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


painted  savages  made  their  echoes  ring  with 
wicked  cries,  and  are  familiar  with  the 
pleasures  that  peace  and  later  days  give 
to  the  lover  of  deep  woods.  Now  Dr.  Mer- 
riam  has  taken  up  the  natural  history  of 
the  wilderness,  and  is  the  first  to  give  us 
the  characteristics  which  distinguish  this 
tract,  as  a  whole,  from  the  surrounding 
country,  and  to  present  with  scientific  ac- 
curacy the  peculiarities  of  its  fauna  and 
flora. 

The  first  chapter  treats  of  the  location 
and  boundaries  of  the  Adirondacks,  geo- 
logical history,  topography,  climate,  general 
features,  botany,  and  faunal  position,  and 
contains  much  that  is  of  general  interest. 

The  author  says :  "  From  a  geological 
stand-point,  the  Adirondacks  are  interesting 
as  constituting  one  of  the  few  islands  that 
rose  above  the  level  of  the  mighty  conti- 
nental sea  previous  to  Paleozoic  time.  Its 
stern  Archaean  shores  were  washed  by  the 
waves  of  countless  ages  before  the  under- 
most strata  of  the  lower  Silurian  were  de- 
posited upon  them,  entombing  and  preserv- 
ing many  of  the  trilobites,  brachiopods,  and 
other  curious  inhabitants  of  that  vast  ocean. 
This  lower  Silurian  zone  marked  the  shore- 
line, so  to  speak,  of  the  ancient  island,  and 
consists  of  Potsdam  sandstone  and  the  lime- 
rocks  of  the  Trenton  period.  Though  broken 
and  interrupted,  enough  of  it  still  remains 
to  afford  us  tantalizing  glimpses  of  the  life 
of  the  time,  torn  pages  of  fragmentary  chap- 
ters that  constitute  but  a  half-told  story  to 
excite  our  imagination  and  regret." 

As  to  the  forms  of  the  mountains,  they 
are  in  no  sense  a  chain,  but  consist  of  more 
or  less  irregular  groups,  isolated  peaks,  and 
short  ranges,  having  no  regular  trend,  con- 
forming to  no  definite  axis,  and  sloping  in 
all  possible  directions. 

The  entire  region  is  studded  with  hun- 
dreds of  beautiful  lakes  of  various  sizes  and 
depths,  two  of  them  upward  of  four  thou- 
sand feet  above  tide-level.  Under  the  head 
of  "  Climate "  the  writer  speaks  at  some 
length  of  the  meteorology  of  the  region, 
and  states  that  the  mean  annual  rainfall 
exceeds  that  of  most  portions  of  the  State 
by  about  five  inches.  After  dwelling  upon 
the  causes  which  serve  to  lower  the  temper- 
ature, increase  the  humidity,  and  promote 
great  luxuriance  of  vegetation,  he  recounts 


the  singular  fact  that  many  characteristic 
marsh-plants  grow  upon  the  highest  sum- 
mits, as  the  conditions  previously  described 
tend  to  produce  upon  them  the  effect  of 
marshes.  On  the  very  top  of  Mount  Marcy 
a  number  of  these  swamp-plants  have  been 
found ;  a  matter  of  especial  interest,  as 
there  are  no  trees  to  protect  them  from  the 
sun,  and  they  grow  on  the  open  summit 
nearly  five  thousand  feet  above  tide-level. 

In  "  Botany '  he  enumerates  thirty-two 
species  of  forest-trees,  fifty-seven  of  under- 
shrubs,  and  one  hundred  and  seventy-eight 
of  the  most  noticeable  flowering-plants.  As 
to  the  "  Faunal  Position,"  he  is  of  the  opin- 
ion that  the  temperature  alone  would  show 
that  the  district  belongs  to  the  Canadian 
fauna,  and  a  number  of  the  resident  birds 
and  mammals  are  cited  in  support  of  this 
view. 

The  other  five  chapters  are  given  to  Mam- 
malia, Aves,  Reptilia,  Batrachia,  and  Pisces, 
respectively.  Of  the  "  Mammalia  "  forty-two 
species  are  enumerated,  but  the  first  part 
ends  with  the  consideration  of  the  carnivora, 
and  constitutes  a  most  important  original ' 
contribution  to  the  literature  of  North 
American  mammals.  We  have  grown  ac- 
customed to  the  modern  iconoclast  haunting 
all  paths  of  learning,  and  now  it  is  Dr.  Mer- 
riam  who  robs  us  of  our  time-honored  pan- 
ther, the  bloodthirsty  monster  of  the  deep 
woods.  Not  that  he  takes  him  entirely 
away,  but  he  only  lets  him  do  some  fearful 
leaping  to  satisfy  our  old  ideal.  He  says 
the  panther  is  an  arrant  coward ;  that  he 
is  not  fierce  unless  he  is  wounded,  and  cor- 
nered at  that ;  he  does  not  climb  trees  ex- 
cept at  the  point  of  the  bayonet,  as  it  were, 
and  he  does  not  scream  screams  that  curdle 
the  blood ;  at  least,  it  is  the  testimony  of 
the  most  reliable  hunters  that  he  rarely 
makes  any  noise  at  all.  But  he  does  eat 
porcupines  until  his  mouth  bristles  with 
quills,  and  he  docs  catch  deer,  even  if  he 
has  to  make  quite  a  jump  to  do  it. 

Lack  of  space  obliges  us  to  refer  the 
reader  to  the  book  itself  for  a  further 
knowledge  of  its  contents,  which  will  abun- 
dantly repay  perusal,  and  will  confirm  what 
indeed  is  apparent  throughout  the  work,  that 
the  author  is  thoroughly  acquainted  with  his 
subject,  and  writes  about  it  in  a  style  which 
is  at  once  entertaining  and  instructive. 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


5 


Van  Nostrand's  Science  Series,  No.  66, 
Dynamo-Electric  Machinery.  A  series 
of  Lectures  by  Sylvanus  P.  Thompson, 
Professor  of  Experimental  Physics  in 
University  College,  Bristol.  New  York : 
D.  Van  Nostrand.  Pp.  218.  Price,  50 
cents. 

This  latest  addition  to  the  Science  Series 
deals  with  a  variety  of  machine  whicli  has 
80  rapidly  attained  prominence  that  few 
persons  have  yet  been  able  to  gain  an  ade- 
quate idea  of  its  forms  or  principles.  In 
the  first  of  these  lectures,  on  "  The  Dynamo 
in  Theory,"  Professor  Thompson  proposed  a 
division  of  dynamos  into  three  classes,  ac- 
cording to  the  movement  of  their  armatures 
in  the  field  of  electrical  force.  He  then 
took  up  the  conditions  on  which  the  amount 
of  force  generated  depends,  and  showed  how 
far  the  fulfillment  of  each  is  compatible  with 
fulfillment  of  the  others.  In  respect  to  the 
condition  of  size,  he  calculates  that,  if  the 
size  of  a  machine  is  increased  n  times  in 
linear  dimensions,  the  eflBciency  will  be  in- 
creased rv>  times.  Under  "  The  Dynamo  in 
Practice  "  he  has  described  tlie  arrangement 
of  the  several  elements  as  they  appear  in 
the  machines  of  a  large  number  of  promi- 
nent electricians.  The  third  lecture  sets 
forth  the  principles  on  which  is  based  the 
employment  of  the  dynamo  in  converting 
the  energy  of  electric  currents  into  the  en- 
ergy of  mechanical  motion,  and  contains  a 
demonstration  of  the  mathematical  law  of 
efficiency  of  the  dynamo  as  a. motor.  The 
volume  is  well  supplied  with  illustrations. 

Local  Government  in  Illinois.  By  Albert 
Shaw,  A.  B, ;  and  Local  Government 
in  Pennsylvania.  By  E,  R.  L.  Gould, 
A.  B.  Pp.  37.  Price,  30  cents.  Local 
Government  in  Michigan  and  the 
Northwest.  By  Edward  W.  Bemis, 
A.  B.  Pp.  25.  Price,  25  cents.  Balti- 
more :  Johns  Hopkins  University. 

These  pamphlets  belong  to  the  series  of 
"  Johns  Hopkins  University  Studies  in  His- 
torical and  Political  Science,"  and  speak 
well  for  the  practical  value  of  the  plan  on 
which  the  studies  are  based.  The  paper  on 
Hlinois  shows  how  the  southern  counties  of 
that  State,  being  settled  from  the  South, 
were  organized  on  the  Virginia  plan,  in 
which  the  county  is  the  chief  factor  and 
the  township  is  insignificant;  while  the 
northern  counties,  settled  later  from  New 


England,  were  organized  on  the  New  Eng- 
land plan,  with  the  township  as  the  princi- 
pal factor.  The  two  systems  have  met  and 
struggled  for  the  mastery;  the  New  Eng- 
land plan  is  prevailing,  and  now  only  about 
one  fifth  of  the  one  hundi-ed  and  two  coun- 
ties in  the  State  cling  to  the  old  county  sys- 
tem. The  history  of  the  development  of  the 
Pennsylvania  system  is  more  complicated. 
As  it  stands,  it  occupies  the  middle  ground 
between  the  New  England  township  and  the 
Southern  county  systems,  and  aims  at  a  par- 
tition of  power,  for  the  terms  of  which  we 
must  refer  to  the  pamphlet.  The  organiza- 
tion in  Michigan  is  a  transplantation  of  the 
New  England  system,  with  unimportant  dif- 
ferences. In  Mr.  Bemis's  paper,  the  Michi- 
gan system  is  compared  with  that  of  each  of 
the  older  Eastern  States  and  with  the  sys- 
tems which  have  been  or  are  being  adopted 
in  the  other  States  of  the  West  and  North- 
west, including  the  newer  Territories ;  and 
the  gradual  introduction  and  growth  of  the 
township  system  in  the  Southern"  States  is 
noticed. 


The  Sciences  among  the  Jews  before  and 
during  the  Middle  Ages.  By  M.  J, 
Schleiden,  Ph.  D.  Baltimore  :  D.  Biu- 
swanger  &  Co.     Pp.  64. 

Four  editions  of  this  essay  have  been 
published  in  Germany,  but  this  is  the  first 
time  it  has  been  given  in  an  English  dress. 
It  presents,  in  a  rapid  view,  the  record  of 
what  the  Jews  achieved  for  the  advancement 
of  mankind  during  the  period  indicated  in 
the  title,  by  their  labors  in  literature,  phi- 
losophy, science,  and  art.  Their  schools  in 
Europe  were,  it  is  claimed,  among  the  best 
of  the  period,  and  were  attended  even  by 
the  Christian  clergy,  because  they  furnished 
almost  the  only  means  of  mental  culture. 
Having  no  doctrinal  theology,  they  were 
able  to  pursue  every  branch  of  study  un- 
trammeled,  and  their  literature  is  rich  in 
the  fruits  of  their  many-sided  work,  partic- 
ularly in  philosophy,  ethics,  mathematics, 
astronomy,  and  hygiene.  Down  to  the  thir- 
teenth century,  they  "  far  surpassed  their 
Christian  contemporaries,  as  well  in  point 
of  intellect  as  in  all  the  sciences  having  an 
important  bearing  on  life."  They  contrib- 
uted much  to  the  revival  of  learning  in  the 
West,  for  they  understood  the  languages  in 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


which  the  ancient  learning  was  embraced, 
and,  "  had  it  not  been  for  the  efforts  of  Jew- 
ish translators,  it  is  quite  likely  that  the 
darkness  of  the  middle  ages  would  have 
enveloped  us  a  good  while  longer,"  They 
were  also  active  in  the  arts  and  trades,  and 
carried  on  commerce.  These  statements 
are  not  bare  assertions,  but  are  sustained 
by  abundant  citations  and  references  to  au- 
thorities, which  really  constitute  the  bulk  of 
the  volume. 

Lake  Agassiz  :  A  Chapter  in  Glacial  Ge- 
ology. By  Warren  Upham.  Winona, 
Minn. :  Jones  &  Kroeger,  Printers.  Pp. 
24. 

Lake  Agassiz  is  the  name  given  to  a 
body  of  water  which  is  supposed  to  have 
been  formed  in  the  basin  of  the  Red  River 
of  the  North  and  of  Lake  Winnipeg,  during 
the  final  melting  and  recession  of  the  ice- 
sheet.  Measured  by  the  shore-line  it  was 
175  miles,  in  a  direct  line  142  miles,  from 
north  to  south.  At  its  greatest  height  its 
outlet  was  about  1,055  feet  above  the  sea, 
and  was  then  through  the  valley  of  the 
Minnesota  River,  the  flow  to  the  north 
which  the  rivers  of  the  valley  now  take  hav- 
ing been  restrained  at  that  time  by  the 
thickness  of  the  continental  ice-sheet.  The 
elucidating  of  these  hypotheses  is  accom- 
panied by  a  study  in  detail  of  the  geological 
features  of  the  district  supposed  to  have 
been  occupied  by  the  lake. 

The  Iroquois  Book  of  Rites.  Edited  by 
Horatio  Hale,  M.  A.  Philadelphia :  D. 
G.  Brinton.  Pp.  222.  Price,  $3. 
This  is  the  second  volume  of  the  "Library 
of  Aboriginal  American  Literature"  of  which 
Dr.  Brinton  has  undertaken  the  publication. 
The  book  itself  is  an  aboriginal  composition, 
partly  in  the  Mohawk  and  partly  in  the 
Onondaga  languages,  and  comprises  the 
speeches,  songs,  and  other  ceremonies  which 
composed  the  proceedings  of  the  council 
when  a  deceased  chief  was  lamented  and 
his  successor  was  installed  in  oflSce.  The 
ritual,  which  had  been  preserved  by  tradi- 
tion for  a  period  of  unknown  duration,  was 
reduced  to  writing  at  about  the  middle  of 
the  last  century,  when  many  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  tribes  having  learned  to  write 
in  the  orthography  devised  by  the  mission- 
aries, the  chiefs  of  the  great  council  directed 


its  composition  in  that  form  for  permanent 
preservation.  Copies  of  one  part  of  the 
work  were  obtained  by  Mr.  Hale  from  John 
Smoke  Johnson,  Speaker  of  the  Great  Coun- 
cil, and  a  descendant  of  Sir  William  John- 
son, and  Chief  John  Buck,  Record  Keeper ; 
and  of  the  other  part,  from  the  interpreter 
Daniel  La  Fort,  of  Onondaga  Castle.  Be- 
sides the  ritual-books  in  their  originals  and 
English  translations,  with  glossaries  and 
notes,  the  volume  contains  a  history  of  the 
Iroquois  nation  and  league,  an  exposition  of 
its  policy,  an  account  of  the  origin  and  com- 
position of  the  books,  a  review  of  the  his- 
torical traditions  of  the  nation,  and  an 
analysis  of  the  Iroquois  language.  The 
book  is  one  of  great  ethnological  value,  in 
the  light  it  casts  on  the  political  and  social 
life,  as  well  as  the  character  and  capacity, 
of  the  people  with  whom  it  originated. 

"The  HoMffiOPATHic  Leader.''  Edited  by 
Walter  Williams  Cowl,  M.  D.,  and  As- 
sociates. Monthly:  July,  1883.  Pp. 
78.     Price,  per  year,  |4. 

This  is  the  first  number  of  a  new  maga- 
zine, the  intended  character  of  which  is  in- 
dicated by  its  name.  It  contains,  besides  a 
poetical  salutatory,  nine  contributed  articles 
on  subjects  of  disease  and  treatment,  edi. 
torial  articles,  notes,  and  proceedings  of 
homoeopathic  societies.  The  editor  reports 
upon  a  kind  of  election  he  has  taken  among 
the  practitioners  called  homoeopathic,  for 
the  purpose  of  determining  to  what  extent 
they  adhere  to  the  original  principles  of  the 
school,  in  which  they  have  been  accused  of 
indulging  a  growing  laxity.  So  far  as  the 
"  returns  "  have  come  in,  the  majority  still 
appear  to  "  continue  to  believe  in  infinitesi- 
mals and  dynamization,  they  still  believe  in 
the  law  of  similars,  and  continue  to  honor 
the  man  who  declared  the  fact  and  proved 
its  truth." 

A  Practical  Arithmetic.    By  G.  A.  Went- 

woRTH,  A.  M.,  and  Rev.  Thomas  Hill, 

D.  D.,  LL.  D.      Boston :  Ginn,  Heath  & 

Co.     Pp.  351.     Price,  $1.10. 

There  is  much  that  is  new  in  this  book 

as  compared  with  the  arithmetics  of  ten  years 

ago,  notably  in  the  arrangement.     After  five 

pages  on  "  Numbers,"  "  Decimal  Fractions  " 

are  at  once  introduced,  and  are  explained  by 

means  of  the  divisions  of  United   States 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


127 


money,  no  separate  chapter  being  given  to 
this  latter  topic.  Then  follow  the  Four 
Rules,  and  after  them  "  Metric  Measures." 
The  next  chapter  is  on  "Common  Frac- 
tions," and  "  Measures  in  Common  Use  " 
come  next,  after  the  pupils  have  learned 
the  metric  system,  an  arrangement  which 
can  not  fail  to  impress  upon  the  young  that 
the  English  measures  are  as  absurdly  infe- 
rior to  the  decimal  system  as  British  money 
is  more  inconvenient  than  American.  The 
examples  are  not  of  the  old-fashioned  im- 
aginary kind,  but  "  are  intended  to  convey, 
incidentally,  a  great  deal  of  accurate  and 
valuable  information  ;  so  that,  by  means  of 
the  index,  the  book  becomes  a  book  of  ref- 
erence for  many  physical  and  mathematical 
constants." 

The  Yellowstone  National  Park.  A 
Manual  for  Tourists.  By  Henry  J.  Win- 
SER.  New  York :  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons. 
Pp.  96.  Illustrated,  with  Maps.  Price, 
40  cents. 

A  CONVENIENT  and  acceptable  description 
of  the  great  national  Yellowstone  reserva- 
tion, with  its  mammoth  hot  springs,  the 
great  geyser  basins,  the  cataracts,  the  ca- 
nons, and  other  features  of  this  land  of  won- 
ders. The  park  is  about  2,500  miles  from 
New  York  by  way  of  the  Northern,  and 
3,000  miles  by  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad. 
The  Northern  Pacific  road  carries,  or  will 
shortly  carry,  passengers  directly  to  the 
park  by  its  Yellowstone  Park  branch,  while 
the  Union  Pacific  will  deliver  them  by  110 
miles  of  staging  from  Beaver  Canon.  The 
fare  to  the  park  and  back  is  from  $155  to 
$165. 

How  CAN  WE  ESCAPE  INSANITY  ?    By  ChARLES 

W.  Page,  M.  D.  Hartford,  Conn. :  Case, 
Lockwood  &  Co.     Pp.  22. 

The  author  believes  that  hereditary 
bias  must  be  taken  account  of,  "although 
it  has  become  too  popular  as  an  excuse  for 
results  which,  through  ignorance  or  design, 
are  often  obscure,"  but  that  insanity  is  large- 
ly promoted  by  intemperance,  overwork, 
over-study,  and  many  over-stimulating  influ- 
ences of  American  life.  The  escape  from 
it  must  be  prepared  for  by  proper  mar- 
riages, the  cultivation  of  temperance  in  all 
things,  and  by  counteracting  the  deteriorat- 
ing influences  that  affect  us. 


Chemistry,  Inorganic  and  Organic  With 
Experiments.  By  Charles  Loudon 
Bloxam,  Professor  of  Chemistry  in 
King's  College,  London.  Fifth  edition. 
Philadelphia:  P.  Blakiston,  Son  &  Co. 
Pp.  640.  Price,  $4. 
Bloxam's  "Chemistry"  is  a  compre- 
hensive text-book,  intended  "  to  give  a  clear 
and  simple  description  of  the  elements  and 
their  principal  compounds,  and  of  the  chemi- 
cal principles  involved  in  some  of  the  most 
important  branches  of  manufacture."  The 
book  is  adapted  to  beginners,  and  the  more 
special  parts,  that  the  general  student 
would  wish  to  omit,  are  put  in  small  type. 
The  promise  in  regard  to  technological  sub- 
jects is  well  kept  in  treating  of  the  extrac- 
tion of  the  several  useful  metals,  of  glass, 
pottery,  building  materials,  explosives,  fuel, 
organic  dyes,  sugars,  animal  chemistry,  etc. 
The  volume  contains  a  large  number  of  cuts 
illustrative  of  the  experiments  introduced, 
and  of  the  commercial  processes  described, 
and  its  table  of  contents  is  made  very  full, 
so  as  to  afford  the  student  a  means  of  self- 
examination.  This  new  edition  "  has  been 
carefully  revised,  and  some  alterations  have 
been  made  in  the  theoretical  portion,  to  bring 
it  into  harmony  with  modern  views."  The 
volume  is  about  equally  divided  between  or- 
ganic and  inorganic  chemistry. 

Manual  of  Taxidermy.    A  Complete  Guide 
in  collecting  and  preserving  Birds  and 
Mammals.     By  C.  J.  Maynard.     Illus- 
trated.    Boston:   S.  E.  Cassino   &  Co. 
Pp.  101.     Price,  $1.25. 
This  little  book  consists  of  directions 
for  collecting,  skinning,  and  mounting  birds 
and  mammals,  so  that  they  may  be  not  only 
ornamental  objects,  but  also  useful  for  the 
study  of  natural  history.     The  last  chapter 
is  on  "  Mounting  Reptiles,  Batrachians,  and 
Fishes." 

Revista   de  Agricultura  (Review  of  Ag- 
riculture), Nicomedes  p.  De  Adan,  Di- 
rector. August,  1883.   Havana:  La  Pro- 
paganda Literaria.     Pp.  32. 
The  "  Review  "  is  the  monthly  organ  of 
a  circle  of  land-owners  of  Cuba,  and  aims  at 
the  development  and  improvement  of  the 
agricultural  resources   of  the  island.     The 
contents  relate  predominantly  to  the  culti- 
vation of  sugar-cane  and  the  manufacture 
of  sugar.     An  article  is  also  published  on 
the  cultivation  of  the  eucalyptus. 


128 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


Brain-Rest.  By  J.  Leonard  Corning,  M.  D. 
New  York :  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  Pp. 
103.     Price,  $1. 

Dr.  Corning's  treatment  of  this  impor- 
tant subject  consists  first  of  an  examination 
of  the  nature  and  phenomena  of  sleep,  and 
of  the  relation  of  the  blood-supply  to  the 
activity  of  the  brain.  Then  follow  some 
practical  directions  in  regard  to  sleeping, 
and  a  discussion  of  the  nature  of  several 
varieties  of  insomnia.  Finally,  some  meth- 
ods of  diminishing  the  cerebral  circulation 
are  described,  one  of  them  being  the  "  ca- 
rotid truss,"  an  invention  of  the  author's  for 
lessening  the  supply  of  blood  through  the 
carotid  arteries. 

On  the  Conservation  op  Solar  Energy. 
By  C.  William  Siemens,  F.  R.  S.,  D.  C.  L., 
etc.  With  Illustrations.  London :  Mac- 
millan  &  Co.     Pp.  111.     Price,  $1.75. 

This  volume  contains  Dr.  Siemens's  Royal 
Society  paper  on  this  subject,  the  substance 
of  which  is  included  in  his  article  entitled 
"A  New  Theory  of  the  Sun,"  published  in 
the  "  Monthly  "  for  June,  1882.  Other  papers 
are,  letters  by  MM.  Faye  and  Him,  T.  Sterry 
Hunt,  C.  A.  Young,  and  others,  criticising 
his  theory,  and  Dr.  Siemens's  replies  to  the 
same.  There  is  also  a  paper  "  On  Electri- 
cal Discharges  in  Vacuum-Tubes,  and  their 
Relation  to  Solar  Physics,"  being  an  extract 
from  a  presidential  address  by  the  author 
before  the  British  Association.  The  appen- 
dix comprises  a  paper  entitled  "  On  the 
Electric  Furnace,"  by  C.  William  Siemens 
and  A.  K.  Huntington ;  one  on  "  Sunlight 
and  Skylight  at  High  Altitudes,"  by  Cap- 
tain Abney ;  "  Remarks  of  Professor  Lang- 
ley  on  Ceptain  Abney's  Paper  "  ;  and  "  Dis- 
sociation of  Attenuated  Compound  Gases," 
by  Professor  Liveing. 

A  New  Theory  op  the  Origin  op  Species. 
By  Benjamin  G.  Ferris.     New  York: 
Fowler  &  Wells.    Pp.278.   Price,  $1.50. 
The  author  first  examines  Darwin's  the- 
ory, and  endeavors  to  show  that  the  causes 
it  assigns  for  the  production  of  new  species 
are  insufficient.    Some  of  his  arguments  are 
based  on  the  non-production  of  new  types  in 
recent  time,  and  on  the  great  changes  that  the 
ape  of  to-day  would  have  to  make  to  develop 
into  the  man  of  to-day.     He  next  discusses 
the  nature  of  life,  and  the  difference  be- 


tween human  and  brute  life.  A  chapter  is 
devoted  to  the  question  of  the  existence  of 
a  First  Cause,  which  the  author  is  disposed 
to  answer  in  the  affirmative.  Finally,  he 
proposes  his  new  theory,  which  is,  that,  as 
"  every  living  organism  within  historic  times 
has  required  a  receptacle  or  matrix  for  its 
conception,  gradual  development,  and  final 
birth,  ...  if  species  are  reproduced  by  this 
ordinary  process,  then  it  is  fair  to  conclude 
that  they  must  have  originated  not  by  an 
'unusual  birth,'  but  by  an  extraordinary 
generation'''' — that  is,  the  first  members  of 
each  new  species  were  produced  from  a 
mother  of  another  species  by  the  influence 
of  a  "  direct  creative  influx" — i.  e.,  by  a  sort 
of  miraculous  conception. 

The  Amesican  Citizen's  Manual.  Part  IL 
The  Functions  of  Governments  (State 
and  Federal).  By  Worthington  C.  Ford. 
New  York :  G.  r.  Putnam's  Sons,  Pp. 
184.     Price,  $1. 

The  purpose  of  this  series — to  make 
citizens  at  large  acquainted  with  the  theory, 
functions,  and  operations  of  the  State  and 
national  governments,  and  with  their  rights 
and  duties — is  admirable,  and  the  concep- 
tion of  the  several  books  is  well  adapted  to 
further  it.  The  present  volume  treats  of 
protection  to  life  and  property  ;  the  func- 
tions of  the  Federal  Government  in  the  mat- 
ters of  war,  foreign  relations,  regulation  of 
commerce,  naturalization,  post-offices  and 
post-roads,  Indians,  the  public  lands,  and 
patent  and  copyright  laws ;  the  functions  of 
the  State  government  in  reference  to  corpora- 
tions, education,  charitable  institutions,  and 
immigration ;  and  State  finances. 

Dr.  B.  C.  Faust's  Laws  of  Health.  Edited 
by  Dr.  S.  Wolffberg.  Translated  and 
improved  by  Herman  Kopp.  Brooklyn : 
H.  Kopp  &  Co.  Pp.  37.    Price,  20  cents. 

This  work  is  a  collection  of  more  than  a 
hundred  and  fifty  admirable  maxims  tersely 
expressed,  embodying  sound  hygienic  prin- 
ciples and  practical  instructions  for  the  pres- 
ervation of  health.  Its  peculiar  merit  is  the 
conciseness  with  which  the  rules  are  phrased, 
whereby  they  are  more  sharply  stamped  up- 
on the  memory  and  borne  in  mind.  The  trans- 
lator has  arranged  the  manual  with  particu- 
lar adaptation  to  its  use  in  the  fourth-reader 
grade  of  schools  and  for  self -instruction. 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


29 


How  TO  GET  ON  IN  THE  "WoRLD,  AS  DEMON- 
STRATED BY  THE  Life  and  Language  of 
William  Cobbett:  to  which  is  added 
Cobbett's  English  Grammar,  with  Notes. 
By  Robert  Waters,  Teacher  of  Lan- 
guage and  Literature  in  the  Hoboken 
(N.  J.)  Academy.  New  York:  James 
W.  Pratt.     Pp.  551.     Price,  81.75. 

The  literary  style  of  Cobbett  receives  in 
this  book  about  equal  attention  with  the 
incidents  and  achievements  of  his  life.  Al- 
though he  is  not  often  named  among  the 
masters  of  English  that  students  of  rhetoric 
are  advised  to  read,  and  his  grammar  has 
been  allowed  to  go  out  of  print,  yet  the  au- 
thor is  able  to  quote  several  good  judges 
who  agree  with  him  in  a  high  rating  of  Cob- 
bett's style.  Many  extracts  from  Cobbett's 
writings  are  given,  partly  as  specimens  of 
his  English,  and  partly  as  affording  a  better 
picture  of  the  man  than  description  could 
give.  The  author  has  secured  for  his  esti- 
mate of  the  character  of  Cobbett  the  pre- 
sumption of  correctness,  in  that  he  men- 
tions and  condemns  Cobbett's  faults  as  un- 
hesitatingly as  he  praises  his  virtues.  The 
grammar,  which  is  in  the  form  of  letters  to 
a  son,  occupies  about  half  the  volume. 

French  Forest  Ordinance  of  1669  ;  with 
Historical  Sketch  of  Previous  Treat- 
ment OF  Forests  in  France.  Compiled 
and  translated  by  John  Croumbie  Brown, 
LL.D.  Edinburgh:  Oliver  &  Boyd.  Pp. 
150. 

Dr.  Brown  was  formerly  Colonial  Bota- 
nist at  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  had  his 
attention  particularly  directed  to  the  sub- 
ject of  forestry  by  observation  of  the  evils 
which  had  been  brought  upon  South  Africa 
by  the  reckless  destruction  of  its  woods. 
He  has  since  become  engaged  in  a  kind  of 
philanthropic  work  of  publishing  at  his  own 
risk  books  enforcing  the  necessity  of  renew- 
ing or  preserving  forests,  and  explaining 
the  manner  in  which  these  objects  are  to  be 
accomplished  ;  the  proceeds  of  one  book,  if 
there  be  any,  being  applied  to  the  getting 
out  of  another  in  the  series.  The  present 
volume  embodies  a  translation  in  full  of  the 
famous  ordinance  from  which  it  derives  its 
name — a  statute  which  the  author  claims 
has  exercised  a  deeper,  more  extended,  and 
more  prolonged  influence  on  the  forest  econ- 
omy of  Europe  than  has  any  other  work 
known  to  him.     As  introductory  to  it,  are 

VOL.   XXIV. — 9 


given  notices  of  the  treatment  of  forests  in 
France  in  prehistoric  times  ;  of  the  incursion 
of  the  Normans  and  the  changes  introduced 
by  them  ;  of  the  administration  of  the  for- 
ests of  France  in  the  first  half  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century,  and  the  abuses  and  dev- 
astation of  forests  which  followed ;  of  the 
method  of  exploitation  then  practiced — jar- 
dinage,  or  the  system  of  felling  a  selected 
tree  here  and  there,  and  leaving  the  others 
standing  ;  of  the  method  of  tire  et  aire— or 
"  cut  and  come  again  " ;  of  the  method  of 
compariiments — or  the  division  of  the  wood 
into  equivalent  instead  of  equal  porcions,  as 
!  in  the  former  system,  each  of  which  is  to  be 
I  cut  in  its  order  in  a  regular  succession  of 
'  years ;  and  explanations  of  some  of  the  old 
j  technical  terms  used  in  the  ordinance. 

;  The  Pine  Moth  of  Nantucket  {Retinia 
\  Fttcstrana).  By  Samuel  H.  Scudder. 
I  Boston:  A.  Wilhams  k  Co.  Pp.  22, 
I        with  Plate. 

1        The  pines  on  the  Island  of  Nantucket, 

\  set  out  some  twenty  or  thirty  years  ago,  are 

fast  dying  in  large  numbers  from  some  cause 

j  hitherto  unknown.     Mr.  Scudder  began  his 

\  investigations  as  to  the  cause  of  the  destruc- 

I  tion  in  1876,  and  found  it  at  the  extreme 

I  tips  of  the  living  twigs,  in  the  shape  of  a 

j  moth-larva,  which  is  hatched  out  in  the  bud 

:  and  eats  its  way  to  the  heart,  sapping  the 

I  life  of  the  needles,  one  by  one,  as  it  goes 

j  downward.     As  the  insects  are  numerous 

and  prolific  they  soon  take  possession  of 

the  tree  and  eat  away  its  life.     The  present 

monograph  gives  an  account  of  the  insect 

and  its  life-history,  as  well  as  descriptions 

of  its  relatives,  and  suggestions  as  to  the 

way  of  contending  with  it. 

A  Book  about  Roses.  How  to  grow  and 
show  them.  By  S.  Reynolds  Hale. 
New  York :  William  S.  Gottsberger.  Pp. 
326. 

The  author  has  been  a  successful  grower 
and  exhibitor  of  roses,  and  essays  in  this 
book  to  tell  how  he  has  gained  his  success. 
I  With  considerable  copiousness  of  words  and 
numerous  digressions,  all  of  which  go  to 
make  his  story  lively  and  pleasant,  he  gives 
a  great  deal  of  information  of  practical 
value  on  all  matters  pertaining  to  the  culti- 
vation of  cood  roses. 


130 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


Authors  and  Publishers.  A  Manual  of 
Suggestions  for  Beginners  in  Literature. 
New  York :  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  Pp. 
96. 

The  forcible  presentation  in  this  work 
of  the  publisher's  side  of  the  questions  on 
which  publishers  and  authors  are  supposed 
to  be  liable  to  controversy  or  misunder- 
standing has  awakened  a  lively  discussion 
in  the  literary  journals  relative  to  the  merits 
and  faults  of  the  two  classes.  This  is  well, 
for  the  subject  is  important,  vague  ideas 
prevail  about  it,  and  the  questions  relating 
to  it  should  be  settled,  so  that  all  can  un- 
derstand the  situation,  and  be  ready  to  ac- 
cept it.  This  matter  is,  however,  only  an 
incident  in  the  general  purpose  of  the 
book,  which  is  to  teach  young  authors  how 
to  compose  their  books  and  to  make  bar- 
gains with  publishers,  so  as  to  secure  the 
greatest  advantages  to  themselves,  and  at 
the  same  time  make  matters  easy  for  the 
trade.  The  work  contains  a  description  of 
publishing  methods  and  arrangements,  di- 
rections for  the  preparation  of  manuscript 
for  the  press,  explanations  of  the  details  of 
book-manufacturing,  instructions  for  proof- 
reading, specimens  of  typography,  the  text 
of  the  United  States  copyright  law,  and  in- 
formation concerning  international  copy- 
rights, and  useful  general  hints  for  authors. 
All  this  is  of  practical  value  to  those  who 
are  bent  on  authorship,  and  are  determined 
to  disregard  the  advice  given  in  the  book  to 
refrain  from  it. 


Eecord  for  the  Sick-Room.  Philadelphia  : 
P.  Blakiston,  Son  &  Co.  Pp.  26.  Price, 
25  cents  each,  $2.50  per  dozen. 

The  book  is  a  set  of  blank  tables,  each 
ruled  so  as  to  give  a  record  of  the  condi- 
tion of  a  single  patient  during  twelve  hours. 
Columns  are  provided  to  show  the  condition 
of  the  pulse,  temperature,  respiration,  and 
bowels,  the  medicines  and  nourishment 
given,  the  baths  or  lotions  administered, 
the  temperature  of  the  room,  and  general 
notes  on  the  condition  of  the  patient,  at 
each  hour,  with  space  at  the  foot  of  the 
table  for  the  physician's  directions  and 
memoranda  for  the  nurse.  The  second  page 
of  the  cover  is  occupied  with  directions  for 
nurses,  lists  of  poisons  and  their  antidotes, 
and  instructions  for  emergencies. 


Contributions  to  the  History  of  Lake 
Bonneville.  By  G.  K.  Gilbert.  Wash- 
ington :  Government  Printing-Office.  Pp. 
32,  with  Plates. 

This  monograph  is  a  part  of  the  report 
of  the  Director  of  the  United  States  Geo- 
logical Survey.  The  study  of  which  it  re- 
cords the  results  is  one  of  a  series  designed 
to  include  all  the  lakes  of  the  Quaternary 
formation.  The  geological  structure  of  the 
Great  Salt  Lake  Valley  indicates  that  it  was 
once  the  seat  of  an  immense  lake,  with 
shores  a  thousand  feet  above  the  level  of 
the  present  lake,  while  the  mountains  around 
bear  the  marks  of  shore-lines  at  different 
levels,  testifying  to  a  system  of  oscillations 
of  the  waters  of  this  great  sheet.  Mr.  Gil- 
bert's studies  were  directed  to  the  determi- 
nation of  the  period  at  which  this  lake  ex- 
isted, and  of  the  order  of  its  oscillations. 
His  conclusions  are,  that  the  history  of  the 
lake  reveals  the  existence  of  two  periods  of 
maxima  of  moisture,  separated  by  an  inter- 
val of  extreme  dryness ;  that  the  time  since 
the  Bonneville  epoch  has  been  briefer  than 
the  epoch,  and  that  the  two  together  are  in- 
comparably briefer  than  such  a  geologic 
period  as  the  Tertiary ;  that  the  period  of 
volcanic  activity  in  the  Great  Basin,  which 
covered  a  large  share  of  Tertiary  time,  con- 
tinued through  the  Quaternary  also,  and 
presumably  has  not  yet  ended;  that  such 
earth-movements  as  are  concerned  in  the 
molding  of  continents  had  not  ceased  in 
Western  Utah  at  the  close  of  the  Bonne- 
ville epoch,  and  presumably  have  not  yet 
ceased ;  and  that  the  Wahsatch  Range  has 
recently  increased  in  height,  and  presumably 
is  still  growing. 

Libraries  and  Readers.  By  "William 
E.  Foster.  Pp.  136.  Libraries  and 
Schools.  Papers  selected  by  Samuel  S. 
Green.  Pp.  126.  New  York  ;  F.  Ley- 
poldt.     Price,  50  cents  each. 

One  of  the  good  signs  of  the  times  is 
the  increased  attention  that  is  given  to  the 
management  of  public  libraries  and  the  cul- 
tivation of  correct  reading  habits  and  a  taste 
for  profitable  reading  in  the  general  public. 
Both  these  books  bear  on  these  objects. 
The  first  relates  to  the  direction  of  the  at- 
tention of  those  who  visit  the  libraries  to 
the  books  that  will  be  most  advantageous 
to  them — facts  to  be  learned  as  to  each 


LITERARY  NOTICES, 


131 


reader  by  ascertaining  the  bent  of  his  tastes 
and  the  nature  of  the  subjects  in  which  he 
has  the  most  living  interest — and  to  the  in- 
ducement in  him  of  the  habit  of  systematic 
and  methodical  reading.  The  other  book 
is  a  selection  of  papers  by  different  authors, 
having  in  part  a  similar  bearing  with  rela- 
tion to  the  children  in  schools ;  and,  in 
part,  showing  how  the  library,  properly 
used,  may  be  made  a  most  efficient  auxil- 
iary to  the  studies  of  the  school. 

Handsaws,  their  Use,  Care,  and  Abuse. 
How  to  select,  and  how  to  file  them.  By 
Fred  T.  Hodgson.  New  York  :  The  In- 
dustrial Publication  Company.  Pp.  96. 
Price,  $1. 

This  is  a  book  of  practical  information 
on  matters  relative  to  the  qualities  and  ma- 
nipulation of  all  kinds  of  handsaws,  for  the 
benefit  of  those  persons,  whether  operative 
mechanics  or  amateurs,  who  use  them ;  and 
it  possesses  a  value  to  such  to  which  its 
price  bears  a  really  small  proportion.  It  is 
well  illustrated ;  and  a  list  of  works  referred 
to  in  the  preface  shows  that  a  considerable 
literature  on  the  subject  exists  in  out-of-the- 
way  places. 

Studies  in  Logic.  By  Members  of  the 
Johns  Hopkins  University.  Boston: 
Little,  Brown  &  Co.   Pp.203.    Price,  $2. 

The  "  Studies  "  are  the  work  of  students 
of  the  university,  with  one  essay  contributed 
by  Professor  C.  S.  Peirce  at  their  request. 
Two  of  the  papers  present  new  develop- 
ments of  the  logical  algebra  of  Boole.  An- 
other paper  relating  to  deductive  logic  de- 
velops those  rules  for  the  combination  of 
relative  numbers  of  which  the  general  prin- 
ciples of  probabilities  are  special  cases.  In 
another  essay.  Dr.  Marquand  shows  how  a 
counting -machine,  or  a  binary  system  of 
numeration,  will  exhibit  De  Morgan's  eight 
modes  of  universal  syllogism.  A  second 
paper  by  Dr.  Marquand  explains  the  views 
of  the  Epicureans,  known  to  us  mainly 
through  a  fragment  of  the  work  of  Philode- 
mus.  Professor  Peirce's  paper  contains  a 
statement  of  what  appears  to  him  to  be  the 
true  theory  of  the  inductive  process,  and 
the  correct  maxims  for  the  performance  of 
it.  The  neophyte  who  takes  up  these  essays 
with  the  view  of  mastering  them  will  find 
abundant  occupation. 


Deep  Breathing.  By  Sophia  Marquise 
A.  CiccoLiNA.  Translated  from  the  Ger- 
man by  Edgar  S.  Werner.  New  York  : 
M,  L.  Holbrook  &  Co.     Pp.  48. 

The  subject  is  considered  as  a  means 
of  promoting  the  art  of  song,  and  of  cur- 
ing  weaknesses  and  affections  of  the  throat 
and  lungs,  especially  consumption.  The  au- 
thor speaks  from  experience,  having  had 
her  voice — a  rare  one  for  song — restored 
after  she  had  lost  it,  by  practice  in  deep 
breathing.  We  are  told,  in  the  preface  to 
the  present  edition,  that  a  class  in  deep 
breathing  was  formed  in  a  certain  sanitari- 
um after  reading  one  of  the  chapters  of  the 
book ;  as  a  result  of  a  few  weeks  of  prac- 
tice in  which,  one  young  woman  invalid  in- 
creased the  size  of  her  chest  three  inches 
and  greatly  improved  her  health,  and  all  re- 
ceived much  benefit. 

Books  for  the  Young.  A  Guide  for  Par- 
ents and  Children.  Compiled  by  C.  M. 
Hewins.  New  York  :  F.  Leypoldt.  Pp. 
94. 

A  classified  list  of  the  books  most  suit- 
able for  boys  and  girls,  including  both  chil- 
dren and  youth  of  from  ten  to  sixteen  years 
of  age.  The  author  is  librarian  of  the  Hart- 
ford Library  Association.  The  list  is  pref- 
aced by  a  terse  review  of  children's  books 
in  general ;  a  number  of  suggestions  on  the 
right  use  of  books;  notices  of  the  best 
works  for  children  in  English  and  American 
history ;  and  a  "  symposium,"  in  which  are 
quoted  the  expressions  of  several  authors 
and  authorities  on  the  reading  best  suited 
for  children. 

The  Modern  Sphinx,  and  some  of  her  Rid- 
dles. By  M.  J.  Savage.  Boston :  George 
H.  Ellis.     Pp.  160.    Price,  $1. 

A  VOLUME  of  Sunday-morning  sermons, 
of  which  the  first  six,  constituting  a  series, 
deal  particularly  with  the  objects  of  life, 
business,  and  education.  In  the  first  ser- 
mon, "  The  Modern  Sphinx  "  is  made  to  pro- 
pound the  question,  What  is  the  end  of 
man?  The  answer  given  is  that,  as  the 
earth  and  heavens  glorify  God  by  being, 
man  can  glorify  God  only  by  being  himself. 
To  help  him  accomplish  this  perfectly,  busi- 
ness, brains,  and  education  should  be  used 
and  sought,  not  for  themselves  only,  but  as 
means  and  aids  to  help  him  give  himself  the 


132 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


highest  development.  The  other  sermons 
are  on  "  The  Newspaper — its  Good  and  its 
Evil " ;  "A  True  Republic  "  ;  "  Progress  and 
Poverty  "  ;  "  Religious  Transition  " ;  and 
"  The  Reign  of  the  Dead." 

On  the  Relations  of  Micro-organisms  to 
Disease.  By  William  T.  Belfield, 
M.  D.  Chicago :  W.  T.  Keener.  Pp. 
131. 

This  volume  is  composed  of  the  four 
"  Cartwright  Lectures  "  delivered  by  the  au- 
thor in  February  last,  before  the  Alumni 
Association  of  the  CoUege  of  Physicians  and 
Surgeons  of  New  York.  It  presents  a  clear 
and  intelligent  discussion  of  the  subject, 
considering  the  nature  and  classification  of 
the  micro-organisms,  their  action  on  plants 
and  animals,  the  diseases  they  occasion,  and 
the  methods  of  studying  them,  with  remarks 
on  the  germ  theory  of  disease,  accompanied 
by  good  illustrations.  We  have  been  asked 
to  name  some  comprehensive  work  on  the 
bacteria.  The  present  treatise  is  concise 
and  methodical,  and  makes  full  use  of  the 
latest  investigations. 

Handbook  of  Vertebrate  Dissection.  By 
H.  Newell  Martin,  D.  Sc,  and  William 
A.  MoALE,  M.  D.  Part  II.  How  to  dis- 
sect a  Bird.  New  York :  Macmillan^  & 
Co.     Pp.  174.     Price,  60  cents. 

The  intention  of  the  series  of  which  this 
book  is  a  member  is  not  to  enable  the  stu- 
dent to  determine  species,  but  to  give  the 
young  morphologist  practical  directions  as- 
sisting him  to  learn  for  himself  what  a  fish, 
an  amphibian,  a  reptile,  a  bird,  and  a  mam- 
mal are,  when  considered  from  an  anatomical 
point  of  view  and  contrasted  with  one  an- 
other. In  the  present  volume  are  given 
specific  and  detailed  directions  for  perform- 
ing the  several  operations  of  dissection  on 
a  bird,  which  are  made  more  clear  by  well- 
executed  illustrations.  The  work  has  been 
composed  chiefly  by  Dr.  Moale,  under  the 
direction  of  Professor  Martin. 

Die  Kupferlegirungen,  ihre  Darstellfng 

TND   VeRWENDUNG    BEI    DEN  VOLXEM  DES 

Alterthums.  (Copper alloys:  their  rep- 
resentation and  application  by  the  peo- 
ple of  antiquity.)  By  Dr.  E.  Reyer. 
Vienna.     Pp.  16. 

The  author,  who  is  Professor  of  Ge- 
ology in  the  University  of  Vienna,  has  al- 


ready published  a  number  of  monographs  on 
several  of  the  metals  which  are  the  objects 
of  man's  mining  enterprise  and  have  been 
applied  by  him  to  his  use,  in  which  he  has 
compressed  much  valuable  information.  In 
the  present  work  he  describes  the  uses  that 
have  been  made  of  the  alloys  of  copper,  in 
sections  treating  of  the  geology  and  discov- 
ery of  the  metal,  the  characteristics  of  the 
alloys,  the  valuable  uses  that  have  been 
made  of  them,  a  summary,  by  nations,  of 
the  kinds  of  alloys  that  have  been  used  by 
different  people,  and  the  literature  of  the 
subject. 

Die  Korperliche  Eigenschaften  der  Ja- 
PANER.  (The  Physical  Characteristics 
of  the  Japanese.)  An  Anthropological 
Study.  By  Dr.  Erwin  Baelz.  First  Part. 
Yokohama :  Press  of  the  "  Echo  du  Ja- 
pan."    Pp.  16. 

The  author  of  this  study  is  Professor  of 
Clinical  Medicine  in  the  University  of  Tokio, 
and  the  essay  is  a  contribution  to  the  "  Trans- 
actions" of  the  German  East-Asiatic  Soci- 
ety. Authorities  differ  greatly  in  their  esti- 
mates of  the  stature  and  other  physical  pe- 
culiarities of  the  Japanese,  and  betray  great 
inaccuracy  in  their  statements  on  the  sub- 
ject. Dr.  Baelz  has  sought  to  remedy  this 
diflSculty  by  instituting  a  series  of  system- 
atic and  exact  measurements.  The  paper 
gives  the  results  he  has  reached.  The  pres- 
ent (first)  part  considers  anatomical  details. 
It  is  to  be  followed  by  a  second  part,  treat- 
ing of  physiological  peculiarities. 


PUBLICATIONS  EECEIYED. 

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bridge :  John  Wilson  &  Son.    1SS3.    Pp.  56. 

The  Journal  of  Physiology.  Vol.  lY,  Nos.  2 
and  3.  Edited  by  Michael  Foster,  M.  D..  F.  R.  S. 
Supplement  to  Vol  IV,  containing  List  of  Titles  of 
Works  and  Papers  of  Physiological  Interest  pub- 
lished in  ISS'2.  Baltimore:  Johns  Hopkins  Univer- 
sity.   August,  1SS3. 

The  Sonnets  of  Shakspere  :  When,  to  Whom, 
and  by  Whom  Written.    Pp.  12. 

New  and  Important  Discoveries  in  Physiology. 
By  George  H.  Kussell.  Newville,  Pa.  18S3.  Pp. 
14.    25  cents. 

Observations  on  the  Habits  of  the  American 
Chameleon.  By  E.  W.  Shufeldt.  1SS8.  Pp.  8.  Il- 
lustrated. 

The  Relations  of  Pain  to  Weather.  By  Captain 
E.  Catlin.  United  States  Army,  with  Notes  by 
6.  Weir  Mitchell.  M.  D.  Philadelphia:  Collins, 
printer.    IS^.    Pp.  19. 

A  Synopsis  of  Copyright  Decisions.  By  W.  M. 
Griswold.    Bangor,  Me.    1SS3.    Pp.  S. 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


33 


The  Structure  and  Appearance  of  a  Laramie 
Dinosaurian,  pp.  4.  with  Plates ;  and  On  the  Mutual 
Kelations  of  the  Bunotheriau  Mammalia,  pp.  7.  By 
E.  D.  Cope.    ISbS. 

Notes  on  the  Volcanoes  of  Northern  California, 
Oregon,  and  Wasliiugton  Territory.  By  Arnold 
Hague  and  Joseph  P.  Iddings.     1SS;3.     Pp.  13. 

The  Heart  of  Man.  An  Attempt  in  Mental 
Anatomv.  By  Putnam  P.  Bishop.  Chicago: 
Shepard"&  Johnston,  printers.     1SS3.    Pp.93. 

A  History  of  the  New  York  State  Teachers'  As- 
sociation. By  Hyland  C.  Kirk.  New  York  :  E.  L. 
KeUogg&Co.    1S33.    Pp.174.    Hlustrated. 

Syllabus  of  the  Instruction  in  Sanitary  Science. 
By  Delos  Fall.  Albion,  Mich.  1683.  Pp.  7.  10 
cents. 

On  the  Eight  Use  of  Books.  By  William  P. 
Atkinson.  Boston :  Eoberts  Brothers.  ISiy.  Pp. 
65. 

God  and  the  State.  By  Michael  Bakounine. 
Translated  from  the  French  by  Benjamin  E.  Tucker. 
Boston :  Benjamin  E.  Tucker,  publisher.  1883. 
Pp.  52.    15  cents. 

A  Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians.  Edited 
by  George  Grove,  D.  C.  L.  Parts  XVII  and  XVIII. 
London  and  New  York  :  Macmillan  &  Co.  lbS3. 
Pp.  239.    $1  per  Part. 

Sewer-Gas  and  its  Alleged  Causation  of  Typhoid 
Fever,  pp.  20 ;  and  The  Status  of  Professional 
Opinion  and  Popular  Sentiment  regarding  Sewer- 
Gas  and  Contaminated  Water  as  Causes  of  Typhoid 
Fever,  pp.  10.  By  George  Hamilton,  M.  D.  Phila- 
delphia.   18S3. 

The  Influence  of  Athletic  Games  upon  Greek 
Art.  By  Charles  Waldstein,  Ph.  D.  London.  1883. 
Pp.  24. 

Studies  from  the  Biological  Laboratory  of  Johns 
Hopkins  University.  Edited  by  H.  Newell  Martin 
and  W.  K.  Brooks.  Vol.11,  No.  4.  Baltunore.  1883. 
Pp.  85,  with  Plates. 

Professional  Papers  of  the  Signal  Service.  No. 
VIII.  The  Motions  of  Fluids  and  Solids  on  the 
Earth's  Surface.  By  Professor  William  Ferrel,  with 
Notes  by  Frank  Waldo.  Pp.  51.  No.  IX.  Geo- 
graphical Distribution  of  Eainfall  in  the  United 
States.  By  H.  C.  Dunwoody.  Pp.  51,  with  Maps. 
No.  XI.  Meteorological  and  Physical  Observations 
on  the  East  Coast  of  British  America.  By  Orray 
Taft  Sherman.  Pp.202.  No.  XII.  Popular  Essays 
on  the  Movements  of  the  Atmosphere.  By  Pro- 
fessor William  Ferrel.  Pp.  59.  Washington  :  Gov- 
ernment Printing-office. 

Verbal  Pitfalls.  By  C.  W.  Bardeen.  Syracuse, 
N.  Y. :  C.  W.  Bardeen,  publisher.    1883.    Pp.  223. 

Henry  Irving.  New  York  :  W.  S.  Gottsberger. 
1883.    Pp.207. 

Van  Nostrand's  Science  Series.  No.  69.  Steam- 
Heating.  By  Eobert  Briggs,  C.  E.  Pp.  108.  No. 
69.  Chemical  Problems.  By  James  C.  Foye,  Ph. 
D.  Pp.  141.  New  York  :  1).  Van  Nostrand.  188^3. 
50  cents  each. 

Astronomy,  By  Simon  Newcomb,  LL.  D.,  and 
Edward  S.  Holden.  M.  A.  New  York :  Henry  Holt 
&Co.    1883.     Pp.338.     $1.40. 

A  New  School- Dictionary  of  the  English  Lan- 
guage. Philadelphia  :  J.  B.  Lippincott  «fe  Co.  1883. 
Pp.  390.    90  cents. 

The  Fertilization  of  Flowers.  By  Hermann  Miil- 
ler.  With  a  Preface  by  Charles  Darwin.  London  : 
Macmillan  &  Co.     1883.    Pp.  669.    $5. 

Annual  Eeport  of  the  Operations  of  the  United 
States  Life-Saving  Service  for  the  Year  ending  June 
80, 18S2.  Washington :  Government  Printing-Office. 
18S3.    Pp.  504. 

Finland:  Its  Forests  and  Forest  Management. 
By  John  Croumbie  Brown,  LL.  D.  Montreal : 
Dawson  Brothers.    1883.     Pp.  290. 

Annual  Eeport  of  the  Board  of  Eegents  of  the 
Smithsonian  Institution  for  the  Year  ISSl.  Wash- 
ington :  Government  Pi-inting-Office.  1883.  Pp.  837. 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 

School  Examinations. — In  an  address 
before  the  Teachers'  Association  of  Cook 
County,  Illinois,  Colonel  Francis  W.  Parker, 
formerly  of  Boston,  now  Principal  of  the 
County  Normal  School,  severely  condemned 
the  prevalent  system  of  examining  in  schools. 
He  believed  that  none  were  more  faithful  in 
their  efforts  than  the  teachers  of  to-day,  and 
none  were  more  anxious  to  do  good  than 
they.  He  had  wondered  why  progress  had 
not  been  greater,  and  had  come  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  greatest  obstacle  was  the 
examinations.  The  standard  for  the  work 
had  a  powerful  influence  on  the  work  it- 
self. He  believed  that  examinations  were 
the  greatest  curse  the  schools  had,  though 
they  might  be  made  the  greatest  blessing. 
"  What  is  the  true  motive  of  examinations  ? 
Ileal  teaching  leads  to  the  systematic,  all- 
sided  upbuilding  of  a  compact  body  of 
knowledge  in  the  mind.  In  this  upbuild- 
ing or  instruction,  every  faculty  of  the  mind 
is  brought  into  action — perception,  judg- 
ment, classification,  reason,  imagination,  and 
memory.  Examinations,  then,  should  test 
the  condition  and  progress  of  the  mind  in 
its  development.  Is  the  common  standard 
of  examinations  a  test  of  real  teaching  ?  If 
I  am  not  mistaken,  the  examinations  usually 
given  simply  test  the  pupil's  power  of  mem- 
orizing disconnected  facts.  The  surest  way 
to  effectually  kill  all  desire  to  study  any 
subject,  say  history,  when  the  pupil  leaves 
school,  is  the  memorizing  of  disconnected 
facts.  A  no  less  sure  way  of  creating  an 
intense  desire  to  read  history  is  to  take  one 
interesting  subject  and  read  from  various 
books  all  that  is  said  about  it,  and  then 
under  the  guidance  of  a  skillful  teacher  to 
put  together  this  information,  arranging 
events  in  logical  order,  and  finally  writing 
out  in  good  English  the  whole  story.  It  is 
very  easy  for  an  expert  in  examinations  to 
judge  of  the  true  teaching  power  of  the 
teacher  in  such  work,  by  the  written  papers. 
If  meaningless  words  have  been  memorized, 
if  there  is  a  lack  of  research,  investigation, 
and  original  thought,  the  results  will  be 
painfully  evident. 

"  Examinations  should  not  be  made  the 
test  of  fitness  for  promotion.  Those  who 
understand  children  will  readily  appreciate 


134 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY 


the  excitement  and  strain  under  whicli  they 
labor,  when  their  fate  depends  upon  the 
correct  answering  of  ten  disconnected  ques- 
tions. It  is  well  known  to  you  that  some 
of  the  best  pupils  generally  do  the  poorest 
work  in  the  confusion  that  attends  such 
highly-wrought  nervous  states.  How  much 
better,  then,  it  is  to  take  the  work  of  the 
pupil  for  the  whole  year,  than  the  results  of 
one  hour,  under  such  adverse  conditions  !  If 
the  teacher  really  teaches,  and  faithfully 
watches  the  mental  growth  of  her  pupils 
through  the  work  of  one  or  more  years,  she 
alone  is  the  best  judge  of  their  fitness  to  do 
the  work  of  the  next  grade.  The  examina- 
tions of  a  superintendent  should  be  to  ascer- 
tain whether  the  principals  under  his  charge 
have  the  requisite  ability  and  knowledge  to 
organize,  teach,  and  supervise  a  large  school. 
The  examinations  of  the  principal  should 
test  the  teaching  power  of  his  teachers. 
And,  lastly,  the  teachers  should  test  by  ex- 
aminations the  mental  growth  of  their  pupils. 
This  is  the  true  economical  system  of  respon- 
sibility. First  ascertain  that  superintend- 
ent, principal,  and  teacher  can  be  trusted,  and 
then  trust  iJiem.  The  testimony  of  count- 
less good  teachers  has  been  uniform,  when 
asked, '  Why  don't  you  do  better  work  ?  why 
don't  you  use  the  methods  learned  in  normal 
schools,  and  educational  periodicals,  and 
books  ? '  *  We  can  not  do  it.  Look  at  our 
course  of  study.  In  three  weeks  or  months 
these  children  will  be  examined.  We  have 
not  one  moment  of  time  to  spend  in  real 
teaching.'  No  wonder  that  teaching  is  a 
trade  and  not  an  art !  No  wonder  there  is 
little  or  no  demand  for  books  upon  the  sci- 
ence and  art  of  teaching ! " 

The  Alps  in  Roman  Times.— The  ancient 
Romans,  says  Professor  H.  Nissen,  of  Stras- 
burg,  saw  in  the  Alps  a  kind  of  a  wall  com- 
pletely shutting  them  out  from  the  people 
living  beyond  them,  and  so  for  centuries 
they  hesitated  to  take  possession  of  the 
mountain-lands,  although  their  legions  had 
subjected  all  the  country  at  the  base  of  the 
Alps  to  the  Rhine,  and  had  made  demon- 
strations toward  Germany  and  England.  So 
great  was  their  dread  of  those  imknown 
heights  that  they  quietly  endured  the  au- 
dacity of  the  rapacious  tribes  inhabiting 
them  till  about  fifteen  years  b.  c.    Yet  Han- 


nibal had  crossed  them  for  the  first  time  in 
September  of  218  b.  c.  This  was  consid- 
ered a  deed  of  such  magnitude  that  its  suc- 
cess was  ascribed  by  the  southern  people 
to  the  assistance  of  the  heavenly  powers. 
The  darkness  that  rested  over  the  Alps  was 
first  illuminated  by  the  historian  Polybius, 
who  visited  them  and  described  them  from 
his  own  observations.  Roman  power  was 
extended  over  them  by  Augustus  Cassar,  b.  c. 
15.  Afterward  roads  were  built  over  them, 
fourteen  at  least,  the  laying  out  of  which 
shows  that  they  were  made  after  careful 
studies  of  the  situation  by  the  engineers. 
The  opening  of  the  mountains  to  travel  was 
followed  by  a  great  streaming  of  adventur- 
ers in  search  of  the  riches  to  be  found  in 
the  regions  beyond,  and  scenes  were  enacted 
very  much  like  those  which  were  witnessed 
a  few  years  ago  in  California.  At  one  time 
gold  was  found  in  such  abundance  that  the 
price  of  the  metal  was  dcpi-eciated  thirty-four 
per  cent  through  all  Italy.  The  treasure- 
hunters  carried  vines  with  them  and  planted 
them  wherever  they  settled  down ;  and  to 
this,  in  part,  Germany  owes  its  wealth  in 
vineyards.  The  forests  were  laid  waste,  as 
a  matter  of  course,  just  as  they  are  now 
wherever  a  new  settlement  is  planted,  and 
with  similar  results.  The  Romans  had  no 
appreciation  of  the  beauty  and  grandeur  of 
the  mountains,  so  highly  admired  by  mod- 
em taste,  but  expressed  only  dread  of  them 
and  abhorrence  of  their  savage  aspect,  which 
they  considered  well  represented  in  the  bar- 
barous names  their  indwellers  gave  to  them. 
They  entertained  the  wildest  ideas  of  the 
height  of  the  mountains,  which  they  exag- 
gerated tremendously.  Pliny,  who  was  a  na- 
tive of  Como,  at  their  very  foot,  speaks  of 
one  of  the  peaks  as  being  fifty  miles  high, 
or  sixteen  times  as  high  as  Mont  Blanc. 

Tlie  Venom  of  Snaltes.— Drs.  S.  Weir 
Mitchell  and  Edward  T.  Reichert  have  ob- 
tained the  venoms  from  several  snakes  in 
the  shape  of  a  turbid,  yellowish  fluid,  vary- 
ing in  viscidity,  odorless,  and  having  an  acid 
reaction.  All  the  venoms  are  soluble  in 
water  at  ordinary  temperatures,  save  for  a 
slight  cloudiness  which  but  slowly  settles. 
The  poisonous  principle  of  the  venom  of 
the  moccasin  and  the  rattlesnake  appears  to 
reside  in  two  out  of  three  proteids  which  it 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY, 


135 


contains,  one  of  which  is  analogous  to  pep- 
tones and  is  a  putrefacient,  while  the  other 
is  akin  to  globuline  and  is  a  much  more 
fatal  poison,  probably  attacking  the  respir- 
atory centers  and  destroying  the  power  of 
the  blood  to  clot.  The  third  proteid  resem- 
bles the  albumens,  and  is  probably  innocent. 
The  poisons  of  the  rattlesnake,  copperhead, 
and  moccasin  are  capable  of  being  destroyed 
by  bromine,  iodine,  bromohydric  acid  (thirty- 
three  per  cent),  sodium  hydrate,  potassium 
hydrate,  and  potassium  permanganate. 

Antiseptic  Qnalities  of  Copper. — A  few 

years  ago  copper  was  universally  regarded 
as  a  deadly  poison,  and  any  questioning  on 
the  subject  would,  as  M.  Gautier  observes, 
have  been  regarded  as  absurd.  This  opin- 
ion has  been  shaken  by  recent  investiga- 
tions. M.  V.  Burq  claims  for  copper  bene- 
ficial properties  as  a  disinfectant  and  pro- 
phylactic. He  has  observed  for  thirty  years 
that  workmen  in  copper  and  players  on  musi- 
cal instruments  of  brass,  who  were  liable 
daily  to  absorb  notable  quantities  of  pure 
copper-dusts,  enjoyed  a  remarkable  immu- 
nity from  infectious  diseases.  This  was  es- 
tablished in  the  case  of  the  cholera  in  1869 
and  1873,  during  the  epidemic  which  pre- 
vailed in  Paris  in  18*76  and  18*77,  and  in 
the  recent  visitation  of  typhoid  fever,  which 
was  the  Immediate  occasion  of  M.  Burq's 
making  a  communication  to  the  French 
Academy  on  the  subject.  M.  Burq  has 
been  encouraged,  by  his  own  experiments 
and  those  of  other  physicians  whom  he 
cites,  to  recommend  the  administration  of 
salts  of  copper  as  a  preventive  and  remedy 
in  cases  of  infectious  disease.  M.  A,  Gautier 
has  recently  published  a  book  on  "  Copper 
and  Lead  in  Food  and  Industry,"  in  which 
he  denies  that  copper  is  as  dangerous  a 
substance  as  it  has  been  considered  to  be. 
Citing  the  observations  of  Burq,  Galippe, 
and  other  authors,  he  discusses,  in  substan- 
tial agreement  with  them,  the  eifect  which 
copper  has  in  industry  and  in  general  use 
upon  workmen  engaged  with  it,  and  upon 
public  health.  lie  represents  it  as  a  normal 
constituent  in  many  of  our  foods.  Wheat, 
barley,  rice,  beans,  coffee,  etc.,  constantly 
contain  of  it  quantities  varying  from  four  to 
ten  milligrammes  per  kilogramme.  Prepared 
foods — ^greened  pickles,  chocolate,  etc. — con- 


tain much  more  copper,  from  ten  to  two 
hundred  milligrammes  per  kilogramme ; 
and  the  author  shows  that,  as  a  rule,  we 
consume  five  milligrammes  of  metallic  cop- 
per a  day  without  receiving  any  serious  in- 
jury from  it.  These  quantities  could  be  in- 
creased without  much  danger,  but  the  taste 
of  the  salts  of  the  metal  is  so  disagreeable, 
and  their  color  so  conspicuous,  that  stronger 
doses  would  make  the  food  nauseous  and 
repulsive,  so  that  the  danger  of  one  taking 
a  fatal  dose  of  copper  is  really  quite  remote. 
All  food  becomes  uneatable  when  it  con- 
tains four  grammes  per  kilogramme  of  cop- 
per salts ;  even  voluntary  poisoning  by  cop- 
per is  almost  impossible.  A  practical  infer- 
ence from  these  observations  would  be,  that 
the  care  we  take  to  tin  our  copper  cooking- 
vessels  is  useless.  M.  Gautier  maintains, 
that  it  is  even  dangerous  ;  for  most  tin  con- 
tains lead,  a  deadly  poison  even  in  small 
doses ;  and  it  is  this  metal,  in  M.  Gautier's 
opinion,  that  is  guilty  of  the  damage  that 
has  been  attributed  to  copper.  It  meets  us 
everywhere,  and  always  leaves  its  mark  in 
some  damage  to  our  system,  slight  in  the  de- 
tail, but  cumulative  in  the  aggregate.  We 
absorb  it  with  our  preserved  foods,  from 
glazed  papers  and  oil-cloths,  from  paint, 
from  enamels  and  crockery,  from  tin-ware, 
and  from  cosmetics,  a  little  every  day,  till 
at  last  enough  of  the  poison  is  accumulated 
in  the  system  to  make  its  strength  very 
plainly  felt. 

How  Raisins  are  dried.— Malaga  raisins 
are  made  from  two  distinct  kinds  of  grapes 
— the  Muscat,  which  is  indigenous ;  and  the 
Pero-Ximenes,  which  was  imported  from 
Germany  two  hundred  or  more  years  ago. 
Opinions  differ  concerning  the  respective 
merits  of  the  two  varieties.  The  vines  are 
strongly  manured,  and  are  allowed  to  stretch 
themselves  over  the  ground  and  absorb  all 
atmospheric  heat.  The  fruit  is  not  all  gath- 
ered at  one  time,  but  the  same  piece  of 
ground  is  gone  over  three  times,  so  that  all 
the  grapes  may  have  the  necessary  ripeness. 
The  raisins  are  prepared  by  washing,  by  dry- 
ing by  steam,  or  by  simple  drying  in  the  sun. 
To  dry  the  grapes  by  the  washing  method, 
furnaces  of  feeble  draught  are  made  in  which 
wood  is  used  as  fuel.  A  round  kettle  of 
three  or  four  hundred  quarts'  capacity  re- 


136 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


ceives  a  lye  formed  from  the  residue  or 
refuse  of  the  grapes  after  pressing,  which  is 
either  that  obtained  from  the  present  year 
or  some  that  has  been  kept  from  a  previous 
vintage.  The  raisins,  held  in  wire  colan- 
ders holding  from  five  to  eight  pounds  each, 
are  plunged  in  this  lye  while  it  is  boiling. 
After  the  immersion,  the  workmen  exam- 
ine the  skins  to  see  if  they  are  shriveled 
enough.  If  not,  they  immerse  the  grapes 
a  second  time,  which  is  usually  the  last. 
The  process  of  immersion  is  a  very  deUcate 
one,  requiring  skillful  watching  and  keen 
judgment  on  the  part  of  the  workmen.  The 
grapes  must  not  be  allowed  to  burst,  nor 
the  skins  to  crack.  The  grapes  must  not 
get  too  hot  or  be  too  sweet,  or  the  raisins 
will  mold.  Raisins  dried  by  this  process 
are  considered  inferior.  To  prepare  rai- 
sins by  steam,  the  grapes,  after  having  been 
sunned  for  twenty-four  hours,  are  put  on 
drying-shelves  in  a  room  heated  by  steam  to 
160°  Fahr.,  and  kept  there  for  twenty-four 
hours,  when  they  are  taken  to  a  cooling- 
room  to  be  gradually  cooled  till  they  are 
ready  to  be  packed.  Drying  in  the  sun  is  pre- 
ferred to  the  other  processes  wherever  the 
sun  affords  enough  heat.  Stagings  are  built 
of  brick  or  stone,  on  which  the  grapes  are 
exposed  at  such  an  angle  of  inclination  as 
to  be  in  the  sun  throughout  the  day.  A 
temperature  of  145°  is  thus  attained  in  Au- 
gust. At  night,  the  grapes  are  covered  with 
canvas  or  with  boards.  During  the  process 
of  drying,  those  grapes  that  remain  green  or 
are  spoiled  are  carefully  removed,  and  each 
grape  is  turned,  in  order  to  preserve  a  uni- 
formity in  the  darkening  of  color.  Raisins 
prepared  by  the  scalding  process  dry  in  four 
days,  while  those  dried  in  the  sun  take  ten 
days,  but  the  difference  of  time  is  largely 
compensated  for  by  the  economy  of  ex- 
penditure. The  raisins  are  not  ready  for 
packing  immediately  after  being  dried,  but 
have  to  be  kept  for  several  days  in  the 
stores  on  the  planks  on  which  they  are  car- 
ried. Those  that  are  spoiled  or  defective 
are  picked  out,  especially  if  they  appear 
broken  or  bruised,  for  one  drop  of  moisture 
from  them  would  probably  damage  a  whole 
box.  The  crop  of  raisins  produced  in  the 
Malaga  district  from  the  vintage  of  1880 
and  1881  is  estimated  at  between  2,000,000 
and  2,050,000  boxes  of  22  pounds  each. 


Centripetal  and  Ccntrifagal  Moyements 
of  the  Limbs. — Dr.  G.  Delaunay  controverts 
the  theory  of  Carl  Vogt,  that  the  direction 
of  the  lines  in  writing,  whether  from  right 
to  left,  the  result  of  a  centripetal,  or  from 
left  to  right,  the  result  of  a  centrifugal, 
movement  of  the  hand,  depends  upon  ex- 
terior conditions  rather  than  a  physiological 
necessity.  His  investigations  have  taught 
him  to  believe  that  the  general  direction  of 
all  movements  is  determined  by  physiological 
and  anatomical  influences.  Quadrupeds,  he 
says,  as  a  rule  are  capable  only  of  vertical 
or  forward  and  backward  movements ;  a 
few  of  them,  as  the  cat  and  monkeys,  can 
make  centripetal  movements.  Man  is  the 
only  one  who  can  execute  centrifugal  ones. 
The  physiological  evolution  from  vertical  to 
lateral — first  centripetal,  then  centrifugal — 
movements,  is  a  result  of  an  anatomical  evo- 
lution that  has  been  well  described  by 
Broca,  in  his  work  on  the  "  Order  of  Pri- 
mates." According  to  M.  Delaunay's  re- 
searches, movements  are  rather  centripetal 
than  centrifugal  with  primitive  or  inferior 
races — rather  centrifugal  than  centripetal 
with  superior  races ;  and  the  change  from 
one  to  the  other  takes  place  as  the  race 
advances.  Formerly  watches  were  wound 
from  right  to  left — now  they  are  wound 
from  left  to  right.  Some  English  watches 
are  an  exception,  but  the  Americans,  who 
are  more  advanced  in  evolution  (so  M.  De- 
launay says)  than  the  European  English, 
wind  their  watches  from  left  to  right.  As 
it  is  with  watches,  so  it  is  with  most  other 
machinery.  Writing  from  right  to  left  w^as 
characteristic  of  the  earlier  nations,  and  is 
still  so  of  the  less  advanced  peoples,  but 
has  given  way  to  writing  from  left  to  right 
as  the  races  have  improved.  As  between 
the  sexes,  women  are  more  inclined  to  cen- 
tripetal, men  to  centrifugal,  movements; 
this  is  seen  in  drawing  and  in  the  adjust- 
ment of  clothing.  Children  are  more  in- 
clined to  centripetal  than  to  centrifugal 
movements;  they  strike  with  their  palms 
rather  than  with  the  backs  of  their  hands, 
draw  from  right  to  left,  and  have  a  propen- 
sity to  spell  and  write  in  the  same  direction. 
M.  Delaunay  sees  in  this  a  tendency  to 
atavism.  As  between  individuals,  the  more 
intelligent  persons,  better  scholars,  are  more 
ready  in  left  to  right,  or  centrifugal ;  the  less 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY, 


37 


intelligent,  poor  scholars,  in  right  to  left, 
or  centripetal  motions.  Idiots  can  hardly 
strike  with  the  back  of  the  hand,  and  are 
not  at  ease  in  lateral  movements.  In  a 
psychological  respect,  centripetal  gestures 
denote  primitive,  egoistic,  retrograde  ideas, 
as  is  seen  in  the  attitude  of  the  miser  hold- 
ing his  treasure,  and  of  the  coward  in  the 
presence  of  danger.  Centrifugal  gestures 
express  generous,  expansive,  altruistic,  brave 
ideas  and  passions.  The  gesture  of  ac- 
clamation or  applause,  for  example,  is  as 
elevated,  as  outward,  as  centrifugal,  as  pos- 
sible. "  Pleasure,"  says  M.  Charles  Richet, 
"  corresponds  with  a  movement  of  blooming, 
of  dilatation,  of  extension.  In  grief,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  shrink,  we  withdraw  upon 
ourselves  in  a  general  movement  of  flexion." 
Thus,  in  the  psychological  as  well  as  in 
other  points  of  view,  centripetal  gestures 
mark  mferiority,  centrifugal  ones  superi- 
ority. 

Aneient  Love  of  Honey.— The  bodies  of 
Alexander  the  Great  and  of  the  Spartan 
King  Agesipolis  were  preserved  in  honey. 
The  ancient  Assyrians  also  used  the  same 
substance  for  embalming.  Its  preservative 
eifects  are,  however,  only  temporary,  for, 
although  it  prevents  the  entrance  of  the 
germs  of  decay  for  a  time,  it  is  itself  ulti- 
mately overtaken  by  decay,  and  the  bodies 
it  covers  must  follow  it.  The  ancient  use  of 
honey  for  food  was  much  more  important 
than  its  application  to  purposes  of  embalm- 
ing. The  Greek  mythology  attributes  its 
origin  to  Jupiter,  who  in  his  youth  was  fed 
by  goats  with  milk  and  by  bees  with  honey. 
He  adopted  ambrosia,  a  compound  of  milk 
and  honey,  to  be  the  food  of  the  gods,  and, 
taking  care  that  the  earth  should  be  sup- 
plied, caused  it  to  fall  as  a  dew  from  the 
sky,  and  taught  the  bees  to  make  cells  of 
wax  and  store  honey  in  them.  Aristotle 
said  that  honey  fell  from  the  air  at  the  ris- 
ing of  the  stars  and  whenever  there  was  a 
rainbow  ;  Pliny,  that  it  comes  out  of  the  air 
at  about  daybreak ;  whence,  he  adds,  '*  we 
find  the  leaves  bedewed  with  honey  when 
the  morning  twilight  appears,  and  persons 
in  the  open  air  may  feel  it  in  their  clothes 
and  hair."  He  also  regrets  that  it  can  not 
reach  us  as  pure  as  it  starts,  but  has  to  be 
polluted  by  the  various  substances  it  meets 


in  coming  through  the  air.  The  northern 
sagas  likewise  represent  honey  as  a  heavenly 
product,  and  relate  that  it  drops  upon  the 
earth  from  the  holy  ash,  and  is  food  to  the 
bees.  The  ancients  used  honey  as  exten- 
sively as  they  did,  probably,  because  they 
had  not  learned  to  extract  sugar  from  the 
cane.  Nearchus  says  the  Macedonians 
found  the  sugar-cane  in  India,  referring 
probably  to  the  bamboo  and  its  sweet  juices, 
and  Diodorus  and  Theophrastua  speak  of 
the  sweet  juice  produced  by  a  cane  or  reed- 
like plant;  but,  if  cane-sugar  was  known 
at  all  in  antiquity,  it  was  known  only  as 
a  rarity,  and  honey  was  still  the  pre-emi- 
nent sweetener.  The  ancients  were  well  ac- 
quainted with  the  variations  in  the  quality 
of  honey,  according  to  the  season  when  it 
was  stored  and  the  plants  whence  it  was  de- 
rived. Honey  was  also  used  as  a  medicine 
for  affections  of  the  throat,  inflammations 
of  the  lungs,  and  pleurisy,  and  as  an  anti- 
dote for  snake  and  mushroom  poisoning.  It 
was  given  with  mead  in  apoplexy ;  mixed 
with  rose-oil  it  was  applied  to  diseased  ears ; 
and  it  was  used  to  kill  vermin  in  the  head. 
The  ancient  Germans  had  a  mead  or  honey 
wine,  which  was  made  by  the  fermentation 
of  a  mixture  of  honey,  water,  and  herbs,  and 
contained  about  seventeen  per  cent  of  alco- 
hol. Some  ancient  writers  imagined  that 
bees  were  developed  in  the  decomposing 
bodies  of  animals,  and  an  Arcadian  shep. 
herd  is  credited  with  having  discovered  the 
art  of  cultivating  them  in  this  way.  Melanch- 
thon  believed  something  of  the  kind,  and 
saw  in  it  evidence  of  Providence  and  a  noble 
symbol  of  the  Christian  Church.  Honey 
formed  an  important  article  of  trade  in  the 
middle  ages,  but  gradually  declined  under 
the  competition  of  cane-sugar.  The  destruc- 
tion of  the  monasteries  at  the  time  of  the 
Reformation  caused  also  a  limitation  in  the 
use  of  wax-lights,  and  a  reduction  in  the  de- 
mand for  comb. 

Trees  of  Lake  Chad,— Dr.  Nachtigal  in 
his  "  African  Journeys  "  describes  some  curi- 
ous trees  that  grow  in  the  region  of  Lake 
Chad.  The  butter-tree,  called  in  that  coun- 
try toso-kan,  bears  a  green  round  fruit, 
ripening  into  yellow,  about  as  large  as  a 
small  citron.  This  fruit  consists  of  a  nut 
resembling  a  horse-chestnut  in   color  and 


138 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


size,  and  a  palatable,  fleshy,  smooth-skinned 
covering  like  a  plum.  The  nut  affords  an 
oil,  which  solidifies  under  a  shght  decrease 
of  temperature,  and  is  used  throughout 
North  Africa  as  a  substitute  for  butter. 
The  Parkia  higlohosa  {runno-kan)  of  the 
same  region,  a  leguminous  plant,  furnishes 
an  excellent  food  in  its  seeds,  which  are 
eatable  while  still  unripe.  The  ripe  seeds 
contain  a  thick,  saffron-colored  marrow  in- 
closing black,  shining  grains.  The  meal 
made  from  them  forms  when  mixed  with 
water  or  milk  a  pap,  which  has  a  sweet  and 
pleasant  taste  at  first,  but  soon  cloys.  Re- 
lieved with  sour  milk  or  tamarind-juice,  it 
forms  a  dish  healthful  and  enjoyable  to  all. 
The  wool-tree  {Eriodendron  anfi'aciiiosum) 
is  the  third  characteristic  tree  of  the  coun- 
try. It  rises  straight  up,  with  thick,  hori- 
zontal branches  arranged  in  whorls  one 
above  the  other,  and  derives  its  name  from 
its  fruit,  which  bursts  like  the  pods  of  cot- 
ton and  discloses  a  similar  mass  of  fibers, 
lustrous  and  soft  as  eider-down.  This 
"  wool "  is  used  for  the  stuffing  of  cushions 
and  mattresses  and  for  the  wadding-armor 
of  the  heavy  cavalry.  It  has  the  valuable 
property  of  never  becoming  so  compact  but 
that  it  can  be  restored  to  its  original  volume 
by  a  short  exposure  to  the  sun.  The  tree  is 
a  favorite  place  of  refuge  for  the  negroes  in 
time  of  danger.  Taking  their  children  and 
goods  up  with  them,  they  secure  an  excel- 
lent natural  fortress  among  the  whorls  of 
its  limbs. 

Disposition  of  Sewage, — Professor  Hen- 
ry Robinson  remarks,  in  a  paper  on  "  Home 
Sanitation  and  Sewage  Disposal,"  that  the 
latter  question  should  be  regarded  as  involv- 
ing a  combination  of  sanitary  and  agricul- 
tural interests,  of  which  the  first  is  para- 
mount and  the  latter  should  be  disregarded 
when  incompatible  with  it.  Sewage  is  puri- 
fied in  passing  through  the  soil  by  one  or 
more  of  three  processes :  1.  By  simple  fil- 
tration or  removal  of  the  suspended  matter ; 
2.  By  the  precipitation  and  retention,  in  the 
soil,  of  ammonia  and  various  organic  sub- 
stances previously  in  solution ;  and,  3.  The 
oxidation  of  ammonia  and  of  organic  mat- 
ter with  the  aid  of  living  organisms.  A  fil- 
ter-bed may  be  constructed  so  as  to  have  a 
greater  oxidizing  power  than  would  be  pos- 


sessed by  ordinary  soil  and  subsoil,  by  lay- 
ing over  a  system  of  drain-pipes  a  few  feet 
of  soil  obtained  from  the  surface  of  a  good 
field,  care  being  taken  to  select  a  soil  con- 
taining a  considerable  amount  of  carbonate 
of  lime  and  organic  matter.  Such  a  filter- 
bed  would  be  far  more  porous  than  a  natu- 
ral soil  and  subsoil,  and  would  possess  ac- 
tive oxidiizng  functions  throughout  its  whole 
depth.  The  presence  of  antiseptics  inter- 
feres with  the  fermentation,  and  refuse  from 
chemical  works  hinders  the  progress  of  pu- 
rification. Much  valuable  information  has 
been  published  by  Drs.  Lawes  and  Gilbert 
on  the  chemical  changes  that  take  place  in 
the  soil  under  varying  circumstances ;  and 
Dr.  Angus  Smith,  a  rivers  pollution  inspect- 
or, has  much  to  say  in  his  last  annua  1  re- 
port on  the  action  of  air  on  sewage  and  the 
mode  of  treating  sewage  so  as  to  hasten 
aeration ;  while  in  a  previous  report  he  has 
discussed  the  treatment  of  sewage  by  chem- 
icals. Much  information  on  these  subjects 
may  also  be  found  in  Mrs.  Robinson's  work  on 
"  Sewage  Disposal "  (Spon,  London).  Well- . 
adapted  lands  have  been  found  capable  of 
purifying  the  sewage  of  about  five  hundred 
people  per  acre.  The  average  amount  dis- 
posed of  in  nineteen  towns  where  broad  ir- 
rigation was  practiced  was  equivalent  to  the 
sewage  of  one  hundred  and  thirty-seven  peo- 
ple per  acre. 

Commnnieability  of  Disease  by  Food. — 

Except  the  diseases  associated  with  tape- 
worm and  trichinae,  the  only  animal  diseases 
which  there  is  or  has  been  ground  for  regard- 
ing as  transmissible  to  man,  through  ingest- 
ed meat,  are  cattle-plague,  swine-typhoid, 
epizootic  pleuro-pneumonia,  foot-and-mouth 
disease,  anthrax  and  anthracoid  diseases, 
erysipelas,  and  tuberculosis.  Mr.  Francis 
Vacher,  medical  officer,  of  Birkenhead,  Eng- 
land, having  examined  the  evidence  in  re- 
spect to  the  commnnieability  of  these  seven 
diseases,  has  announced  the  conclusion,  in 
the  "Sanitary  Record,"  that  only  two  of 
them — foot-and-mouth  disease  and  anthrax 
— can  as  yet  be  pronounced  communicable 
to  man  by  infected  flesh,  while  the  commn- 
nieability of  the  others,  although  it  can  not 
be  positively  denied,  remains  unproved. 
Cattle-plague  has  been  supposed  to  be  al- 
lied to  various  forms  of  human  disease,  but 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


39 


pathologists  now  refuse  to  accept  such  kin- 
ship in  any  shape.  The  possibility  of  com- 
municating even  a  mild  form  of  disease  by 
eating  meat  infected  with  rinderpest  is  not 
supported  by  any  recorded  instance;  yet 
experiments  whether  such  food  would  con- 
vey infection  must  have  been  tried  millions 
of  times.  Instances  are  cited  in  which  thou- 
sands of  affected  cattle  were  eaten  during 
epizooties  with  no  bad  results.  Typhoid 
fever  of  swine  was  declared  by  Dr.  William 
Budd,  in  1865,  to  be  the  exact  counterpart 
of  enteric  fever  in  man,  but  his  conclusion 
has  recently  been  found  untenable  after  a 
most  exhaustive  research.  The  meat  of 
swine  ill  with  it  is  of  inferior  quality  and 
diminished  nutritive  value,  and  is  unfit  for 
food  in  an  advanced  stage  of  the  disease, 
but  it  does  not  carry  typhoid  fever.  Epizo- 
otic pleuro-pneumonia  taints  the  whole  car- 
cass of  the  animal  affected,  and  commu- 
nicates blood-poisoning  by  inoculation.  Dr. 
Livingstone  says  that  in  South  Africa  the 
meat  of  animals  that  died  of  it  caused 
malignant  carbuncles  in  those  who  ate  it. 
Dr.  Lctheby  relates  that  a  number  of  per- 
sons were  made  sick  by  eating  sausages 
made  of  it  in  London  in  1860.  Dr.  Gamgee 
mentions  a  prevalence  of  carbuncles  in  a 
convict  establishment  where  such  meat  was 
used,  which  ceased  when  the  use  was  dis- 
continued ;  but  similar  meat  has  been  used 
largely  in  Paris,  the  north  of  France,  at 
Lille,  and  even  in  England,  without  visible 
dangerous  effects.  Cattle  fed  on  parts  of 
diseased  hogs,  and  made  to  drink  the  food 
from  diseased  pleurae,  and  animals  in  the 
Zoological  gardens  fed  on  the  meat,  suffered 
no  ill  effects.  The  communication  of  foot- 
and-mouth  disease  to  man,  according  to 
Gamgee,  "  admits  of  no  doubt."  The  dis- 
ease has  been  transmitted  by  drinking  the 
milk  of  animals  affected  and  by  inoculation, 
and  there  is  a  strong '  presumption  that  it 
can  be  conveyed  by  ingested  meat.  The 
existence  of  anthrax  is  determined  by  the 
presence  of  the  bacillus  anthracis  in  the 
blood  of  the  subject.  It  is  communicable 
by  contact,  for  the  bacilli  can  make  their 
way  through  capillaries  and  large  vessels, 
and  can  pierce  the  skin  and  insinuate  them- 
selves where  it  has  not  been  broken.  Ex- 
periment shows  that  the  disease  "  can  be 
as  readily  conveyed  by  food  as  in  any  other 


way.  If  any  portion  of  food  ingested  con- 
tains live  bacilli,  or  their  spores,  the  con- 
sumer runs  a  terrible  risk  ;  and  the  tenacity 
of  life  of  these  organisms  is  so  great  we 
can  not  assign  a  limit  to  it."  Several  forms 
of  disease  have  been  referred  to  anthracoid 
causes.  Whether  they  are  anthracoidal  or 
not  can  be  ascertained  by  searching  for  the 
bacillus,  which,  if  present,  may  be  seen  with 
a  glass  of  not  very  high  power.  The  com- 
municability  of  erysipelas  to  man  from  in- 
fected food,  though  exceedingly  probable, 
is  hardly  capable  of  direct  proof.  To  con- 
vey it  through  food  by  inoculation  only  re- 
quires that  it  be  present  in  the  food,  that 
the  food  be  imperfectly  cooked,  and  that 
the  consumer  have  a  minute  wound  in  his 
mouth.  With  regard  to  tuberculosis,  Mr. 
Vacher  contends  that  direct  evidence  of  the 
human  form  of  the  disease  having  been 
conveyed  by  ingested  flesh  from  animals 
affected  by  bovine  tuberculosis,  or  "  pearl- 
disease,"  is  wanting,  although  such  flesh  is 
daily  sold  and  bought  in  the  open  market, 
and  daily  consumed  by  all  classes.  The 
indirect  evidence  "  has  really  little  bearing 
upon  the  point  at  issue." 

Massage  and  Mental  Hygiene  as  Cnra- 
tive  Agents. — Dr.  Playfair  has  given  ac- 
counts in  the  *'  British  Medical  Journal "  of 
three  really  wonderful  recoveries  from  seri- 
ous disease  by  the  "  Weir  Mitchell "  treat- 
ment, in  which  massage  and  mental  hygiene 
are  the  principal  agents  relied  upon.  One 
patient,  who  had  been  unable  to  retain  food 
in  any  quantities  for  five  years,  began  to 
recover  in  three  days,  and  in  ten  days  had 
an  enormous  appetite;  another,  a  sufferer 
for  four  years  from  partial  paralysis,  began 
to  recover  in  forty-eight  hours,  and  was  well 
in  a  month;  the  third  had  been  epileptic 
and  partly  paralytic  for  sixteen  years.  She 
began  to  improve  in  a  few  days,  was  out 
driving  and  walking  in  six  weeks,  and  two 
months  afterward  went  on  a  sea-voyage  to 
the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  in  the  course  of 
which  she  attended  her  former  nurse  through 
a  fit  of  sickness,  and  from  which  she  came 
back  in  robust  health.  The  treatment  in 
these  cases  consisted  of  removal  of  the  pa- 
tient from  her  home  surroundings,  and  her 
complete  isolation  with  her  nurse  ;  and  sys- 
tematic muscular  movement,  with  the  use  of 


140 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


the  f aradaic  current,  and  vigorous  feeding — 
to  which  the  appetite  was  found  ready  to 
respond.  Dr.  Playfair  attributes  the  chief 
value  of  the  treatment  to  the  fact  that  it  ap- 
peals not  to  one  only  but  to  many  influ- 
ces  of  a  curative  character.  The  "  Louis- 
ville Medical  News,"  reviewing  the  cases, 
believes  that  the  imagination  is  the  most 
prominent  agent  in  effecting  the  cures,  and 
is  ready  to  class  them  with  "  faith-cures." 

Phosphorescenee  in  Plants. — M.  Crie  re- 
marks, in  a  communication  to  the  French 
Academy  of  Sciences,  that  "  it  is  known  that 
the  flowers  of  phanerogams  are  capable  un- 
der certain  circumstances  of  producing  phos- 
phorescent light.  The  phenomenon  has  been 
verified,  especially  of  the  nasturtium  and  the 
marigold.  Some  years  ago  I  myself  saw 
phosphorescent  lights  emitted  in  stormy 
weather  from  the  flowers  of  the  Tropoelum 
rnajiis,  cultivated  in  a  garden.  The  emission 
is  especially  noticeable  in  the  mushrooms 
The  agaric  of  the  olive,  which  grows  in 
Provence,  at  the  foot  of  the  olive-trees,  is 
distinguished  for  its  white,  quiet,  uniform 
light,  which  resembles  that  of  phosphorus 
dissolved  in  oil."  Several  other  species  of 
luminous  agaric  are  known,  but  the  property 
is  not  limited  to  that  genus.  The  Rhizo- 
morpha^  or  the  vegetative  apparatus  of  a 
considerable  number  of  mushrooms,  are  also 
phosphorescent.  These  cryptogams,  which 
are  common  in  mines,  give  a  light  by  which 
miners  can  see  their  hands.  The  luminous 
threads  of  Ehizomorpha  suhterranea  are 
easy  to  perceive  in  the  Pontpean  mine,  near 
Rennes.  Luminous  filaments  of  a  rhizomor- 
pha  have  been  observed  in  branches  of  the 
elder.  The  Xylaria  polymorpha^  collected 
from  old  stalks  in  a  garden,  has  been  seen 
to  emit  a  feeble  white  glow,  like  that  of 
phosphorus  in  the  air. 

Professor  Virchow  on   Humboldt. — A 

monument  to  William  and  Alexander  von 
Humboldt  was  unveiled  at  the  University 
of  Berlin  on  the  28th  of  May.  Professor 
Virchow  delivered  an  address  on  the  occa- 
sion, in  which  he  spoke  in  the  highest  terms 
of  the  character  and  value  of  the  work  of  the 
two  brothers.  "  We  older  men,"  he  said, 
"  who  have  learned  personally  from  Alex- 
ander   von  Humboldt,   and  have  in  part 


worked  with  him,  feel  our  strength  renewed 
when  we  see  how  the  memory  of  the  time  of 
the  new  birth  of  our  people  is  perpetuated  to 
posterity  in  the  many  monuments  of  our  city. 
One  who  walks  through  our  streets  will  dis- 
cover that  Goethe  and  Schiller,  Stein  and 
the  Humboldts,  Bliicher  and  Schwarnhorst, 
did  not  casually  live  side  by  side,  but  that  a 
recognizable  connection  prevailed  in  their 
development,  and  wove  their  works  together 
to  a  single  end.  Every  German  will  look 
with  pride  upon  the  men  who  have  risen 
from  out  of  the  midst  of  the  people  to  the 
highest  places  of  honor,  because  they 
wakened  and  unfettered  the  noblest  forces 
of  the  nation.  Especially  could  our  aca- 
demic youth,  who  have  these  models  before 
their  eyes  every  day,  learn  from  the  history 
of  such  men  what  recompense  genuine 
work  can  gain.  Humboldt,  who  completed 
the '  Cosmos  '  in  extreme  age,  and  who  wrote 
in  the  last  year  of  his  life, '  For  thirty  years 
I  have  had  no  rest,  except  at  night,'  was  at 
one  time  a  sickly  lad,  whose  teacher  in  the 
first  years  of  his  childhood  doubted  whether 
he  would  ever  manifest  any  more  than  the 
most  ordinary  mental  faculties.  He,  whose 
youth  fell  in  an  age  when  hardly  anything 
but  speculative  wisdom,  poetic  invention  and 
dogmatic  tradition  were  held  in  honor,  had, 
in  his  incessant  struggles  in  nearly  all  the 
domains  of  natural  science,  brought  into 
avail  that  stronger  objective  method  of 
thought,  comprehensive  in  its  grasp,  which 
has  since  become  the  pride  and  the  common 
estate  of  the  learned  of  modern  times. 
When  he  at  last,  like  the  world-sages  of 
antiquity,  united  in  himself  all  the  knowl. 
edge  of  his  time  on  natural  subjects,  and 
with  it  the  comprehension  of  its  historic 
growth,  it  was  not  the  knowledge  of  a  com- 
piler that  he  displayed,  but  the  fruit  of  long 
special  work  in  each  single  field.  He  served 
in  the  ranks  as  a  national  economist  and 
as  a  miner,  as  an  astronomer  and  as  a 
physicist,  as  a  chemist  and  as  a  geologist, 
as  an  anatomist  and  as  an  experimenter  in 
vegetable  and  animal  physiology.  He  was 
the  first  scientific  traveler  who  independent- 
ly studied  all  the  natural  and  political  condi- 
tions of  the  countries  visited  by  himself. 
Political  and  physical  geography,  the  study 
of  terrestrial  magnetism,  plant -geography, 
and  ethnography,  grew  under  his  care  to  be 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


141 


independent  branches  of  science.  His  ex- 
ample  was  operative  everywhere,  as  that  of 
one  of  the  most  self-active  masters  in  the 
shop.  He  has  been  called  vain  and  selfish ; 
but  his  vanity  was  never  so  strong  as  to 
overcome  his  love  of  the  truth,  and  his  self- 
ishness never  prevented  his  fostering  all 
budding  talent  and  joyfully  greeting  every 
advance  in  knowledge.  He  refused  high 
positions,  so  strongly  was  his  innate  incli- 
nation turned  toward  the  advancement  of 
knowledge.  Long  after  he  had  become  one 
of  the  recognized  teachers  of  mankind,  he 
did  not  cease  to  learn  ;  but  he  learned  as  an 
investigator  learns  ;  and,  even  as  against 
the  most  adept,  he  never  gave  up  the  right 
of  testing  by  his  own  proofs.  It  was  thus 
that  we  learned  to  know  Alexander  von 
Humboldt.  His  frame  was  bent  under  the 
burden  of  years  and  labors,  but  his  spirit 
was  high-set,  and  his  eyes  still  looked  clear- 
ly into  the  world.  He  was  valuable  to  us 
as  one  who  had  the  highest  knowledge,  and 
was  at  the  same  time  perfectly  discreet,  as 
a  high-priest  of  truth  and  humanity,  as  a 
true  friend  of  civic  freedom.  Feeling  this? 
we  have  erected  his  monument.  May  it  be 
a  symbol  to  many  generations  of  the  efforts 
of  this  age ! " 

The  Physicians'  Part  in  Evolution.— The 

"  Lancet  "  has  been  asked,  "  Why,  if  it  be 
natural  and  expedient  that  only  the  '  fittest ' 
should  survive,  are  we  [the  medical  men]  as 
a  profession  chiefly  interested  in  prolonging 
the  lives  of  those  who  have  been  rendered 
unfit  by  disease  or  accident  ?  "  It  admits 
that,  "  if  it  were  really  a  fact  that  the  whole 
business  of  our  lives,  the  work  to  which  we 
devote  the  best  of  our  strength  and  intelM- 
gence,  had  for  its  object  to  antagonize  the 
natural  course  of  progress  as  regards  the 
race,  although  compassion  for  the  individual 
might  impel  us  to  continue  the  effort,  it 
would  certainly  damp  the  ardor  of  our  en- 
terprise to  reflect  that  those  we  are  striving 
to  keep  alive  ought  in  the  interests  of  pos- 
terity to  be  left  to  die."  The  seeming  par- 
adox the  "  Lancet  "  reasons  is,  however,  in 
truth  a  fallacy.  It  is  founded  on  an  imper- 
fect view  of  the  inter-relations  of  the  world. 
"  Survival  of  the  fittest "  is  not  the  same 
thing  in  its  result  as  "  adaptation  to  circum- 
stances."  Development,  through  and  by  the 


environment,  is  the  method  of  Nature,  but 
this  does  not  necessitate  that  man  should 
be  the  creature  of  circumstances.  The  en- 
vironment is  not  a  constantly  progressive 
agency  of  development.  It  is  itself  subject 
to  the  law  of  survival.  It  can  not,  therefore, 
be  absolutely  or  abstractly  true  that  the 
fittest  for  the  existing  conditions  of  life  in 
any  particular  place  or  epoch  ought  to  sur. 
vive.  It  is  wholly  out  of  our  power  to  de- 
termine whether  the  particular  type  of  de- 
velopment which  seems  to  be  making  its 
way  in  the  world  and  asserting  its  superi- 
ority by  survival,  and  is  for  a  time  regarded 
as  normal,  is  the  best  type,  or  that  which  is 
destined  to  endure  and  be  perfected.  The 
surroundings  of  life  are  progressively  chang- 
ing as  well  as  the  subjects  of  life.  There  is 
a  perpetual  struggle  for  supremacy  between 
the  two,  and  it  is  always  an  open  question 
whether  the  resultant  of  this  struggle  will 
be  found  to  embody  a  greater  or  less  modi- 
fication of  subject  or  circumstance.  "  Our 
duty  as  practitioners  of  the  art  of  healing 
does  not  relate  to  the  surroundings,  except 
in  so  far  as  these  may  be  regarded  a  tribu- 
tary to  the  central  fact  of  life.  If  we  can 
modify  the  conditions  and  circumstances  of 
existence  so  as  to  render  life  easier,  it  is  in 
our  day's  work  to  do  this,  and  to  do  it 
heartily ;  but  the  commission  we  hold  is  to 
prolong  hfe,  and  to  fight  against  all  that 
tends  to  destroy  or  weaken  it.  In  so  doing, 
we  are  not  merely  benefiting  the  individual, 
but  the  race,  because,  so  far  as  we  know, 
man  is  the  highest  created  organism,  and  as 
such  he  is  destined  to  dominate  circum- 
stances. For  us  *  man '  takes  the  form  of 
men.  The  race  may  be  higher  than  the  in- 
dividual, but  it  is  with  the  latter  we  have  to 
deal." 

Aneient  and  Modern  Egyptian  Schools 
and  Libraries. — Mr.  Reginald  Stuart  Poole 
has  attempted  to  trace  an  historical  connec- 
tion between  the  ancient  Egyptian  schools 
and  library  at  Heliopolis  and  the  Alexan- 
drian Library  and  University,  and  even  the 
present  Moslem  University  at  Cairo.  The 
sources  of  information  respecting  the  an- 
cient schools  are  chiefly  old  hieratic  papyri, 
some  of  which  were  actually  exercise-books 
of  students,  and  they  tell  us  of  temples  at- 
tached to  colleges  in  various  large  towns. 


142 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


At  Heliopolis,  where  were  the  most  famous 
schools,  religion,  law,  mathematics,  medicine, 
and  language  were  taught.  Primary  schools 
were  provided  for  all  classes  ;  and  libraries 
were  attached  to  the  temples.  The  old 
methods  were  adopted  in  the  institutions 
foimded  at  Alexandria  by  the  Ptolemies, 
but,  as  these  were  intended  for  a  mixed  pop- 
ulation of  Egyptians,  Greeks,  and  Hebrews, 
law  and  religion  were  excluded,  to  avoid 
controversy.  Learned  men  were  maintained 
by  the  state  to  prosecute  research,  and  a 
botanical  garden  and  a  menagerie  were 
added.  The  first  Alexandrian  Library  was 
burned  when  Julius  Caesar  captured  the 
place.  The  second  disappeared  at  the  time 
of  the  Arabian  conquest.  The  university 
was  restored  by  one  of  the  caliphs  two  cen- 
turies after  the  conquest.  The  great  Uni- 
versity of  Cairo,  which  has  five  thousand 
students,  and  practically  includes  all  the  Al- 
exandrian faculties  except  medicine,  was 
founded  by  a  Greek  officer  of  the  Fatimite 
caliphate,  a.  d.  969-970. 

The  Jackal,  the  Fox-FaMes,  and  the 
Dog-Star. — Herr  0.  Keller,  in  a  paper  on 
"  The  Jackal  in  Antiquity,"  urges  that  the 
Western  nations,  who  had  foxes  but  no  jack- 
als, borrowed  the  traits  ascribed  to  jackals, 
in  Oriental  fables,  with  the  fables,  and  trans- 
ferred them  to  their  foxes.  Thus  the  Gre- 
cian foxes  were  endowed  with  the  attributes 
of  two  animals,  and  the  most  curious  fox- 
fables  of  ^sop  are  in  their  origin  Indian 
jackal-fables.  Some  of  JSsop's  fables  rep- 
resent the  fox  as  the  follower  and  servant 
of  the  lion,  which  he  is  not  known  to  be  in 
any  sense.  The  jackal,  however,  is  in  the 
habit  of  following  the  lion  at  a  respectful 
distance,  and  lives  on  what  he  can  pick  up 
from  the  deserted  repasts  of  the  king  of 
beasts.  This  trait  was  observed  by  the  an- 
cient Indians,  and  it  was  a  natural  result  of 
the  observation  that  their  vivid  imagina- 
tions, discovering  royal  prerogatives  in  the 
lion,  should  endow  his  follower  with  the 
qualities  of  a  minister  and  counselor,  and 
make  him  to  assist  his  majesty  by  using  in 
his  behalf  the  qualities  of  slyness  and  cun- 
ning in  which  the  royal  beast  was  deficient. 
The  Greeks  substituted  foxes  for  jackals  be- 
cause they  knew  nothing  about  them,  and 
their  foxes  came  nearer  than  any  other  ani- 


mal to  answering  the  descriptions  of  them- 
The  transfer  was  made  easier  by  the  gradual 
development  of  the  fables  from  simple  na- 
ture-stories into  moral  lessons,  in  the  course 
of  which  absolute  truth  to  nature  grew  less 
essential,  and  the  representation  of  abstract 
qualities  under  purely  conventional  masks 
became  more  prominent.  The  incongruous 
association  by  the  Greeks  of  the  supposed 
evil  influences  of  Sirius  with  the  harmless 
dog  are  susceptible  of  a  similar  explanation. 
The  Chinese,  however,  who  also  attributed 
evil  qualities  to  the  dog-star,  called  it  the 
jackal-star,  and  appropriately ;  for  as  the 
heat  and  drought  of  which  it  is  the  forerun- 
ner are  destructive  to  the  crops,  so  likewise 
are  the  jackals,  which  make  their  home  in 
the  fields,  and  are  constantly  running  through 
them  in  gangs,  destroying  myriads  of  plants, 
in  search  of  their  food.  To  the  Egyptians, 
Sirius  was  also  the  jackal-star,  but  foreboded 
good,  for  it  appeared  just  before  the  time  of 
the  inundation.  The  Mesopotamians  also 
recognized  in  it  a  forerunner  of  beneficent 
inundations,  and  gave  it  the  name  of  the 
dog,  an  animal  which  they  held  in  high  es- 
teem. The  Greeks  borrowed  the?  Mesopo- 
tamian  name,  and  kept  the  Chinese  idea, 
which  harmonized  well  with  the  character 
of  their  OAvn  dog-days.  The  origin  of  the 
dog-star  has  been  associated  by  some  other 
writers  with  the  idea  that  Sirius,  the  chief 
of  the  stars,  was  the  shepherd-dog  to  the 
host  of  the  heavenly  sheep,  represented  by 
the  other  stars. 

Deforestization  and  Floods  In  China. — 

The  country  of  the  lower  Yangtse-Kiang 
in  China  suffered  terribly  from  floods  last 
July  and  August.  Dr.  Macgowan  has  taken 
advantage  of  a  trip  up  the  river,  for  the  dis- 
tribution of  relief  to  sufferers,  to  make  in- 
quiry whether  any  connection  existed  be- 
tween the  inundations  and  the  removal  of 
the  forests.  China,  old  as  it  is,  is  not  so 
old  but  that  the  process  of  denuding  the 
land  of  trees  may  be  distinctly  traced.  The 
treeless  aspect  of  the  hills  of  the  lower 
Yangtse  now  attracts  attention  from  every 
voyager ;  yet  no  mention  is  made  of  their 
barren  condition  by  Ellis  or  Davis  in  their 
narratives  of  Lord  Amherst's  embassy  in 
1816,  but  wooded  hills  are  alluded  to ;  from 
which  it  would  seem  that  the  deforestization 


NOTES. 


143 


is  recent.  The  ^inundations  by  which  the 
lower  country  is  frequently  submerged  come 
from  the  Poyang  Lake,  concerning  which 
very  little  is  actually  known,  either  as  re- 
gards its  floods  or  its  rain-falls.  It  is  known 
only  that  there  is  evidence  of  a  great  thin- 
ning out  of  forests  on  the  mountains  of 
Southern  Kiangsi,  although  it  has  not  been 
carried  to  the  extent  that  Che-kiang  has 
experienced,  where  arboriculture  is  system- 
atically pursued  to  meet  demands  for  tim- 
ber. In  the  hills  near  the  coast,  which  are 
stripped  annually  of  grass,  ferns,  and  bush- 
es for  fuel,  the  process  of  the  gradual  de- 
nudation of  the  hills  is  distinctly  observ- 
able. The  soil  is  never  carpeted  by  leaves ; 
no  humus  forms ;  rain,  instead  of  slowly 
percolating  as  through  a  sponge,  rushes  in 
water-courses  as  from  the  roof  of  a  house  into 
gutters,  speedily  filling  them,  and  carrying 
with  it  soil,  which  tends  to  increase  the  evil. 
In  this  way  the  lakes  are  destined  to  be- 
come desiccated  much  sooner  than  they  oth- 
erwise would  be.  It  is  because  of  the  occa- 
sional sudden  rush  of  waters  that  freshets 
are  always  attributed  to  the  spouting  of 
chias — subterranean  monsters.  Several  of 
those  are  reported  as  being  concerned  in  the 
late  floods.  While  there  is  conclusive  evi- 
dence that  there  has  been  in  recent  times  a 
great  destruction  of  forests,  it  is  not  clear 
that  floods  have  proportionately  increased 
in  number  or  rapidity ;  it  is,  however,  what 
might  be  expected,  and  it  is  what  is  affirmed 
by  natives  when  accosted  on  the  subject. 
Deforestization  has  had  one  favorable  effect 
in  the  south  of  China,  in  reducing  the  rav- 
ages of  jungle  malaria,  which  recedes  with 
the  advance  of  agriculture. 

New  Serviceable  Metallic  Alloys.—Three 
new  metalUc  alloys  have  been  recently  in- 
troduced, which  seem  fitted  to  serve  as  sub- 
stitutes for  bronze,  imitation  gold,  and  imi- 
tation silver.  Delta,  a  bronze  made  by  Mr. 
Alexander  Dick,  of  London,  is  a  compound 
of  iron,  zinc,  and  copper,  the  proportions  of 
the  ingredients  being  varied  according  to 
the  color  it  is  sought  to  obtain,  and  has  the 
advantages  of  extraordinary  tenacity  and 
flexibility.  It  can  be  beaten,  and  forged, 
and  drawn  when  cold,  takes  a  perfect  pol- 
ish, and,  exposed  to  the  air,  is  less  Hable  to 
tarnish  than  brass,  Aphthite  is  a  "  gold," 
which  does  not  change,  and  is  composed  of 


eight  hundred  parts  of  copper,  twenty-five 
of  platinum,  and  ten  of  tungsten.  Its 
shade  of  color  may  be  changed  by  varying 
the  proportions  of  its  constituent  metals. 
Sideraphthite  is  a  similar  "  silver "  metal, 
and  is  composed  of  sixty-five  parts  of  iron, 
twenty-three  of  nickel,  four  of  tungsten, 
five  of  aluminum,  and  five  of  copper.  These 
alloys  are  capable  of  resisting  hydrosulphu- 
ric  acid,  are  not  attacked  by  organic  acids, 
and  are  only  slightly  attacked  by  inorganic 
acids. 


NOTES. 

Mr.  F.  H.  King,  State  Geologist,  esti- 
mates the  bird  population  of  Wisconsin  at 
sixty-six  per  square  mile,  or  3,565,000  for 
the  State.  Each  bird  is  assumed  to  eat  fifty 
insects  a  day,  or  6,000  for  the  summer. 
Hence  all  the  birds  will  consume  21,384,- 
000,000  insects  a  year.  "Add  to  this 
amount  the  work  which  these  birds  do  in 
their  Southern  homes,  and  we  have  a  low 
estimate  of  the  influence  they  exert  over  in- 
sect life." 

An  improvement  on  the  Bunsen  cell,  by 
M.  Azapis,  consists  in  substituting  for  the 
acidulated  water  a  solution  of  about  fifteen 
per  cent  of  cyanide  of  potassium,  caustic 
potash,  common  salt,  or  sal-ammoniac.  The 
intensity  in  the  new  form  is  as  great  as  in 
Bunsen's,  and  the  advantages  are,  greater 
constancy,  less  waste  of  zinc,  and  very  little 
smell ;  further,  the  zinc  does  not  need  amal- 
gamating. 

H.  T.  Cresson  has  obtained,  from  Aztec 
clay  flageolets,  the  fourth,  seventh,  and  oc- 
tave tones  of  the  diatonic  scale,  and  the  ad- 
ditional sounds  or  semitones  which  consti- 
tute the  chromatic  scale.  These  notes  are 
produced  by  means  of  the  four  finger-holes 
and  by  stopping  or  half  stopping  the  bell  of 
the  instrument.  The  flageolets  are  pitched 
in  different  keys,  and,  if  the  Aztecs  knew 
the  full  capacity  of  their  instruments,  their 
music  must  have  far  surpassed  that  of  other 
uncivilized  peoples. 

Professor  Archibald  Geikie  remarks, 
concerning  the  future  history  of  the  Grand 
Canon  of  the  Colorado,  that  it  has  still  about 
a  thousand  feet  to  remove  from  the  bottom 
of  its  channel  before  its  slope  will  become 
so  slight  that  its  erosive  power  will  nearly 
cease,  and  that  it  is  conceivable  that,  should 
no  geological  revolution  occur  in  the  region, 
the  canon  may  still  be  deepened  to  that 
amount.  There  are  indications,  however, 
that  a  limit  maybe  set  to  the  possible  depth 
of  the  chasm.  As  in  the  "  creep  "  of  a  coal- 
mine, the  bottom  of  the  canon,  relieved  from 


144 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


the  weight  of  the  overlying  column  of  rock, 
may  be  forced  upward  by  the  pressure  of 
the  walls  on  either  side.  In  that  case,  the 
channel  might  rise  as  fast  as  the  river  cut  it 
down,  so  long  as  nothing  occurred  at  the 
surface  materially  to  diminish  the  height  of 
the  walls. 

Shad,  which  were  first  introduced  there 
seven  years  ago,  are  now  to  be  found  all 
along  the  coast  of  California,  and  are  rapidly 
making  their  way  northward.  The  "run" 
in  the  Columbia  River  this  year  was  described 
as  wonderful,  and  the  fish  were  a  drug  in  the 
market.  In  California  they  have  not  yet 
come  into  popular  use,  owing  partly  to  the 
fact  that  the  closed  season  established  by 
law  is  just  when  they  are  in  the  rivers.  The 
order  of  their  running  in  that  State  is  differ- 
ent from  that  in  the  Atlantic  States.  They 
appear  in  San  Francisco  Bay  in  October,  and 
leave  it  in  May ;  while  for  other  parts  of  the 
coast  their  run  begins  later  as  the  latitude 
increases. 

The  Convocation  of  the  University  of 
Oxford  has  voted  £10,000  for  building  a 
laboratory,  working-rooms,  and  lecture-room 
for  the  Waynfiete  Professor  of  Physiology, 
Dr.  Burdon-Sanderson.  The  grant  was  op- 
posed by  some  of  the  members  of  the  board, 
on  the  ground  of  their  objections  to  vivisec- 
tion, but  was  carried  by  a  majority  of  three 
in  a  house  of  one  hundred  and  ninety-three 
members. 

A  CURIOUS  application  is  made  of  liquid 
carbonic  acid  at  Krupp's  foundry,  in  Essen, 
Prussia.  The  cannon  made  there  are  bound 
with  rings,  which  are  put  on  in  nearly  the 
same  manner  as  the  tires  are  put  on  wagon- 
wheels  ;  that  is,  they  are  heated  very  hot, 
and  driven  on  over  the  cold  cannon,  so  that 
when  they  cool  they  hold  it  very  tight. 
Sometimes  it  is  desirable  to  get  the  rings 
off.  This  is  done  by  freezing  the  cannon 
by  means  of  the  evaporation  of  liquid  car- 
bonic acid,  when  they  contract  and  leave  the 
rings  loose.  The  French  journal,  "  La  Pro- 
duction," calls  the  operation  "  a  formidably 
neat  one,  and  of  really  Herculean  elegance." 

Dr.  Chaille,  of  New  Orleans,  has  made 
a  study  of  the  influence  of  the  inundations 
to  which  Louisiana  is  subject  upon  health. 
He  finds  that  they  do  not  cause  inevitably 
or  generally  any  notable  increase  of  malaria 
or  of  other  disease,  and  that  they  certainly 
do  not  usually  either  cause  or  promote 
epidemics.  Their  direct  influence  is,  there- 
fore, not  usually  to  be  dreaded.  They  may, 
however,  in  certain  soils  and  conditions  be 
charged  with  after-influences  of  a  deleteri- 
ous character,  as  when  the  soil  is  loaded 
with  malaria,  or  deposits  of  filth  have  accu- 
mulated upon  it.  Such  soils  and  deposits, 
festering  in  the  sun  after  the  floods  have 
retired,  may  develop  very  serious  evils. 


M.  Perrier  describes  an  Asteria  ( Caulas- 
ter  pedunculatus)  that  was  dredged  up  in  the 
Travailleur  expedition,  which  appears  to 
furnish  a  link  between  the  ancient  crinoids 
and  the  modern  star-fishes.  It  is  a  star-fish, 
having  on  its  back  a  peduncle  quite  similar 
to  that  of  the  crinoids,  which  is  surrounded 
by  a  system  of  plates  resembling  those  that 
composed  the  "  calyx "  of  those  animals. 
The  peduncle  probably  served  as  a  support 
for  the  young  star-fish  while  it  was  tempo- 
rarily fixed,  and  was  probably  destined  to 
disappear  by  the  progress  of  development ; 
but  this  view  needs  to  be  confirmed  by  fur- 
ther examination. 

M.  Marchasd,  having  repeated  with  wa- 
ter some  of  the  experiments  which  Professor 
Tyndall  has  performed  on  the  air,  declares 
that  there  is  no  really  clear  water  in  exist- 
ence. Filling  a  bottle  with  the  liquid,  he 
covered  it  with  black  paper,  and  pierced  in 
the  paper  two  holes  at  opposite  points. 
Looking  through  the  holes  at  the  light,  the 
dust-particles  floating  in  the  water  were 
made  plainly  visible.  They  were  trans- 
parent, only  two  millimetres  in  diameter, 
and  elastic  enough  to  pass  through  the 
closest  filters. 

Mr.  Joseph  Willcox  remarked  at  a  re- 
cent meeting  of  the  Academy  of  Sciences  of 
Philadelphia  on  the  scarcity  of  springs  and ' 
running  streams  in  Canada,  Where  streams 
exist,  they  are  almost  exclusively  the  out- 
lets of  lakes.  He  ascribes  the  feature  to 
the  fact  that  the  ancient  glaciers  swept  away 
a  large  proportion  of  the  soil  of  the  coun- 
try, leaving  the  underlying  rocks  usually 
near  the  surface,  and  in  many  cases  visible 
above  the  ground.  Thus  the  material  is  de- 
ficient which,  in  countries  where  springs  and 
streams  abound,  soaks  up  the  rain  and  melt- 
ing snow,  and  afterward  gives  out  a  peren- 
nial flow  of  water. 

"La  Nature"  records  the  death,  at  Ca- 
tania, Sicily,  in  the  thirty-third  year  of  his 
age,  of  M.  Tedeschi  di  Ercole,  an  investi- 
gator of  earthquakes  and  volcanic  and  other 
physical  phenomena,  and  a  frequent  con- 
tributor to  it  on  subjects  relating  to  them. 

Mr.  Jacob  Enms  specifies  as  two  great 
works  to  be  done  on  our  sidereal  system — to 
ascertain  what  way  the  great  ring  of  the 
milky  way  revolves,  and  to  discover  in  what 
direction  to  look  for  the  center  of  the  sys- 
tem and  estimate  its  distance.  The  tasks 
are  to  be  wrought  out  gradually  by  observ- 
ing and  measuring  the  proper  motions  of 
the  stars,  and  composing  a  map  by  the  aid 
of  which  the  relations  of  those  motions  to 
each  other  and  to  the  common  center  may 
be  determined.  The  details  of  his  method 
are  explained  in  a  pamphlet  of  twelve  pages 
published  by  Judd  &  Detweiler,  Washington, 
D.C. 


ALEXANDER  VON  HUMBOLDT. 


THE 

POPULAR    SCIENCE 
MONTHLY. 


DEGEMBEE,  1883. 


ALEXAIS^DER  YOl!T  HUMBOLDT.^ 

By  EMIL  DU  BOIS-EEYMOND, 
eector  of  the  university  of  beblrn". 

PROPERLY  to  appreciate  Alexander  von  Humboldt's  life-work, 
one  must  form  a  conception  of  the  intellectual  atmosphere  from 
which  he  issued.  The  opinion  may  not  unfrequently  be  found  among 
laymen  that  there  was  no  real  German  naturalist  before  Humboldt. 
They  are  accustomed,  as  if  to  a  Hercules,  to  ascribe  all  deeds  to  him., 
It  is  not  necessary  to  say  that  this  is  all  a  mistake  ;  but  even  profes- 
sional  naturalists  frequently  remember  too  little  of  our  older  history. 
I  do  not  speak  of  the  almost  ancient  figures  of  Copernicus,  Kepler,  and' 
Otto  von  Guericke  ;  nor  of  Leibnitz,  who  had  as  clear  a  comprehend 
sion  of  the  fundamental  ideas  of  nature  as  we  ;  but  the  eighteenth 
century  displays  names  worthy  of  the  highest  degree  of  respect,  almost 
as  brilliant  as  these. 

The  BernouUis  developed  analytic  mechanics,  Euler  recognized  the 
feasibility  of  achromatic  glasses,  Tobias  Mayer  reformed  the  theory  of 
the  moon,  Lambert  laid  the  foundation  of  photometry,  Kant  conceived 
the  nebular  hypothesis,  and  William  Herschel,  whom  we  count  among 
our  own,  enlarged  our  knowledge  of  the  starry  heavens  almost  as  if  the 
telescope  had  just  been  discovered.  Had  the  Dutch  physicists  left 
him  time,  the  Canon  of  Camin  would  have  certainly  possessed  a  perfect 

*  From  a  memorial  address  delivered  in  the  hall  of  the  university,  August  3, 1883. 
The  speaker  began  his  address  by  referring  to  the  custom  of  annually  celebrating  the 
foundation  of  the  university  and  the  memory  of  its  founder,  King  Frederick  William  III 
of  Prussia  ;  he  then  related  the  history  of  the  efforts  to  raise  funds  to  erect  the  statues 
of  the  brothers  William  and  Alexander  von  Humboldt,  just  placed  in  the  grounds  of  the 
university.  Following  this  account  with  a  brief  comparative  estimate  of  the  talents  of 
the  two  brothers,  he  continued,  speaking  more  especially  of  Alexander. 
VOL.  XXIV. — 10 


146  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

title  to  have  the  Leyden-jar  called  by  his  name.  Volta's  electrophore 
is  really  Wilcke's  discovery.  Segner's  water-wheel,  Leidenfrost's  and 
Sulzer's  experiments,  became  the  germs  of  important  discoveries  and  ap- 
plications. StahPs  phlogiston,  even  if  it  was  a  false  conception,  and 
Haller's  elementa,  in  the  long  run,  made  chemistry  and  physiology 
German  sciences.  Herr  Hofman  has  very  lately  taught  us  how  to 
appreciate  Marggraf's  services  in  technical  chemistry.  Vater  and 
Lieberktihn  are  still  mentioned  in  the  finer  anatomy,  and  the  first  part 
of  Sommering's  classical  activity  belongs  to  the  same  category.  Cas- 
par Frederick  Wolf  reformed  the  development-history  and  outlined 
the  doctrine  of  the  metamorphosis  of  plants.  As  early  as  1785  Blu- 
menbach,  the  founder  of  physical  anthropology,  led  a  class  in  com- 
parative anatomy.  In  natural  history,  Rosel  earnestly  advanced  the 
labors  of  Swammerdam  and  Reaumur  ;  Ledermiiller  described  the 
creatures  which  he  called  infusorioe.  Gleditsch  performed  the  experi- 
mental demonstration  of  the  sexuality  of  the  phanerogams  by  fer- 
tilizing the  palms  in  our  botanical  gardens  with  pollen  from  Leipsic. 
Even  in  classification,  in  which  the  rivalry  of  the  seafaring  nations 
with  the  Germans  was  so  arduous,  a  few,  like  the  creator  of  our  fish- 
collection,  Bloch,  won  imperishable  fame.  Germans  also  approved 
themselves  as  scientific  travelers  :  the  two  Forsters,  Cook's  compan- 
ions around  the  world  ;  and  in  connection  with  the  Russian  expedition 
for  observing  the  second  transit  of  Venus,  our  Pallas,  as  a  student  of 
the  Siberian  fauna.  Finally,  in  geognosy  had  "Werner  secured  the 
uncontested  leadership  for  the  Germans  as  the  pre-eminently  mining 
people,  among  whom  Agricola  had  previously  created  mineralogy. 

This  enumeration,  which  might  be  considerably  extended,  shows 
what  good  progress  German  natural  science  had  made  in  the  last  cen- 
tury. Indeed,  it  is  doubtful  whether  any  other  people  can  boast  of  a 
greater  richness  of  notable  achievements  during  the  same  period.  But, 
toward  the  end  of  the  century,  the  aspect  was  changed,  to  our  disad- 
vantage, and  not  without  our  fault. 

After  its  early  bloom  in  the  middle  ages,  and  the  activity  of  the 
Reformation,  the  German  mind,  disturbed  in  its  development  by  the 
Thirty  Years'  War,  remained,  as  respects  literary  production,  in  the 
background.  At  most,  it  trifled  a  little  in  a  tasteless  way.  Then, 
all  at  once,  in  the  second  half  of  the  century,  it  rose  to  so  mighty 
a  flight  that  it  not  only  recovered  its  lost  rank,  but  placed  itself, 
in  some  kinds  of  poetic  creation,  at  the  head  of  modern  mankind. 
A  constellation  of  talent  arose,  the  like  of  which  the  ages  of  Augustus 
and  Louis  XIV  did  not  see,  nor  the  fifteenth  century,  except  in  other 
fields.  Who  can  describe  the  intoxication  of  the  nation,  when  im- 
mortal songs  announced  that  the  king's  son  had  come  whose  kiss 
was  to  awaken  the  thorn-rose  of  German  poetry  out  of  its  half  a 
thousand  years'  slumber  ?  At  the  same  time  there  pressed  upon  us 
the  new  naturalism  and  emotionalism  from  England,  and  enlighten- 


ALEXANDER    VOJST  HUMBOLDT,  147 

ment  and  gushing  philanthropy  from  France.  German  society  now 
acquired  a  strong  literary  interest.  But  while  that  part  of  the  edu- 
cated world  which  was  susceptible  to  the  more  tender  emotions  led 
an  aesthetic  dream-life,  the  stronger  minds  were  chained  to  the  con- 
templation of  the  antique,  or  were  sunk  in  the  profundities  of  the 
simultaneously  ripened  critical  philosophy.  Thus  the  thought  of  the 
nation  was  far  removed  from  realities,  and  directed  toward  beautiful 
fancies  and  ideal  truths.  If  this  had  had  the  result  of  only  diverting 
some  from  research  and  observation,  the  loss  might  have  been  borne. 
But,  with  the  thoroughness  with  which  the  German  does  everything, 
the  damage  went  deeper.  The  distinctions  between  aesthetic  and  scien- 
tific demands  were  effaced  from  the  universal  comprehension.  The 
intuitions  of  art  usurped  the  place  of  induction  and  deduction.  Even 
the  critique  of  the  reason,  just  achieved  by  Kant,  was  pushed  aside  as 
narrow-minded  scholasticism.  An  arrogant  speculation  believed  its 
synthetic  judgments  a  priori  hsid  grown  so  strong  that  it  could  under- 
take to  construct  the  world  from  a  few  delusive  formulas,  and  it  looked 
down  with  extreme  insolence  upon  the  unpretentious  daily  work  of  the 
empiric.  In  short,  the  day  came  of  that  false  philosophy  which  re- 
dounded to  the  shame  of  German  science  for  a  quarter  of  a  century, 
whose  advocates  threatened  our  own  generation,  and  which  the  best 
heads,  elevating  vague  fancy  and  taste  above  the  practical,  were  least 
able  to  resist. 

The  recollection  of  this  perversion  of  the  German  mind  is  the  more 
mortifying  because  it  occurred  simultaneously  with  the  brightest 
phases  of  science  outside  of  Germany,  especially  in  France.  While 
under  the  first  republic  and  the  first  empire  the  muses  were  hushed  to 
silence,  there  was  gathered  in  Paris  a  circle  of  learned  men  of  whom 
not  only  has  each  one  left  a  bright  trace  behind  him,  but  also  in  which 
as  a  whole  lived  the  comprehension  of  the  true  method  to  which  the 
Academy  of  Sciences  has  always  persistently  adhered.  Coulomb  and 
Lavoisier,  Laplace  and  Cuvier,  Biot  and  Arago,  were  partly  the  fore- 
runners, partly  the  coryphees  of  that  great  epoch  from  which  is  dated 
the  leadership  which,  during  the  first  half  of  this  century,  made  Paris 
the  scientific  capital. 

The  period  of  this  momentous  transformation  in  Germany,  when 
aesthetic  contemplation  of  the  world  and  overweening  speculation  were 
mutually  crowning  each  other  and  pushing  intelligent  experiment,  like 
Cinderella,  into  a  corner — this  period  was  that  of  Alexander  von  Hum- 
boldt's youth.  A  remarkable  youth  he  must  have  been,  exuberant  of 
thought,  and  yet  burning  with  the  thirst  for  action  ;  eloquent  and  en- 
thusiastic like  a  poet,  and  yet  devoted  with  all  his  mind  to  the  study  of 
Nature;  in  knowledge  already  a  reflection  of  the  Cosmos,  and  yet  inde- 
fatigable in  accurate  examination  and  experiment ;  a  born  master  of 
the  German  speech,  yet  at  home  in  every  idiom  ;  in  such  guise  he  ap- 
peared in  the  intellectual  center  of  the  Germany  of  the  day,  in  Jena, 


148  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

younger  than  Goethe  by  twenty,  than  Schiller  by  ten  years,  and  yet 
welcomed  by  both  as  if  he  were  their  peer  in  age. 

He  figured  as  the  friend  of  Willdenow,  Georg  Forster,  and  Leo- 
pold von  Buch,  as  the  pupil  of  Blumenbach,  Lichtenberg,  and  Werner, 
already  known  by  minor  writings  in  which  his  industrious  manysided- 
ness  had  early  displayed  itself,  already  a  much-traveled  man  according 
to  the  ideas  of  the  day,  and,  although  of  independent  means,  a  servant 
of  the  state,  on  the  way  to  the  highest  honors.  In  what  was  he  not 
interested,  and  what  did  he  not  take  up  ?  Ancient  weaving,  subterra- 
nean flora,  basalt,  meteorological  phenomena,  the  theory  of  logarithms, 
had  engaged  him  ;  but,  when  it  was  worth  while,  he  knew  how  to  con- 
centrate his  strength  upon  a  single  point.  Galvani's  discovery  had 
recently  stirred  naturalists  and  physicians  to  effort.  "In  the  fall  of 
1T92,  having  become  acquainted  with  it  in  Vienna,  Humboldt,  trav- 
ersing Germany  in  every  direction  as  a  miner,  physicist,  and  botanist, 
'  wandering  upon  desolate  and  remote  mountains  where  he  was  some- 
times cut  off  from  all  literary  intercourse,'  already  revolving  the  plan 
of  his  tropical  journey  in  his  head,  had  still  found  time  to  make  thou- 
sands of  most  delicate  experiments.  Even  on  horseback,  besides  ham- 
mer, glass,  and  compass,  he  was  never  without  'his  galvanic  apparatus, 
a  pair  of  metal  rods,  pincers,  a  glass  stand  and  an  anatomical  knife,' 
and  the  curse  which  the  Bolognan  anatomist  had  invoked  upon  the 
poor  race  of  batrachians  overtook  them  under  Humboldt's  hand,  even 
in  places  in  which  they  had  previously  been  secure  from  it."  Kow  he 
had  talked  with  Alessandro  Volta,  in  his  villa  on  the  Lake  of  Como,  of 
the  crucial  experiment  in  animal  electricity,  Galvani's  convulsion  with- 
out metals,  and  was  preparing  to  collect  the  results  of  his  investiga- 
tions in  the  book  on  "Excited  Muscular  and  Xervous  Fibers."  He 
must  confirm  his  own  researches  with  experiments  on  frogs'  legs, 
and  he  opportunely  called  not  only  his  brother,  but  also  "  Herr  von 
Goethe,"  to  be  his  witnesses. 

Among  the  various  individualities  which  were  united  in  him  into  a 
complicated  whole,  and  which  we  meet  in  analyzing  this  being,  is  first 
of  all  an  artist.  The  "  Rhodian  Genius,"  the  "  Views  of  Nature,"  the 
address  at  the  opening  of  the  assembly  of  naturalists,  are  art-works. 
That  work  of  Humboldt's  which,  like  Goethe's  "  Faust,"  contemplated 
from  youth,  was  completed  with  an  astonishing  energy  only  in  an  ad- 
vanced old  age,  may  certainly  claim  to  be  an  artist's  production.  We 
shall  for  the  present  leave  unanswered  the  question  of  the  utility  of  this 
kind  of  mingling  of  the  poetic  element  with  the  scientific,  in  which  we 
may  recognize  a  return  to  the  models  of  Plato  and  Lucretius.  Aside 
from  his  native  propensity,  Humboldt  was  led  toward  it  by  the  assthetie 
manner  of  thinking  then  prevailing  in  Germany,  which  had  become  a 
second  nature  to  him,  and  especially  by  his  intercourse  with  our  great 
poets.  It  must  not,  however,  be  forgotten  that  something  of  the  same 
kind  had  been  observed  a  little  while  before  in  France.     Buffon's 


ALEXANDER    VON  HUMBOLDT.  149 

"  Epoques  de  la  Nature,"  his  sketches,  flowing  in  splendid  word- waves, 
of  men  and  animals,  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre's  magnificent  pictures 
of  tropical  nature,  were  well  fitted  to  spur  Humboldt's  literary  ambi- 
tion in  emulation  of  them.  If  his  style  has  lately  been  criticised,  that 
shows  that  he  had  a  style.  Indulgence  in  the  creation  of  beautiful 
forms  of  language  was  agreeable  to  the  taste  of  his  age  ;  and  why 
should  I  not  tell  how  he,  presuming  upon  a  similar  receptivity  in  my- 
self, read  to  me  from  the  proof-sheets  of  his  "  Cosmos  "  passages  which 
particularly  pleased  him,  such  as  the  one  in  which  he  ingeniously  sum- 
marizes all  that  the  moon  is  to  our  earth  ;  enlivening  the  firmament  by 
its  changes,  comforting  the  heart  with  its  mild  luster,  and  in  geological 
periods  carving  out  continents  through  the  erosive  work  of  the  tides  ? 
More  subject  to  criticism  is  the  other  influence  which  the  dominat- 
ing mind  of  Humboldt  exercised  over  Germany  in  his  ninetieth  year. 
At  nothing  are  laymen  more  surprised  than  when  they  hear  that  Hum- 
boldt did  not  stand  on  the  extreme  height  as  a  naturalist,  but  that  his 
situation  in  a  mental  respect  was  like  that  he  found  himself  in  on  Chim- 
borazo,  when  an  impassable  chasm  separated  him  from  the  summit. 
The  gap  which  opened  between  him  and  the  topmost  peak  of  natural 
science  was  the  want  of  physico-mathematical  knowledge.  Not  that 
this  was  denied  his  talents.  He  had  in  his  youth  an  inclination  to  pure 
mathematical  research.  But  the  taste,  and  later  also  the  mental  habit, 
of  analyzing  phenomena  within  a  certain  scope  and  tracing  them  to 
their  ultimate  recognizable  principles,  deserted  him.  He  became  satis- 
fied with  establishing  and  examining  facts.  The  mere  telling,  even  at 
large,  of  those  things  that  occupied  his  vision,  and  which  he  compre- 
hended to  the  most  minute  details,  or  could  deduce  at  every  instant, 
was  tiresome  to  him.  It  was,  indeed,  the  cosmos  ;  only  there  is,  in 
that  highest  sense,  no  scientific  comprehension  of  the  cosmos.  Mathe- 
matical physics  knows  of  no  difference  between  cosmos  and  chaos.  By 
blind  natural  necessity,  by  the  central  forces  of  atoms  independent  of 
time,  or  by  some  other  equivalent  hypothesis  of  the  constitution  of 
matter,  it  concedes  that  cosmos  may  have  come  out  of  chaos.  The 
cosmos,  the  beautiful  and  harmonious  aggregate  of  nature,  is  an  aes- 
thetic anthropomorphism.  Humboldt  explained  the  title  "  Cosmos  " 
with  the  phrase,  "  Sketch  of  a  physical  description  of  the  universe." 
According  to  Herr  Gustav  Kirchhoff's  definition  of  mechanics,  one 
might  easily  place  these  words  upon  Newton's  *'Principia"  or  Laplace's 
**  Mecanique  celeste."  But,  by  description,  Humboldt  understood  only 
a  graphic,  not  a  mechanical  description,  and  there  is  the  same  differ- 
ence between  his  description  of  the  world  and  that  of  Newton  or  La- 
place as  between  the  description  of  a  plant  and  the  calculation  of  a  dis- 
turbance. In  that  he  adhered  to  his  conception  through  his  whole  life, 
and  attached  the  highest  value  to  it,  he  showed  himself  a  genuine  child 
of  a  stage  of  discipline  more  fitted  for  artistic  methods  of  view  than 
for  scientific  analysis. 


150  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

While  German  science  was  involved  in  the  enervating  network  of 
aesthetic  speculations,  his  own  energy  and  happy  skill  enlisted  Hum- 
boldt in  wider  spheres  of  healthy  activity  for  its  salvation.  Even  in 
our  fast-living  age,  it  is  hard  to  conceive  that  only  two  years  after  he 
had  been  enjoying  in  the  Saal  Valley  those  visions,  short  indeed,  but 
in  a  certain  sense,  like  a  young  love,  decisive  as  to  his  life,  he  was 
observing  in  Cumana  the  first  periodical  shower  of  stars,  and  discov- 
ering the  electric  folds  in  the  brain  of  the  torpedo-eel ;  was  exploring 
the  caves  of  Caripe  resonant  with  the  cries  of  the  guachero ;  was 
threading  in  a  pirogue,  environed  with  alligators,  the  stream-net  of  the 
Rio  Negro  and  the  Cassiquiare  between  the  Orinoco  and  the  Amazon  ; 
and  in  Esmeralda,  on  the  upper  Orinoco,  was  observing  the  concoction 
by  the  natives  of  the  weird  arrow-poison,  curare,  which  owes  its 
name  to  him.  Nothing  was  wanting  to  raise  the  fantastic  charm  of 
these  journeys,  from  which,  nevertheless,  Humboldt  brought  back  a 
greater  sum  of  acute,  distinct  observations  in  every  conceivable  field 
of  science,  in  geography  and  anthropology,  than  any  single  observer 
ever  collected  either  before  him  or  after  him.  No  I  The  world  will 
"  never  see  his  like  "  in  comprehensive,  restless  activity,  combined  with 
lofty  thought ;  in  dauntless  venture  for  ideas,  with  the  wisest  saving  of 
means  and  strength  ;  in  soaring  height  of  feeling,  the  expression  of 
which  frequently,  in  view  of  the  sad  contentions  of  mankind  or  of  the 
horrors  of  slavery,  for  instance,  has  an  elegiac  tone,  as  in  a  similar  way 
a  delicate  haze  adorns  his  sketches  of  the  giant  heights  of  the  Cor- 
dilleras. 

It  is  essential  to  the  success  of  a  scientific  journey,  first  of  all,  that 
the  traveler  return.  But,  besides  threatening  him  with  physical  dan- 
gers, which  Humboldt's  apparently  not  very  strong  body  resisted  won- 
derfully, long  journeys  in  wild  regions  have  other  inconvenient  conse- 
quences. Habituation  to  perfect  freedom  in  solitude,  to  constant 
change  and  external  stimulation,  even  excitement,  the  diversion  from 
accustomed  literary  occupations,  render  it  very  hard  for  travelers  to 
feel  themselves  at  home  again,  to  give  themselves  up  to  the  compli- 
cated demands  of  cultivated  society,  and  to  be  satisfied  to  make  the 
most  of  the  treasures  they  have  brought  with  them.  They  seem  to 
prefer  to  such  allegiance  a  return  to  the  wilderness,  so  that  it  is  said 
of  African  travelers  that  the  greatest  danger  that  threatens  them  is 
the  unconquerable  propensity,  when  they  have  once  escaped  the  perils 
of  the  journey,  to  try  them  again.  Thus  it  was  with  Humboldt's  fel- 
low-traveler, Bonpland,  who  was  drawn  back  to  South  America,  where 
it  was  his  fate,  not  to  perish,  but  to  be  lost  to  science,  a  prisoner  to 
Dr.  Francia.  He  left  to  Humboldt,  in  whom  no  trace  of  such  weak- 
ness could  be  found,  the  fruit  of  many  of  their  common  labors. 

Humboldt  had  lived  in  Paris  before  his  journey.  He  now  perma- 
nently fixed  his  place  of  labor  there,  as  the  only  place  where  he  could 
perfect  the  literary  undertakings  he  had  planned  ;  and  as  with  curious 


ALEXANDER    VOJSf  HUMBOLDT. 


151 


facility  he  had  become  a  Spaniard  in  Kew  Spain,  so,  without  denying 
his  German,  he  made  the  Parisian  academicians  forget  that  he  was  not 
a  Frenchman.  In  this,  that  gift  of  ready  wit  with  which,  while  a  stu- 
dent at  Frankfort,  he  had  troubled  the  more  serious  William,  and 
which  he  used  as  a  powerful  weapon  in  his  subsequent  court-life,  was 
of  much  advantage  to  him.  Associated  with  Gay-Lussac  and  Proven- 
cal in  labors  which  are  still  instructive,  he  was  received  into  that  small 
circle  of  learned  men  that  gathered  around  the  venerable  Berthollet 
at  Arcueil.  All  of  these  and  numerous  other  friendships  of  Hum- 
boldt's are  thrown  into  the  shade  by  the  life-long  connection  he  formed 
with  Arago,  to  which  the  contrast  of  their  natures  lent  a  peculiar 
charm. 

Humboldt  was  at  first  sight  of  insignificant,  flattering,  and  pliant 
appearance,  Arago  of  imposing  bearing,  a  type  of  fiery  Southern  man- 
hood; Humboldt  of  encyclopedic  mind  and  knowledge,  Arago  an 
astronomer  and  mathematico-physicist  of  so  sharply  limited  a  scope 
and  so  strict  a  school  that,  while  he  analyzed  according  to  three  axes 
the  modifying  effects  which  neighboring  masses  of  metals  exercise 
upon  magnetic  deflections,  he  left  it  to  Faraday,  who  could  not  square 
a  binomial,  to  find  out  their  causes.  Like  Humboldt,  Arago  was  a 
master  of  comprehensive  scientific  description  ;  but,  while  Humboldt 
inclined  to  melting  pathos,  the  dazzling  polish  of  Arago's  keen  lan- 
guage becomes  a  tiresome  mannerism.  Sympathy  in  political  views 
was  a  bond  between  them.  Arago  was  a  republican,  Humboldt  called 
himself  a  democrat  of  1789.  Probably  this  was  the  reason  of  the 
contemptuous  condescension  with  which  Napoleon  I,  among  whose 
faults  was  not  want  of  respect  for  science,  used  to  meet  him. 

In  connection  with  Arago,  Humboldt,  as  he  was  fond  of  telling, 
ruled  for  twenty  years  what  was  then  the  first  scientific  body  in  the 
world.  If  not  of  his  fame,  this  period  was  the  climax  of  his  life.  As 
in  the  primitive  forest  he  had  watched  through  nights  undisturbed  by 
the  murmur  of  the  cataracts,  the  humming  of  the  mosquitoes,  the 
near  roaring  of  the  jaguars,  and  the  fearful  cry  of  the  beasts  in  the 
tree-tops  above  him,  so  now  were  the  confusing  pressure  of  the  world's 
metropolis,  the  thousand  personal  demands  daily  thrust  upon  him,  the 
brilliant  society  of  the  salon,  the  intrigues  of  academical  lobbies,  to 
him  only  a  pleasant,  stimulating  life-element.  He  found  gratification 
in  this  mental  tumult,  which,  busy  with  the  air  and  matter  of  life, 
overlooked  him  while  he  built  up  the  gigantic  coral  structure  of  the 
many-membered  story  of  his  travels.  More  and  more  consumed  with 
an  inextinguishable  enthusiasm  for  science  ;  in  unlimited  devotion  to 
knowledge,  neglecting  domestic  fortune  ;  drawing  into  the  line  of  his 
activity  hosts  of  learned  men  and  artists,  and  skillfully  utilizing  their 
talents  for  his  own  objects  ;  not,  indeed,  teaching  ex  cathedra,  but  in- 
spiring youth  by  his  example  and  continually  encouraging  them — he 
was  at  that  time  in  Paris,  as  afterward  in  Berlin,  a  central  figure,  from 


152  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

which  force  radiated  on  every  side,  and  in  which  numerous  threads  ran 
together. 

That  was  the  time  when  he,  sometimes  with  an  essay  only  a  few 
pages  long,  created  new  studies,  like  that  of  plant-geography  ;  or  by 
some  suggestive  medium  of  graphic  representation,  such  as  the  iso- 
thermal curves,  revealed  the  law  hidden  in  formless  masses  of  single 
facts.  As  the  whole  real  world  waved  before  his  inner  vision,  so 
"  swelled  before  him  also  the  historical  flood  of  floods,"  only  that  he 
festooned  the  bare  scaffold  of  civic  history  with  the  fruit  and  flower 
garlands  of  the  history  of  civilization,  of  discovery,  and  of  art.  As 
Uhland  composed  some  of  his  finest  romances  in  Paris,  there  likewise 
originated  the  "  Views  of  l^ature,"  Humboldt's  favorite  work. 

While  the  reminiscences  of  Jena  were  thus  revived  in  him,  his 
mind  was  nevertheless  permanently  purified  from  much  dross  that  had 
clouded  it  in  those  days.  In  the  interval  that  separates  Humboldt's 
labors  after  the  journey  to  the  tropics  from  the  "  Experiments  on  Ex- 
cited Muscular  and  Nervous  Fibers,"  we  recognize  the  influence  of  his 
intercourse  with  the  Parisian  academicians,  of  their  always  careful, 
frequently  exaggeratedly  skeptical  views.  In  one  point,  excelling 
through  the  greater  depth  of  German  thought,  he  left  his  masters 
behind  him.  While  a  kind  of  shallow  vitalism  was  prevailing  in 
France,  Humboldt  had  long  passed  the  position  he  had  once  sustained 
in  the  "  Rhodian  Genius,"  and  had  explained  the  process  of  life  as  a 
result  of  the  physical  and  chemical  qualities  of  the  matters  combined 
in  the  organic  texture. 

It  is  perhaps  less  known  that  Humboldt  was  a  pre-Darwinian  Dar- 
winian. He  gave  me  the  "Essay  on  Classification,"  sent  him  by  Louis 
Agassiz,  in  which,  only  three  years  before  the  appearance  of  the  "  Origin 
of  Species,"  a  book  Humboldt  did  not  live  to  see,  the  doctrine  of  peri- 
ods of  creation  and  teleological  views  were  portrayed  with  unblunted 
sharpness,  and  supported  by  numerous  plausible  arguments.  Hum- 
boldt's expressions  on  this  occasion  left  me  no  doubt  that  he,  far  from 
sympathizing  with  Agassiz's  views,  was  a  believer  in  mechanical  causa- 
tion, and  an  evolutionist.  If  we  may  credit  certain  Parisian  traditions, 
Humboldt  and  Cuvier  were  not  on  the  best  footing  with  each  other. 
Perhaps  Humboldt  was  more  inclined  toward  the  doctrines  of  Lamarck 
and  Geoffroy  Saint-Hilaire. 

It  is  time  to  consider  what  had  become  of  German  science  during 
this  period.  It  had,  in  a  certain  sense,  sunk  deeper  and  deeper.  Philo- 
sophical speculation  had  won  ground  at  nearly  all  points,  and  in  nearly 
all  the  universities  its  subtilties  were  announced  as  ready  wisdom  by 
professional  philosophers  as  well  as  by  naturalists  and  doctors,  and 
were  eagerly  taken  up  by  the  misguided  youth.  Goethe's  false  theo- 
ries and  maxims,  supported  by  his  fame  as  a  poet,  increased  the  con- 
fusion. The  wars  of  Napoleon  did  harm  to  German  science,  not  only 
by  external  force,  but  also  through  the  Christian-romantic  reaction 


ALEXANDER    VON  HUMBOLDT.  153 

against  the  Hellenistic  classicism  of  the  preceding  period  that  came  in 
with  the  national  rising. 

Not  that  there  were  wanting  voices  to  protest  against  the  disorder, 
or  men  who  knew  better,  but  who  disdained  to  engage  in  contention 
with  persons  talking  like  madmen.  Germany  could  still  boast  of  one 
of  the  first  mathematicians  and  mathematico-physicists  of  all  time. 
On  his  return,  Humboldt  had  found  the  academy  at  Paris  full  of  the 
fame  of  the  youthful  author  of  "  Disquisitiones  Arithmeticse."  Be- 
sides Humboldt,  there  were  then  in  Paris  to  save  the  reputation  of 
German  science  our  Paul  Erman,  who  received  from  the  academy  the 
prize  in  galvanism  founded  by  Napoleon,  and  whose  anatomy  of  the 
EcMnoderms  was  also  crowned  by  it,  and  pre-eminently  Gauss.  But 
even  Gauss  illustrates  how  small  a  place  science  and  mathematics  had 
in  German  ideas.  Our  pleasure  in  the  dainty  jest  which  Heinrich 
Heine,  in  his  "  Reisebildern,"  utters  against  the  scientists  of  Gottingen, 
in  the  sportive  parallel  between  Georgia  Augusta  and  Bologna,  is  some- 
what troubled  when  we  remember  that  among  those  scientists  was  the 
immortal  Gauss.  Never  on  a  similar  occasion  would  a  young  French 
poet  have  overlooked  the  existence  of  Laplace. 

Finally,  the  revolution  approached.  *'  The  brilliant  and  brief  satur- 
nalia of  a  purely  ideal  natural  science,"  as  Humboldt  mildly  described 
it,  was  drawing  toward  an  end.  Natural  philosophy  had  fulfilled  none 
of  its  glittering  promises  ;  its  draught,  foaming  and  pungent  at  first,  had 
grown  stale.  And  just  as,  two  generations  before,  a  race  of  poets  and 
thinkers  had  been  produced  all  at  once,  so  it  happened,  by  a  coinci- 
dence so  remarkable  that  we  guess  a  law  in  it,  that  there  arose  at  this 
time  a  healthy  and  strong  crop  of  genuine  naturalists.  There  was, 
however,  another  element  by  which  the  external  fortune  of  German  sci- 
ence was  henceforward  materially  affected.  Frederick  the  Great  had 
kept  the  eyes  of  the  world  turned  toward  the  capital  of  his  monarchy 
for  half  a  century.  By  the  calling  of  such  men  as  Maupertius,  Euler, 
and  Lagrange,  he  had  given  the  Academy  of  Sciences,  recently  founded 
by  him,  a  temporary  high  luster,  partly  borrowed  from  abroad.  A  seat 
of  German  intellectual  life,  Berlin  did  not  become,  under  him.  The 
center  of  culture  in  Berlin  lay  in  the  French  colony.  If  we  abstract 
Lessing's  brief  residence,  Moses  Mendelssohn,  the  prototype  of  his 
Nathan,  the  correct,  frigid  Ramler,  and  the  author  of  "  The  Joys  of 
the  Young  Werther,"  Berlin  had,  in  the  last  century,  hardly  attained 
any  importance  in  German  literature. 

That  since  then  Berlin,  having  become  the  political  capital  of  Ger- 
many, has  also  pushed  into  the  advance  of  the  other  German  cities  in 
an  intellectual  respect,  was  not  the  effect  of  a  single  cause,  nor  the 
work  of  any  one  man.  Chief  in  the  succession  of  circumstances  that 
contributed  to  it  was  unquestionably  the  creation  of  the  University  of 
Berlin.  The  university  could,  indeed,  not  raise  a  new  German  Par- 
nassus, even  if  the  Berlin  of  that  time  had  been  the  place  for  it  ;  and 


154  ^^^  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

it  could  also  only  indirectly  contribute  to  the  blossoming  of  art.  But 
it  became,  in  the  pursuit  of  its  work  from  the  first,  the  most  important 
center  of  German  knowledge  as  a  whole.  In  reality  the  general  en- 
lightenment which  had  so  often  comforted  the  nation  in  its  divisions, 
still  remained  spread  over  Germany  to  its  salvation.  In  some  points 
Berlin  saw  itself  surpassed  by  small  universities  like  that  of  Giessen. 
Between  these  and  Berlin  there  was,  however,  always  the  difference 
that,  while  now  and  then  some  one  or  another  small  university  would 
blaze  up  like  a  variable  star  to  the  first  magnitude  in  some  branch  or 
another,  to  sink  in  a  little  while  back  into  comparative  obscurity,  the 
sum  of  the  aggregated  mental  forces  in  the  Berlin  University  and 
Academy  was  the  same,  or  rather  increased,  from  the  beginning. 

Almost  simultaneously  with  the  blossoming  of  the  university,  in 
alliance  with  the  national  rising,  and  favored  by  the  growth  of  the 
city  and  its  prosperity,  there  had  also  been  developed  here  a  real  Ger- 
man culture,  and  a  perhaps  not  very  productive  but  cleverly  critical 
society  had  collected  whose  influence  on  German  intellectual  life  was 
more  perceptible  because  of  the  preponderance  with  which  Berlin  had 
come  out  of  the  war  for  freedom.  As  far  as  the  habitual  influence  of 
so  many  older  centers  of  learning  and  the  independent  spirit  of  the 
Germans,  hostile  to  centralization,  permitted,  Berlin  henceforth  main- 
tained the  rank  of  intelligence  appropriate  to  it  as  the  capital  of  the 
state.  That  illustrious  circle  of  writers,  artists,  and  actively  sym- 
pathizing women  is  now  inconceivable  without  the  background  of  the 
Berlin  University  ;  without  Schleiermacher  and  Frederick  Augustus 
Wolf,  Savigny  and  Carl  Hitter,  Boeckh  and  Lachmann,  Buttmann  and 
Bopp,  Hegel  and  Gauss  ;  and  in  this  sense  we  may  say,  that,  through 
the  foundation  of  the  university,  \Yilliam  von  Humboldt  elevated 
Berlin  to  be  the  intellectual  capital  of  Germany. 

While  the  University  of  Berlin  fully  represented  science  in  nearly 
every  direction,  every  mental  phase  of  the  nation  was  likewise  reflected 
in  it.  Here  was  fought  out  in  jurisprudence  the  battle  between  the 
historical  and  the  philosophical  schools  ;  here  was  seen,  in  theology, 
dogmatic  reaction  to  give  way  to  rationalism.  Here  unrestrained 
speculation  continued  to  have  its  way  for  a  long  time,  natural  phi- 
losophy blew  its  last  party-colored  bubbles,  and  Goethe's  Farbenlehre 
was-  taught  ex  cathedra.  Here  it  was,  also,  that  that  host  of  men 
arose  who,  in  connection  with  many  illustrious  minds  still  adorning 
the  Fatherland,  repaired  the  faults  of  philosophical  error,  and  gave  to 
natural  science  an  activity  which  was  full  of  consequence  for  the 
world  as  well  as  for  Prussia  and  Germany,  and  which  still  continues. 
Is  it  necessary  to  name  them,  when  so  many  of  them  are  looking  down 
upon  us  from  these  walls — Eilhard  Mitscherlich,  Heinrich  and  Gus- 
tav  Rose,  Encke  and  Poggendorff,  Weiss  and  Lichtenstein,  Ehrenberg 
and  Johannes  Miiller,  Dove  and  Gustav  Magnus,  and  besides  them 
the  mathematicians,   Lejeune-Dirichlet   and   Steiner,  and   later   still 


ALEXANDER    VON  HUMBOLDT,  155 

Jacobi ;  and  finally,  yet  remaining  among  us,  the  last  of  his  race, 
Herr  Peter  Riess  ?  It  was  a  glorious  time  for  German  science,  little 
as  a  precocious  and  spoiled  youth  is  wont  to  esteem  the  men  who, 
themselves  almost  without  teachers,  trained  their  teachers  ;  a  time  to 
write  whose  connected  history,  the  materials  for  which  lie  at  hand  in 
numerous  memorial  addresses,  would  be  a  thankful  task  and  a  patriotic 
duty  ;  for  it  was  the  time  when  the  German  nationality,  to  which  so 
much  importance  is  now  attached,  grew  strong  in  science  also,  to 
proud  independence.  But  the  crowning  was  reserved  for  the  epoch 
in  which  Alexander  von  Humboldt  exchanged  his  former  residence  in 
Paris  for  Berlin.  The  Italian  double-entry  book-keeping,  which  he 
had  learned  when  young  in  the  trade-school  at  Hamburg,  enabled  him, 
as  he  told  me,  to  observe  how  his  originally  quite  considerable  means 
were  wasting  away  in  the  sums  which  the  publication  of  his  travel- 
work  consumed.  When  this  occasion  compelled  him,  in  obedience  to 
the  wish  of  King  Frederick  William  III,  much  against  his  inclination, 
to  remove  to  Prussia,  we  can  only  see  in  this  turn  of  fortune  the 
fulfillment  of  his  high  calling,  and  in  the  epos  of  his  "much-moved 
life  "  admire  the  remarkable  concatenation  by  means  of  which,  during 
Alexander's  long  absence,  his  brother  William,  by  the  foundation  of 
the  Berlin  University,  had  prepared  a  suitable  location  for  his  con- 
tinued activity. 

It  is  hard  in  this  all-leveling  time  to  give  an  idea  of  the  dominant 
position  that  spontaneously  fell  to  him  here.  In  consequence  of  the 
long  depression  of  science  in  Germany  and  its  contemporaneous  bloom 
in  France,  Paris  was  endowed  in  the  eyes  of  German  naturalists  with 
a  luster  of  which  the  present  generation  knows  nothing.  We  learned 
from  French  text-books,  we  worked  with  instruments  made  in  Parisian 
shops,  and  a  long  residence  in  Paris  was  considered  an  indispensable 
finish  to  a  good  scientific  education.  We  may  conceive,  from  this 
consideration,  what  a  halo  would  surround  the  head  of  a  man  who 
had  played  such  a  part  in  Paris  as  Humboldt  had  done.  He  returned 
home  as  a  king  comes  back  to  his  kingdom  after  a  long  campaign  of 
conquest,  and  was  received  by  the  circle  of  Berlin  naturalists,  which 
had  grown  up  in  the  mean  time,  as  a  prince  is  received  by  his  magnates. 

We  can  more  easily  represent  to-day  the  favorable  circumstances 
that  assured  to  the  brother  of  William  von  Humboldt  his  familiar 
place  in  the  highest  circles  of  society  and  his  relations  to  the  court. 
The  Cosmos-lectures,  the  meeting  of  the  German  naturalists  at  Berlin 
in  1828,  the  journey  into  Central  Asia,  made  under  the  commission  of 
the  Czar  of  Russia,  pressed  Alexander  von  Humboldt's  figure  before 
the  German  public  far  in  advance  of  that  of  any  other  scientific  man. 
His  peculiar  dependent-independent  position  between  the  court  and 
ministry  ;  the  impregnable  footing  of  scientific  fame  and  unselfish 
exertion  on  which  he  stood  ;  his  profound  knowledge  of  men  and  af- 
fairs, and  his  perfect  tact ;  a  power  for  work  that  was  equal  to  numer- 


156  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

ous  visits,  notes,  and  letters,  as  well  as  to  days  and  nights  of  con- 
tinuous observations  of  magnetic  terms  ;  and,  finally,  a  grace  in  inter- 
course that  disarmed  all  contradiction — all  of  these  things  together 
made  him  a  real  power  ;  and  how  frequently  did  he  use  his  power  for 
the  good  of  this  university  ! 

At  that  time,  when  the  limited  means  of  the  state  made  it  harder 
to  raise  a  couple  of  hundred  thalers  for  scientific  purposes  than  as 
many  thousand  marks  now,  no  emergency  arose  for  which  Humboldt 
did  not  obtain  the  needed  means  by  his  personal  intercession  ;  and  as 
now  the  Academy  of  Sciences  will  on  satisfactory  assurances  advance 
money  to  young  men  engaged  in  merely  prospective  scientific  enter- 
prises, so  was  Humboldt  then  the  earthly  providence  of  all  students. 
What  matter  is  it  that  his  zeal  was  sometimes  mistaken,  and  that 
among  the  number  of  those  to  whom  he  opened  the  way  was  now  and 
then  one  who  came  short  of  fulfilling  the  hopes  set  upon  him  ?  Even 
academicians  are  not  infalliblti  in  the  choice  of  \\i&x  jyroteges.  If  he 
had  a  preference  for  travelers,  for  his  own  specialty,  did  he  not  also 
let  his  sun  shine  on  philologists  as  well  as  on  naturalists  ?  Who  would 
examine  as  with  a  psychological  lens  the  secret  motives  that  impelled 
him  to  such  touching  sacrifices  for  things  quite  remote  from  him  ? 
Of  course,  Humboldt  had  the  faults  of  his  virtues.  Ambition  is  the 
source  of  all  greatness,  but  it  is  hard  to  draw  the  line  that  separates  it 
from  vanity.  Humboldt  used  his  sharp  tongue  and  pen  not  only  as 
weapons  of  defense,  but  he  frequently  gave  them  freer  license  than 
was  perhaps  good.  But  what  signifies  the  dread  that  some  felt  of  his 
criticisms,  in  the  face  of  such  testimony  as  that  of  August  Boeckh, 
that  he  never  came  away  from  Humboldt's  presence  without  feeling 
exalted  and  inspired  with  new  love  for  all  that  is  good  and  noble  ? 
There  is  one  other  example  of  a  personality  which,  like  Humboldt's, 
reached  such  power  by  pure  intellectual  force  that  peoples  on  both 
sides  of  the  great  sea  waited  for  his  words,  and  kings  listened  to  him  : 
this  was  Voltaire,  in  the  eighteenth  century.  The  two  men,  notwith- 
standing the  deep-reaching  differences  between  them,  afford  many 
points  of  resemblance.  Both  were  born  in  a  capital — Voltaire  in  Paris, 
Humboldt  in  Berlin;  Voltaire  reaching  out  of  the  *'  grand  century  "  into 
a  new  period  which  he  had  helped  to  introduce  ;  Humboldt  from  the 
classical  period  of  our  literature  to  a  new  scientific  period  that  had  been 
partly  prepared  for  by  him  ;  in  both  a  poet  was  paired  with  a  natural- 
ist, but  the  poet  predominating  in  Voltaire,  the  naturalist  in  Humboldt ; 
both  disappearing  from  the  scene  for  a  period  in  youth,  Voltaire  to 
return  after  his  study-travel  to  England,  Humboldt  from  his  tropical 
journey,  with  great  acquisitions  ;  Voltaire  afterward  in  Berlin,  Hum- 
boldt, at  least  in  his  later  abode  in  Paris,  living  near  the  throne  ;  both 
occasionally  intrusted  with  diplomatic  business  ;  both  animated  to  the 
noblest  exertions,  but  not  above  a  well-directed  jest  ;  both  regarding 
mankind  as  their  family,  without  a  domestic  hearth  ;  Voltaire  power- 


ALEXANDER    VON  HUMBOLDT.  157 

fully  grasping  the  tragic  fate  of  Galas,  Sirven,  and  De  la  Barre,  Hum- 
boldt in  happier  times  only  summoning  his  force  to  obtain  a  salary  for 
poor  Eisenstein,  or  to  prosecute  Haupt's  appeal ;  the  fame  of  both 
suffering  from  the  fact  that  their  teachings  and  discoveries  having 
long  ago  become  common  property,  only  a  few  know  whom  to  thank 
for  them  ;  finally,  both  in  extreme  old  age  glowing  "  with  that  youth 
which  never  forsakes  us,"  and  active  to  the  latest  breath  ;  Voltaire 
busy  with  his  "  Ir^ne  "  and  the  "  Dictionnaire  de  FAcademie,"  Hum- 
boldt with  the  "  Cosmos."  What  the  "  Experiments  on  Excited  Mus- 
cular and  Nervous  Fibers "  was  for  the  youth  Humboldt,  and  the 
"  Travels  "  and  "  Views  of  Nature  "  for  the  man,  the  "  Cosmos  "  was  for 
the  old  man.  We  have  already  questioned  the  fundamental  thought 
of  this  famous  book  from  the  point  of  view  of  theoretical  natural  his- 
tory, and  of  the  doctrine  of  the  persistence  of  force.  We  have  frequent- 
ly entertained  the  query  whether  such  a  mixture  of  styles  as  rules 
in  it  is  correct  or  not.  It  certainly  is  not  becoming  to  the  naturalist. 
But  it  is  clear  that  it  is  exactly  this  form  of  representation  that  makes 
possible  the  immense  influence  of  the  book,  that  has  over  the  whole 
inhabited  earth  prompted  hundreds  of  thousands  to  join  in  asking 
questions  they  had  not  thought  of  before  ;  that,  particularly  in  Ger- 
many, lifted  the  ban  under  which  natural  science  had  lain  in  the  ideas  of 
the  cultivated,  as  if  it  were  a  domain  from  which  common  men  were 
excluded,  and  were  accessible  only  to  a  few  particularly  qualified  to 
enter  it,  and  about  which  one  need  not  be  concerned  unless  he  have 
some  special  inclination  or  calling  for  it.  It  has  been  remarked  that 
by  science  the  French  understand  only  natural  science,  by  'Wissen- 
schaft  the  Germans  only  mental  science.  Goethe's  scientific  efforts,  in 
consequence  of  their  semi-aesthetic  character,  their  desultoriness,  and 
the  bitter  hostility  he  showed  to  all  associated  research,  could  not 
change  the  case.  If  it  is  now  different,  and  the  state  recognizes  the 
full  importance  of  science,  it  is,  of  course,  immediately  the  result  of 
the  technical  triumphs  science  has  achieved.  But  the  turn  for  the 
better  we  ascribe  originally  to  the  Cosmos-lectures,  which,  for  the  first 
time  in  Germany,  led  a  cultivated  German  audience  to  imagine  that 
there  was  something  else  in  the  world  than  belles-lettres  and  music, 
than  the  "  Morgenblatt  "  and  Henrietta  Sonntag.  And  although  Hum- 
boldt himself,  as  we  have  already  said,  did  not  rise  to  the  very  apex 
of  science,  it  was,  nevertheless,  this  less  exalted  height  at  which  he 
stopped  that  permitted  him  to  make  himself  comprehensible  to  the 
ordinary  children  of  men. 

While,  indeed,  he  was  not  as  sublime  as  Newton  or  Laplace,  while 
he  did  not  mirror  one  side  of  the  world  in  absolute  perfection  like 
Gauss,  he  was  able  to  make  an  entrance  among  the  multitude  for  the 
truths  discovered  by  those  archangels  of  science.  While  he  shared 
with  them  the  universal  human  feeling  for  the  beautiful  in  sublime 
things,  he  was  incited  to  project  a  "picture  of  Nature,"  at  the  risk  that 


158  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

it  "would  not  give  back  the  measure  of  the  depth,  and  that  no  frame 
could  inclose  the  infinity  of  the  object.  Having  once  come  out  from 
Heyne's  philological  school,  and  still,  when  sixty  years  old,  with  the 
college  portfolios  under  his  arm,  taking  his  place  in  our  audience-rooms 
among  Boeckh's  students,  he  was  the  man  to  lay  the  bridge  between 
the  old  and  the  new  time,  between  the  philological-historical,  aesthetic- 
speculative  Germany,  as  the  turn  of  the  century  saw  it,  and  the  mathe- 
matico-scientific,  technical,  inductive  Germany  of  our  days. 

The  German  people,  indeed  the  world,  has  remembered  his  loving, 
enthusiastic  devotion.  Not  the  thousands  of  well-observed,  important, 
and  new  facts  with  which  he  has  enriched  single  branches  ;  not  the 
happy  and  suggestive  thoughts  thrown  out  as  seed-corns  and  sometimes 
grown  up  to  new  sciences  ;  still  less  his  historical  and  geographical 
works  composed  with  ceaseless  industry — furnish  the  reasons  why  he 
sits  out  there  in  a  marble  image.  The  composition  of  the  whole  world 
into  an  artistically  harmonious  figure  attempted  by  him,  the  combina- 
tion of  the  ideal  with  the  real  realized  in  him,  of  the  poet  with  the 
naturalist,  made  him,  in  Emerson's  sense,  a  representative  man  of  sci- 
ence, and  educated  manhood  in  that  statue  has  set  up  Alexander  von 
Humboldt  as  a  personification  of  a  new  phase  of  its  own  genius,  of 
which  it  became  conscious  through  him. 

The  custom  of  honoring  the  memory  of  a  great  man  by  a  monu- 
ment would  have  little  significance  if  the  monument  had  no  other  pur- 
pose than  to  keep  up  that  memory  ;  for,  if  the  remembrance  would 
be  lost  without  the  monument,  it  would  not  be  worth  keeping  up.  The 
monument  should  rather,  calling  back  to  thought  the  hero  who  has 
gone  out  from  among  us,  lead  us,  in  reflecting  on  his  virtues,  to  renew 
the  determination  to  emulate  them.  We  should  ask  ourselves  how  the 
man  to  whom  we  look  up  in  grateful  admiration  would  judge  us  if  he 
should  return  to  us,  and  whether  he  would  recognize  us  as  worthy 
prosecutors  of  the  work  he  had  begun. 

Alexander  von  Humboldt  died  in  a  gloomy  time.  The  reign  of  a 
king  friendly  to  the  muses,  to  whom  he  had  personally  stood  closer 
than  it  is  often  allowed  to  a  subject  to  stand,  had  fallen  short  of  ful- 
filling expectations.  The  rule  of  Napoleon  III,  personally  hateful  to 
him,  a  friend  of  the  house  of  Orleans,  weighed  upon  France.  A  new 
and  strong  hand  had  taken  the  reins  of  Prussian  state  life  ;  but  it  was 
sad  to  close  his  eyes  at  the  instant  when  even  to  us  a  momentous  de- 
cision seemed  unavoidable. 

With  how  deep  satisfaction  Humboldt  would  now  see  the  imperial 
banners  waving  from  the  palace  of  the  prince  regent,  and  how  the 
revolution  in  the  fortune  of  the  Fatherland,  which  we  have  witnessed 
since  his  death,  would  gratify  him  !  But  how  deeply  would  it  pain 
him  to  learn  at  what  price  the  recovered  power  of  the  German  Em- 
pire had  to  be  bought  ! — that  instead  of  the  feeling  of  mutual  esteem 
and  friendship  which  during  his  life  had  bound  Germany  and  France, 


ALEXANDER    VON  HUMBOLDT.  159 

and  to  the  confirmation  of  which  he  had  contributed  so  much,  had 
come  in  on  the  side  of  the  French  vengeful  hatred  and  unappeasable 
hostility.  Humboldt,  a  son  of  the  eighteenth  century,  was,  like  Goethe, 
cosmopolitan  in  his  feelings,  without  being  on  that  account  any  less  a 
patriot.  Nothing  would  have  shocked  him,  who  spent  the  best  part 
of  his  life  in  Paris,  in  intercourse  with  the  noblest  men  of  the  nation, 
more  than  the  preponderance  of  Chauvinism  ;  nothing  would  have 
troubled  him  more  than  to  observe  that  mental  disease  suggesting  a 
back-sliding  into  the  barbarism  of  primitive  society  which  is  becoming 
epidemic  over  Europe,  and  more  seriously  threatens  the  progress  of 
mankind  than  the  rivalry  of  dynasties  ever  could  do. 

Among  the  articles  of  faith  with  which  Humboldt  was  thoroughly 
permeated,  was  that  of  the  unity  of  the  human  race.  On  it  he  theo- 
retically based  his  abhorrence  of  slavery,  the  worser  side  of  which  in 
practice  he  had  observed  in  its  very  home,  and  he  spared  no  oppor- 
tunity to  make  his  convictions  public.  The  Abolitionist  party  in  the 
United  States  did  not  fail  to  make  use  of  so  desirable  a  confederate, 
and  at  many  an  anti-slavery  meeting,  besides  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin," 
brought  the  "  Cosmos  "  into  the  fight.  Humboldt  did  not  live  to  see 
the  melancholy  drama  of  the  war  of  secession.  The  final  defeat  of 
the  slave-holders  and  the  abolition  of  slavery  would  have  given  him 
great  joy.  But  how  would  we  have  stood  before  him,  the  friend  of 
the  house  of  Mendelssohn,  who  corresponded  with  Henrietta  Herz  in 
the  Jewish  current  hand,  if  he  had  heard  of  the  race-persecution  we 
have  instituted  ? 

In  science  we  could,  however,  point  with  peculiar  pride  to  the  in- 
sight into  the  unity  of  the  forces  of  Nature  which  has  become  so  clear  : 
to  spectrum  analysis  ;  to  the  recognition  of  the  nature  of  comets,  a 
sequel  to  his  observations  in  Cumana  ;  and  to  the  establishment  of 
the  doctrine  of  descent,  and  the  associated  one  of  persistent  natural 
selection.  To-day,  when  the  nebular  hypothesis  has,  through  the  me- 
chanical theory  of  heat,  been  combined  with  geology,  and  the  hand  of 
the  doctrine  of  descent  is  reaching  through  paleontology  over  the 
hiatus  of  spontaneous  generation  ;  when  we  can  so  far  survey  the 
birth  of  cosmos  out  of  chaos  as  to  be  able  clearly  to  define  the  really 
doubtful  points — now,  perhaps,  a  "  Cosmos  "  might  be  written,  but  no 
one  longer  thinks  of  doing  it.  Two  qualities  which  Humboldt  pos- 
sessed in  the  highest  degree,  and  would  be  missed  by  us  with  regret 
were  necessary  to  it,  and  can  no  more  be  found — the  view  over  the 
whole  field  of  science,  and  the  careful  effort  to  create  beautiful  forms. 
Humboldt  would  also  deeply  lament  the  decay  of  the  historical  sense, 
which  often  in  the  growth  of  science  first  teaches  us  the  true  connec- 
tion of  things. 

Since  Alexander  von  Humboldt  was  a  universal  naturalist,  and 
thought  historically,  while  William,  not  less  universal  in  the  mental 
sciences,  sometimes  acted  as  a  naturalist,  the   two  brothers  met  at 


i6o  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

many  points  where  the  natural  and  mental  sciences  march  upon  each 
other,  and  together  formed,  in  the  measure  of  the  enlarged  condition 
of  knowledge,  a  universitas  litter aria^  as  Leibnitz  called  it  in  his  time. 
The  statues  of  the  two  brothers,  in  whom,  by  the  rarest  coincidence, 
the  various  faculties  of  the  human  mind  diverged  and  were  again 
drawn  together,  as  in  a  German  university,  are  therefore  the  most  sig- 
nificant ornament  of  our  edifice,  and  lend  it  at  once,  by  a  speaking 
symbolism,  the  character  of  a  palace  of  science.  The  situation  of  this 
building,  opposite  the  palace  of  the  ruling  house,  was  a  significant 
mark  of  the  capital  of  the  Hohenzollerns.  The  Humboldt  statues 
confirm  and  perfect  its  significance.  As  fences  and  troops  guard 
against  marauders  by  night,  so  do  the  spirits  of  these  brothers  keep 
watch  against  the  tricks  of  blockheads.  Where  William  and  Alexan- 
der von  Humboldt  are  sentries,  there  will  always  be  the  seat  of  the 
noblest  manly  effort,  of  free  investigation  and  free  teaching. 


SUGGESTIO]^S  O^  SOCIAL  SUBJECTS. 


PASSAGES     SELECTED     FROM    PROFESSOR    W.    G.     SUMNER  S    NEW    BOOK,- 
ENTITLED    "  WHAT   SOCIAL    CLASSES    OWE    TO    EACH    OTHER." 

IN  the  introduction  to  his  little  volume.  Professor  Sumner  remarks  : 
"  During  the  last  ten  years  I  have  read  a  great  many  books  and 
articles,  especially  by  German  writers,  in  which  an  attempt  has  been 
made  to  set  up  *  the  state  '  as  an  entity,  having  conscience,  power,  and 
will  sublimated  above  human  limitations,  and  as  constituting  a  tutelary 
genius  over  us  all.  I  have  never  been  able  to  find  in  history  or  expe- 
rience anything  to  fit  this  concept.  I  once  lived  in  Germany  for  two 
years,  but  I  certainly  saw  nothing  of  it  there  then.  Whether  the 
state  which  Bismarck  is  molding  will  fit  the  notion  is  at  best  a  mat- 
ter of  faith  and  hope.  My  notion  of  the  state  has  dwindled  with 
growing  experience  of  life.  As  an  abstraction,  the  state  is  to  me  only 
AU-of-us.  In  practice — that  is,  when  it  exercises  will  or  adopts  a  line 
of  action — it  is  only  a  little  group  of  men  chosen  in  a  very  hap-hazard 
way  by  the  majority  of  us  to  perform  certain  services  for  all  of  us. 
The  majority  do  not  go  about  their  selection  very  rationally,  and  they 
are  almost  always  disappointed  by  the  results  of  their  own  operation. 
Hence  *  the  state,'  instead  of  offering  resources  of  wisdom,  right  rea- 
son, and  pure  moral  sense,  beyond  what  the  average  of  us  possess, 
generally  offers  much  less  of  all  these  things.  Furthermore,  it  often 
turns  out  in  practice  that  *  the  state '  is  not  even  the  known  and  ac- 
credited servants  of  the  state,  but,  as  has  been  well  said,  is  only  some 
obscure  clerk  hidden  in  the  recesses  of  a  government  bureau  into  whose 
power  the  chance  has  fallen  for  the  moment  to  pull  one  of  the  stops 


SUGGESTIONS    ON  SOCIAL   SUBJECTS.  161 

which  control  the  government  machine.  In  former  days  it  often  hap- 
pened that  *  the  state '  was  a  barber,  a  fiddler,  or  a  bad  woman.  In 
our  day  it  often  happens  that  *  the  state '  is  a  little  functionary  on 
whom  a  big  functionary  is  forced  to  depend." 

In  Chapter  I — "  On  a  New  Philosophy  :  that  Poveety  is  the 
Best  Policy  " — Professor  Sumner  says  :  "  It  is  commonly  asserted  that 
there  are  in  the  United  States  no  classes,  and  any  allusion  to  classes  is 
resented.  On  the  other  hand,  we  constantly  read  and  hear  discussions 
of  social  topics  in  which  the  existence  of  social  classes  is  assumed  as  a 
simple  fact.  *  The  poor,'  *  the  weak,'  *  the  laborers,'  are  expressions 
which  are  used  as  if  they  had  exact  and  well-understood  definitions. 
Discussions  are  made  to  bear  upon  the  assumed  rights  and  misfortunes 
of  certain  social  classes  ;  and  all  public  speaking  and  writing  consists 
in  a  large  measure  of  the  discussion  of  general  plans  for  meeting  the 
wishes  of  classes  of  people  who  have  not  been  able  to  satisfy  their  own 
desires.  These  classes  are  sometimes  discontented  and  sometimes  not. 
Sometimes  they  do  not  know  that  anything  is  amiss  with  them  until 
the  *  friends  of  humanity '  come  to  them  with  offers  of  aid.  Some- 
times they  are  discontented  and  envious.  They  do  not  take  their 
achievements  as  a  fair  measure  of  their  rights.  They  do  not  blame 
themselves  or  their  parents  for  their  lot  as  compared  with  that  of  other 
people.  Sometimes  they  claim  that  they  have  a  right  to  everything  of 
which  they  feel  the  need  for  their  happiness  on  earth.  To  make  such  a 
claim  against  God  or  Nature  would,  of  course,  be  only  to  say  that  we 
claim  a  right  to  live  on  earth  if  we  can.  But  God  and  Nature  have 
ordained  the  chances  and  conditions  of  life  on  earth  once  for  all.  The 
case  can  not  be  reopened.  We  can  not  get  a  revision  of  the  laws  of 
human  life.  We  are  absolutely  shut  up  to  the  need  and  duty,  if  we 
would  learn  how  to  live  happily,  of  investigating  the  laws  of  Nature, 
and  deducing  the  rules  of  right  living  in  the  world  as  it  is.  These  are 
very  wearisome  and  commonplace  tasks.  They  consist  in  labor  and 
self-denial  repeated  over  and  over  again,  in  learning  and  doing.  When 
the  people  whose  claims  we  are  considering  are  told  to  apply  them- 
selves to  these  tasks,  they  become  irritated  and  feel  almost  insulted. 
They  formulate  their  claims  as  rights  against  society — that  is,  against 
some  other  men.  In  their  view  they  have  a  right  not  only  to  pur- 
sue happiness,  but  to  get  it ;  and,  if  they  fail  to  get  it,  they  think 
they  have  a  claim  to  the  aid  of  other  men — that  is,  to  the  labor  and 
self-denial  of  other  men — to  get  it  for  them.  They  find  orators  and 
poets  who  tell  them  that  they  have  grievances  so  long  as  they  have 
unsatisfied  desires.  .  .  .  The  humanitarians,  philanthropists,  and  re- 
formers, looking  at  the  facts  of  life  as  they  present  themselves,  find 
enough  which  is  sad  and  unpromising  in  the  condition  of  many  mem- 
bers of  society.  They  see  wealth  and  poverty  side  by  side.  They 
note  great  inequality  of  social  position  and  social  chances.  They 
eagerly  set  about  the   attempt   to  account  for  what  they  see,,  and 

TOL.  XXIV. — 11 


i62  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

to  devise  schemes  for  remedying  what  they  do  not  like.  In  their 
eagerness  to  recommend  the  less  fortunate  classes  to  pity  and  con- 
sideration, they  forget  all  about  the  rights  of  other  classes  ;  they 
gloss  over  all  the  faults  of  the  classes  in  question,  and  they  exaggerate 
their  misfortunes  and  their  virtues.  They  invent  new  theories  of 
property,  distorting  rights  and  perpetrating  injustice,  as  any  one  is 
sure  to  do  who  sets  about  the  readjustment  of  social  relations  with  the 
interests  of  one  group  distinctly  before  his  mind  and  the  interests  of 
all  other  groups  thrown  into  the  background.  When  I  have  read  cer- 
tain of  these  discussions,  I  have  thought  that  it  must  be  quite  dis- 
reputable to  be  respectable,  quite  dishonest  to  own  property,  quite 
unjust  to  go  one's  own  way  and  earn  one's  own  living,  and  that  the 
only  really  admirable  person  was  the  good-for-nothing.  The  man  who 
by  his  own  effort  raises  himself  above  poverty  appears,  in  these  dis- 
cussions, to  be  of  no  account.  The  man  who  has  done  nothing  to 
raise  himself  above  poverty  finds  that  the  social  doctors  flock  about 
him,  bringing  the  capital  which  they  have  collected  from  the  other 
class,  and  promising  him  the  aid  of  the  state  to  give  him  what  the 
other  had  to  work  for.  ...  On  the  theories  of  the  social  philoso- 
phers to  whom  I  have  referred,  we  should  get  a  new  maxim  of  judi- 
cious living  :  *  Poverty  is  the  best  policy.  If  you  get  wealth,  you  will 
have  to  support  other  people  ;  if  you  do  not  get  wealth,  it  will  be  the 
duty  of  other  people  to  support  you.' " 

In  his  second  chapter,  the  author  dilates  upon  the  proposition  that 
"  A  Free  Man  is  a  Sovereigi?^,  but  that  a  Sovereign  can  not  take 
*  Tips.'  "  He  discourses  as  follows  :  "  A  free  man,  a  free  country,  liberty 
and  equality,  are  terms  in  constant  use  among  us.  They  are  employed 
as  watchwords  as  soon  as  any  social  question  comes  into  discussion.  It 
is  right  that  they  should  be  so  used.  They  ought  to  contain  the  broad- 
est convictions,  and  most  positive  faiths  of  the  nation,  and  so  they 
ought  to  be  available  for  the  consideration  of  questions  of  detail.  .  .  . 
Probably  the  popular  notion  is,  that  liberty  means  doing  as  one  has  a 
mind  to,  and  that  it  is  a  metaphysical  or  sentimental  good.  A  little 
observation  shows  that  there  is  no  such  thing  in  this  world  as  doing 
as  one  has  a  mind  to.  There  is  no  man,  from  the  tramp  up  to  the 
President,  the  Pope,  or  the  Czar,  who  can  do  as  he  has  a  mind  to. 
Moreover,  liberty  is  not  a  metaphysical  or  sentimental  thing  at  all. 
It  is  positive,  practical,  and  actual.  It  is  produced  and  maintained  by 
law  and  institutions,  and  is  therefore  concrete  and  historical.  Some- 
times we  speak  distinctly  of  civil  liberty  ;  but  if  there  be  any  liberty 
other  than  civil  liberty— that  is,  liberty  under  law— it  is  a  mere  fiction 
of  the  school-men  which  they  may  be  left  to  discus.  .  .  .  The  notions 
of  civil  liberty  which  we  have  inherited  is  that  of  a  status  created  for 
the  individual  by  laws  and  institutions,  the  effect  ofichich  is  that  each 
man  is  guaranteed  the  use  of  all  his  own  powers  exclusively  for  his  own 
welfare.     It  is  not  at  all  a  matter  of  elections,  or  universal  suffrage,  or 


SUGGESTIONS    OJST  SOCIAL   SUBJECTS.  163 

democracy.  All  institutions  are  to  be  tested  by  the  degree  to  wbich 
they  guarantee  liberty.  It  is  not  to  be  admitted  for  a  moment  that 
liberty  is  a  means  to  social  ends,  and  that  it  may  be  impaired  for 
major  considerations.  Any  one  who  so  argues  has  lost  the  bearing 
and  relation  of  all  the  facts  and  factors  in  a  free  state.  A  human 
being  has  a  life  to  live,  a  career  to  run.  He  is  a  center  of  powers  to 
work  and  of  capacities  to  suffer.  What  his  powers  may  be,  whether 
they  can  carry  him  far  or  not ;  what  his  chances  may  be,  whether 
wide  or  restricted  ;  what  his  fortune  may  be,  whether  to  suffer  much 
or  little — are  questions  of  his  personal  destiny  which  he  must  work 
out  and  endure  as  he  can  ;  but  for  all  that  concerns  the  bearing 
of  the  society  and  its  institutions  upon  that  man,  and  upon  the  sum 
of  happiness  to  which  he  can  attain  during  his  life  on  earth,  the 
product  of  all  history  and  all  philosophy  up  to  this  time  is  summed  up 
in  the  doctrine  that  he  should  be  left  free  to  do  the  most  for  himself 
that  he  can,  and  should  be  guaranteed  the  exclusive  enjoyment  of  all 
that  he  does.  If  the  society — that  is  to  say,  in  plain  terms,  if  his  fel- 
low-men, either  individually,  by  groups,  or  in  a  mass — impinge  upon 
him  otherwise  than  to  surround  him  with  neutral  conditions  of  security, 
they  must  do  so  under  the  strictest  responsibility  to  justify  them- 
selves. ...  It  is  not  at  all  the  function  of  the  state  to  make  men 
happy.  They  must  make  themselves  happy  in  their  own  way  and  at 
their  own  risk.  The  functions  of  the  state  lie  entirely  in  the  con- 
ditions or  chances  under  which  the  pursuit  of  happiness  is  carried  on, 
so  far  as  those  conditions  or  chances  can  be  affected  by  civil  organiza- 
tion. Hence,  liberty  for  labor  and  security  for  earnings  are  the  ends 
for  which  civil  institutions  exist,  not  means  which  may  be  employed 
for  ulterior  ends.  .  .  .  Democracy,  in  order  to  be  true  to  itself,  and  to 
develop  into  a  sound  working  system,  must  oppose  the  same  cold  re- 
sistance to  any  claims  for  favor  on  the  ground  of  poverty  as  on  the 
ground  of  birth  and  rank.  It  can  no  more  admit  to  public  discussion, 
as  within  the  range  of  possible  action,  any  schemes  for  coddling  and 
helping  wage-receivers  than  it  could  entertain  schemes  for  restricting 
political  power  to  wage-payers.  It  must  put  down  schemes  for  mak- 
ing *the  rich'  pay  for  whatever  *the  poor'  want,  just  as  it  tramples 
on  the  old  theories  that  only  the  rich  are  fit  to  regulate  society.  One 
needs  but  to  watch  our  periodical  literature  to  see  the  danger  that  de- 
mocracy will  be  construed  as  a  system  of  favoring  a  new  privileged 
class  of  the  many  and  the  poor.  ...  In  a  free  state  every  man  is  held 
and  expected  to  take  care  of  himself  and  his  family,  to  make  no 
trouble  for  his  neighbor,  and  to  contribute  his  full  share  to  public  in- 
terests and  common  necessities.  If  he  fails  in  this,  he  throws  burdens 
on  others.  He  does  not  thereby  acquire  rights  against  the  others.  On 
the  contrary,  he  only  accumulates  obligations  toward  them  ;  and,  if  he 
is  allowed  to  make  his  deficiencies  a  ground  of  new  claims,  he  passes 
over  into  the  position  of  a  privileged  or  petted  person — emancipated 


i64  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

from  duties,  endowed  with  claims.    This  is  the  inevitable  result  of  com- 
bining democratic  political  theories  with  humanitarian  social  theories. 
Chapter  III.    "  That  it  is  not  wicked  to  be  eich  ;   nay,  even 

THAT     it   is     not    WICKED     TO     BE     EICHER    THAN     ONE's    NeIGHBOK." 

"  We  all  agree  that  he  is  a  good  member  of  society  who  works  his 
way  up  from  poverty  to  wealth,  but,  as  soon  as  he  has  worked  his 
way  up,  we  begin  to  regard  him  with  suspicion  as  a  dangerous  mem- 
ber of  society.  A  newspaper  starts  the  silly  fallacy  that  *  the  rich  are 
rich  because  the  poor  are  industrious,'  and  it  is  copied  from  one  end 
of  the  country  to  the  other,  as  if  it  were  a  brilliant  apothegm.  *  Capi- 
tal '  is  denounced  by  writers  and  speakers  who  have  never  taken  the 
trouble  to  find  out  what  capital  is.  .  .  .  The  great  gains  of  a  great 
capitalist  in  a  modern  state  must  be  put  under  the  head  of  wages  of 
superintendence.  Any  one  who  believes  that  any  great  enterprise  of 
an  industrial  character  can  be  started  without  labor  must  have  little 
experience  of  life.  .  .  .  Especially  in  a  new  country,  where  many  tasks 
are  waiting,  where  resources  are  strained  to  the  utmost  all  the  time, 
the  judgment,  courage,  and  perseverance  required  to  organize  new 
enterprises  and  carry  them  to  success  are  sometimes  heroic.  Persons 
who  possess  the  necessary  qualifications  obtain  great  reward.  They 
ought  to  do  so  ;  .  .  .  the  ability  to  organize  and  conduct  industrial, 
commercial,  or  financial  enterprises  is  rare  ;  the  great  captains  of 
industry  are  as  rare  as  great  generals.  .  .  .  The  aggregation  of  large 
fortunes  is  not  at  all  a  thing  to  be  regretted.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  a 
necessary  condition  of  many  forms  of  social  advance.  If  we  should 
set  a  limit  to  the  accumulation  of  wealth,  we  should  say  to  our  most 
valuable  producers,  *  We  do  not  want  you  to  do  us  the  services  which 
you  best  understand  how  to  perform,  beyond  a  certain  point.'  It 
would  be  like  killing  off  our  generals  in  war.  .  .  .  Human  society 
lives  at  a  constant  strain  forward  and  upward,  and  those  who  have 
most  interest  that  this  strain  be  successfully  kept  up,  that  the  social 
organization  be  perfected,  and  that  capital  be  increased,  are  those  at 
the  bottom.  .  .  .  Those  who  to-day  enjoy  the  most  complete  emanci- 
pation from  the  hardships  of  human  life,  and  the  greatest  command 
over  the  conditions  of  existence,  simply  show  us  the  best  that  man 
has  yet  been  able  to  do.  Can  we  all  reach  that  standard  by  wishing 
for  it  ?  Can  we  all  vote  it  to  each  other  ?  If  we  pull  down  those  who 
are  most  fortunate  and  successful,  shall  we  not  by  that  very  act  defeat 
our  own  object  ?  Those  who  are  trying  to  reason  out  any  issue  from 
this  tangle  of  false  notions  of  society  and  of  history  are  only  involv- 
ing themselves  in  hopeless  absurdities  and  contradictions.  If  any 
man  is  not  in  the  first  rank  who  might  get  there,  let  him  put  forth 
new  energy  and  take  his  place.  If  any  man  is  not  in  the  front  rank, 
although  he  has  done  his  best,  how  can  he  be  advanced  at  all  ?  Cer- 
tainly in  no  way  save  by  pushing  down  any  one  else  who  is  forced  to 
contribute  to  his  advancement." 


SUGGESTIONS    ON  SOCIAL   SUBJECTS.  165 

Chapter  V.  "  That  we  must  have  Few  Men  if  we  want  Strong 
Men."  "Undoubtedly  the  man  who  possesses  capital  has  a  great  ad- 
vantage over  the  man  who  has  no  capital,  in  all  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence. .  .  .  If  it  were  not  so,  capital  would  not  be  formed.  Capital 
is  only  formed  by  self-denial,  and  if  the  possession  of  it  did  not  se- 
cure advantages  and  superiorities  of  a  high  order,  men  would  never 
submit  to  what  is  necessary  to  get  it.  .  .  .  The  man  who  has  capital 
has  secured  his  future,  won  leisure  which  he  can  employ  in  winning 
secondary  objects  of  necessity  and  advantage,  and  emancipated  himself 
from  those  things  in  life  which  are  gross  and  belittling.  The  posses- 
sion of  capital  is,  therefore,  an  indispensable  prerequisite  of  educa- 
tional, scientific,  and  moral  goods.  This  is  not  saying  that  a  man  in 
the  narrowest  circumstances  may  not  be  a  good  man.  It  is  saying 
that  the  extension  and  elevation  of  all  the  moral  and  metaphysical 
interests  of  the  race  are  conditioned  on  that  extension  of  civilization 
of  which  capital  is  the  prerequisite,  and  that  he  who  has  capital  can 
participate  in  and  move  along  with  the  highest  developments  of  his 
time.  Hence  it  appears  that  the  man  who  has  his  self-denial  before 
him,  however  good  may  be  his  intention,  can  not  be  as  the  man  who 
has  his  self-denial  behind  him.  Some  seem  to  think  that  this  is  very 
unjust,  but  they  get  their  notions  of  justice  from  some  occult  source 
of  inspiration,  not  from  observing  the  facts  of  this  world  as  it  has 
been  made  and  exists. 

The  author  expresses  the  opinion,  in  Chapter  YI,  "  That  He  who 

WOULD  be  well  taken  CARE  OF  MUST  TAKE  CARE  OF  HiMSELF,"  and 

in  enforcing  this  idea  he  observes  :  "The  fashion  of  the  time  is  to 
run  to  government  boards,  commissions,  apd  inspectors,  to  set  right 
everything  which  is  wrong.  No  experience  seems  to  damp  the  faith 
of  our  public  in  these  instrumentalities.  The  English  liberals  in  the 
middle  of  this  century  seemed  to  have  full  grasp  of  the  principle  of 
liberty,  and  to  be  fixed  and  established  in  favor  of  non-interference. 
Since  they  have  come  to  power,  however,  they  have  adopted  the  old 
instrumentalities,  and  have  greatly  multiplied  them  since  they  have 
had  a  great  number  of  reforms  to  carry  out.  They  seem  to  think  that 
interference  is  good  if  only  they  interfere.  In  this  country  the  party 
which  is  *  in  '  always  interferes,  and  the  party  which  is  *  out '  favors 
non-interference.  The  system  of  interference  is  a  complete  failure  of 
the  end  it  aims  at,  and  sooner  or  later  will  fall  of  its  own  expense  and 
be  swept  away.  The  two  notions — one  to  regulate  things  by  a  com- 
mittee of  control,  and  the  other  to  let  things  regulate  themselves  by 
the  conflict  of  interests  between  free  men — are  diametrically  opposed  ; 
and  the  former  is  corrupting  to  free  institutions,  because  men  who  are 
taught  to  expect  government  inspectors  to  come  and  take  care  of 
them  lose  all  true  education  in  liberty.  If  we  have  been  all  wrong  for 
the  last  three  hundred  years  in  aiming  at  a  fuller  realization  of  indi- 
vidual liberty  as  a  condition  of  general  and  widely  diffused  happiness, 


i66  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

then  we  must  turn  back  to  paternalism,  discipline,  and  authority  ;  but 
to  have  a  combination  of  liberty  and  dependence  is  impossible." 

Chapter  VIII  is  a  very  spicy  discussion  "  On  the  Value  as  a  So- 
ciological Principle  of  the  Rule  to  mind  one's  Own  Business," 
and  here  the  author  remarks  :  "  Every  man  and  woman  in  society  has 
one  big  duty.  That  is,  to  take  care  of  his  or  her  own  self.  This  is  a 
social  duty.  For,  fortunately,  the  matter  stands  so  that  the  duty  of 
making  the  best  of  one's  self  individually  is  not  a  separate  thing  from 
the  duty  of  filling  one's  place  in  society,  but  the  two  are  one,  and  the 
latter  is  accomplished  when  the  former  is  done.  The  common  notion, 
however,  seems  to  be  that  one  has  a  duty  to  society  as  a  special  and 
separate  thing,  and  that  this  duty  consists  in  considering  and  deciding 
what  other  people  ought  to  do.  Now,  the  man  who  can  do  anything 
for  or  about  anybody  else  than  himself  is  fit  to  be  the  head  of  a  fam- 
ily ;  and  when  he  becomes  head  of  a  family  he  has  duties  to  his  wife 
and  children  in  addition  to  the  former  big  duty.  Then,  again,  any 
man  who  can  take  care  of  himself  and  his  family  is  in  a  very  excep- 
tional position  if  he  does  not  find  in  his  immediate  surroundings  peo- 
ple who  need  his  care  and  have  some  sort  of  personal  claim  upon  him. 
If,  now,  he  is  able  to  fulfill  all  this  and  to  take  care  of  anybody  outside 
his  family  and  his  dependants,  he  must  have  a  surplus  of  energy,  wis- 
dom, and  moral  virtue,  beyond  what  he  needs  for  his  own  business. 
No  man  has  this  ;  for  a  family  is  a  charge  which  is  capable  of  infinite 
development,  and  no  man  could  suffice  to  the  full  measure  of  duty 
for  which  a  family  may  draw  upon  him.  Neither  can  a  man  give  to 
society  so  advantageous  an  employment  of  his  services,  whatever 
they  are,  in  any  other  way  as  by  spending  them  on  his  family.  .  .  . 
The  danger  of  minding  other  people's  business  is  twofold:  First,  there 
is  the  danger  that  a  man  may  leave  his  own  business  unattended  to  ;  and, 
second,  there  is  the  danger  of  an  impertinent  interference  with  another's 
affairs.  The  *  friends  of  humanity '  almost  always  run  into  both  dan- 
gers. I  am  one  of  humanity,  and  I  do  not  want  any  volunteer  friends. 
I  regard  friendship  as  mutual,  and  I  want  to  have  my  say  about  it.  I 
suppose  that  other  components  of  humanity  feel  in  the  same  way  about 
it.  If  so,  they  must  regard  any  one  who  assumes  the  role  of  a  friend 
of  humanity  as  impertinent.  The  reference  of  the  friend  of  humanity 
back  to  his  own  business  is  obviously  the  next  step.  .  .  .  Yet  we  are 
constantly  annoyed,  and  the  Legislatures  are  kept  constantly  busy,  by 
the  people  who  have  made  up  their  minds  that  it  is  wise  and  conducive 
to  happiness  to  live  in  a  certain  way,  and  who  want  to  compel  every- 
body else  to  live  in  their  way.  Some  people  have  decided  to  spend 
Sunday  in  a  certain  way,  and  they  want  laws  passed  to  make  other 
people  spend  Sunday  in  the  same  way.  Some  people  have  resolved  to 
be  teetotalers,  and  they  want  a  law  passed  to  make  everybody  else  a 
teetotaler.  Some  people  have  resolved  to  eschew  luxury,  and  they  want 
taxes  laid  to  make  others  eschew  luxury.     The  taxing  power  is  espe- 


SUGGESTIONS    ON  SOCIAL   SUBJECTS.  167 

cially  something  after  which  the  reformer's  finger  always  itches.  Some- 
times there  is  an  element  of  self-interest  in  the  proposed  reformation, 
as  when  a  publisher  wanted  a  duty  imposed  on  books,  to  keep  Ameri- 
cans from  reading  books  which  would  unsettle  their  Americanism  ; 
and  when  artists  wanted  a  tax  laid  on  pictures,  to  save  Americans 
from  buying  bad  paintings.  .  .  .  Amateur  social  doctors  are  like  the 
amateur  physicians — they  always  begin  with  the  question  of  remedies, 
and  they  go  at  this  without  any  diagnosis,  or  any  knowledge  of  the 
anatomy  or  physiology  of  society.  They  never  have  any  doubt  of  the 
efficacy  of  their  remedies.  They  never  take  account  of  any  ulterior 
effects  which  may  be  apprehended  from  the  remedy  itself.  It  gener- 
ally troubles  them  not  a  whit  that  their  remedy  implies  a  complete 
reconstruction  of  society,  or  even  a  reconstruction  of  human  nature. 
Against  all  such  social  quackery  the  obvious  injunction  to  the  quacks 
is,  to  mind  their  own  business.  .  .  .  We  have  inherited  a  vast  number 
of  social  ills  which  never  came  from  nature.  They  are  the  compli- 
cated products  of  all  the  tinkering,  meddling,  and  blundering  of  social 
doctors  in  the  past.  These  products  of  social  quackery  are  now  but- 
tressed by  habit,  fashion,  prejudice,  platitudinarian  thinking,  and  new 
quackery  in  political  economy  and  social  science.  .  .  .  Society,  there- 
fore, does  not  need  any  care  or  supervision.  If  we  can  acquire  a 
science  of  society  based  on  observation  of  phenomena  and  study  of 
forces,  we  may  hope  to  gain  some  ground  slowly  toward  the  elimina- 
tion of  old  errors  and  the  re-establishment  of  a  sound  and  natural 
social  order.  What  we  gain  that  way  will  be  by  growth,  never  in  the 
world  by  any  reconstruction  of  society  on  the  plan  of  some  enthusi- 
astic social  architect.  The  latter  is  only  repeating  the  old  error  over 
again,  and  postponing  all  our  chances  of  real  improvement.  Society 
needs,  first  of  all,  to  be  freed  from  these  meddlers  ;  that  is,  to  be  let 
alone.  Here  we  are,  then,  once  more  back  at  the  old  doctrine — laissez 
faire.  Let  us  translate  it  into  blunt  English,  and  it  will  read,  *Mind 
your  own  business.'  It  is  nothing  but  the  doctrine  of  liberty.  Let 
every  man  be  happy  in  his  own  way.  If  his  sphere  of  action  and  in- 
terest impinges  on  that  of  any  other  man,  there  will  have  to  be  com- 
promise and  adjustment.  Wait  for  the  occasion.  Do  not  attempt  to 
generalize  those  interferences,  or  to  plan  for  them  a  priori.  We  have 
a  body  of  laws  and  institutions  which  have  grown  up  as  occasion  has 
occurred  for  adjusting  rights.  Let  the  same  process  go  on.  Practice 
the  utmost  reserve  possible  in  your  interferences,  even  of  this  kind, 
and  by  no  means  seize  occasion  for  interfering  with  the  natural  adjust- 
ments. ...  To  mind  one's  own  business  is  a  purely  negative  and  un- 
productive injunction  ;  but,  taking  social  matters  as  they  are  just  now, 
it  is  a  sociological  principle  of  the  first  importance.  There  might 
be  developed  a  grand  philosophy  on  the  basis  of  minding  one's  own 
business." 

Chapter  IX  considers  *'the   Case  of  a  Ceetain  Man  who  is 


i68  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

NEVEB  THOUGHT  OF."  "  Almost  all  legislative  effort  to  prevent  vice 
is  really  protective  of  vice,  because  all  such  legislation  saves  the 
vicious  man  from  the  penalty  of  his  vice.  Nature's  remedies  against 
vice  are  terrible.  She  removes  the  victims  without  pity.  A  drunkard 
in  the  gutter  is  just  where  he  ought  to  be,  according  to  the  fitness  and 
tendency  of  things.  Natui'e  has  set  up  on  him  the  process  of  decline 
and  dissolution  by  which  she  removes  things  which  have  survived 
their  usefulness.  Gambling  and  other  less  mentionable  vices  carry 
their  own  penalties  with  them. 

"  Now,  we  can  never  annihilate  a  penalty.  We  can  only  divert  it 
from  the  head  of  the  man  who  has  incurred  it  to  the  heads  of  others, 
who  have  not  incurred  it.  A  vast  amount  of  ^  social  reform '  consists 
in  just  this  operation.  The  consequence  is,  that  those  who  have  gone 
astray,  being  relieved  from  Nature's  fierce  discipline,  go  on  to  worse, 
and  that  there  is  a  constantly  heavier  burden  for  the  others  to  bear. 
Who  are  the  others  ?  When  we  see  a  drunkard  in  the  gutter  we  pity 
him.  If  a  policeman  picks  him  up,  we  say  that  society  has  interfered 
to  save  him  from  perishing.  *  Society '  is  a  fine  word,  and  it  saves 
us  the  trouble  of  thinking.  The  industrious  and  sober  workman,  who 
is  mulcted  of  a  percentage  of  his  day's  wages  to  pay  the  policeman, 
is  the  one  who  bears  the  penalty.  But  he  is  the  Forgotten  Man.  He 
passes  by,  and  is  never  noticed,  because  he  has  behaved  himself,  ful- 
filled his  contracts,  and  asked  for  nothing. 

"  The  fallacy  of  all  prohibitory,  sumptuary,  and  moral  legislation  is 
the  same.  A  and  B  determine  to  be  teetotalers,  which  is  often  a  wise 
determination,  and  sometimes  a  necessary  one.  If  A  and  B  are  moved 
by  considerations  which  seem  to  them  good,  that  is  enough.  But  A 
and  B  put  their  heads  together  to  get  a  law  passed  which  shall  force 
C  to  be  a  teetotaler  for  the  sake  of  D,  who  is  in  danger  of  drinking 
too  much.  There  is  no  pressure  on  A  and  B.  They  are  having  their 
own  way,  and  they  like  it.  There  is  rarely  any  pressure  on  D.  He 
does  not  like  it  and  evades  it.  The  pressure  all  comes  on  C.  The 
question  then  arises.  Who  is  C  ?  He  is  the  man  who  wants  alcoholic 
liquors  for  any  honest  purpose  whatsoever,  who  would  use  his  liberty 
without  abusing  it,  who  would  occasion  no  public  question,  and  trouble 
nobody  at  all.  He  is  the  Forgotten  Man  again,  and,  as  soon  as  he  is 
drawn  from  his  obscurity,  we  see  that  he  is  just  what  each  one  of  us 
ought  to  be. 

"  The  doctrine  which  we  are  discussing  turns  out  to  be  in  practice 
only  a  scheme  for  making  injustice  prevail  in  human  society  by  re- 
versing the  distribution  of  rewards  and  punishments  between  those 
who  have  done  their  duty  and  those  who  have  not. 

"  It  is  plain  that  the  Forgotten  Man  and  the  Forgotten  Woman  are 
the  real  productive  strength  of  the  country.  The  Forgotten  Man 
works  and  votes — generally  he  prays — but  his  chief  business  in  life  is 
to  pay.     His  name  never  gets  into  the  newspapers,  except  when  he 


THE  HABITATION  AND    THE  ATMOSPHERE,      169 

marries  or  dies.  He  is  an  obscure  man.  He  may  grumble  sometimes 
to  his  wife,  but  he  does  not  frequent  the  grocery,  and  he  does  not  talk 
politics  at  the  tavern.  So  he  is  forgotten.  Yet  who  is  there  whom 
the  statesman,  economist,  and  social  philosopher,  ought  to  think  of 
before  this  man  ?  If  any  student  of  social  science  comes  to  appreciate 
the  case  of  the  Forgotten  Man,  he  will  become  an  unflinching  advocate 
of  strict  scientific  thinking  in  sociology,  and  a  hard-hearted  skeptic  as 
regards  any  scheme  of  social  amelioration.  He  will  always  want  to 
know.  Who  and  where  is  the  Forgotten  Man  in  this  case,  who  will 
have  to  pay  for  it  all  ? 

"  Certainly  there  is  no  harder  thing  to  do  than  to  employ  capital 
charitably.  It  would  be  extreme  folly  to  say  that  nothing  of  that 
sort  ought  to  be  done,  but  I  fully  believe  that  to-day  the  next  most 
pernicious  thing  to  vice  is  charity  in  its  broad  and  popular  sense." 


THE  HABITATIO:^  A^D  THE  ATMOSPHEEE. 

By  M.  R.  RADAU. 

IN  a  former  article  we  endeavored  to  elucidate  some  of  the  princi- 
ples which  have  been  developed  from  the  later  researches  and  ex- 
periments on  the  relations  of  our  clothing  with  the  atmosphere  (see 
"Popular  Science  Monthly,"  October,  1883).  The  house,  also,  may 
be  regarded  as  a  kind  of  clothing,  as  a  large  and  ample  garment, 
designed  to  regulate  our  relations  with  the  surrounding  medium, 
and  to  deliver  us  from  its  tyranny,  but  not  to  isolate  us.  It  ought 
not  to  deprive  us  of  air,  though  that  point  is  too  often  forgotten. 
Fortunately,  no  voluntary  prison  is  so  tightly  calked  up  that  air 
from  out-of-doors  does  not  find  entrance  without  our  perceiving  it. 
The  fact  that  water  will  readily  penetrate  a  wall  or  ceiling  is  known 
to  all,  for  they  can  see  the  spots  it  makes  ;  but  the  air  that  passes 
through  walls  is  not  seen,  and  so  we  imagine  that  it  does  not  penetrate 
them.  This  is  a  mistake.  Walls  would  not  prevent  us  from  being  in 
communication  with  the  outside  air,  even  if  no  cracks  were  left  around 
the  doors  and  windows.  If  water  can  find  a  way  through  them,  what 
is  to  hinder  a  subtile  gas  from  doing  the  same  ?  The  porosity  of  walls 
is  very  far  from  being  an  evil ;  and  we  shall  shortly  see  that  it  is  ne- 
cessary to  prevent  houses  being  damp. 

A  very  simple  experiment  by  Dr.  Pettenkofer  illustrates  the  per- 
meability of  building  materials.  He  took  a  cylinder  of  dry  mortar 
twelve  millimetres  (4*7  inches)  long  and  one  third  as  thick,  and  waxed 
all  of  it  except  the  ends,  in  which  he  fastened  two  glass  funnels,  one 
of  which  was  extended  by  an  India-rubber  tube,  while  the  other  ter- 
minated in  a  very  fine  orifice.      Blowing  through  the  India-rubber 


170  TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

tube,  he  was  able  to  drive  the  air  through  the  cylinder  with  force 
enough  to  extinguish  a  candle  at  the  other  extremity.  Similar  results 
may  be  obtained  with  wood  and  such  varieties  of  stones  as  allow  air 
to  pass  through  them  without  difficulty  ;  while  other  stones,  like  com- 
pact limestones,  are  hardly  permeable. 

All  materials  become  impermeable  to  the  air  when  they  are  wet. 
The  experiment  with  the  cylinder  of  mortar  will  not  be  successful  if 
the  mortar  is  moistened.  It  has  also  been  found  less  easy  to  drive 
moisture  through  bricks  and  mortar  than  to  make  air  pass  through 
them  ;  only  a  few  drops  of  the  liquid  can  be  made  to  appear  on  the 
free  surface.  Water  is  therefore  not  easy  to  dislodge  from  the  pores 
it  has  occupied,  and  is  at  most  removed  very  slowly  by  evaporation. 
But,  when  water  stops  the  pores,  it  prevents  the  air  from  circulating 
through  them — a  mischievous  effect  upon  the  permeability  of  build- 
ing materials,  which  is  more  perceptible  in  proportion  as  their  grain  is 
finer  and  more  compact. 

In  ordinary  weather,  and  when  they  are  dry,  walls  perspire.  They 
are  continually  traversed  by  feeble  atmospheric  currents,  which  renew 
the  air  of  closed  rooms  and  rid  it  of  the  moisture  with  which  it  is 
loaded.  The  atmosphere  of  a  house  is  saturated  with  moisture  by 
the  respiration  and  perspiration  of  its  inmates,  and  by  the  water  daily 
used  in  housekeeping,  even  if  we  do  not  take  account  of  the  dew  that 
is  deposited  whenever  some  air  from  without  gets  into  cold  rooms. 
This  moisture,  which  is  always  undergoing  renewal,  ought  to  be  ab- 
sorbed by  the  walls,  to  be  evaporated  from  the  outside,  under  the  ac- 
tion of  the  sun  and  wind.  For  this  reason  it  is  well  for  building  mate- 
rials to  be  porous  and  permeable,  and  for  them  to  interpose  no  obstacle 
to  the  circulation  of  the  air  which  is  depended  upon  to  promote  evap- 
oration. This  remark  is  especially  applicable  in  the  North,  where  the 
windows  can  not  always  be  wide  open  ;  it  is  perhaps  of  less  importance 
in  the  South. 

The  moisture  which  the  walls  receive  from  the  exterior  atmos- 
phere, from  fogs  and  rain,  generally  disappears  quickly  enough  under 
the  operation  of  the  winds  that  constantly  lick  the  surface  of  the 
house.  But  the  moisture  that  comes  from  within,  which  is  deposited 
on  the  walls  of  poorly  ventilated  rooms,  passes  away  with  difficulty 
when  the  walls  are  not  porous.  Even  the  heating  apparatus  only 
causes  it  to  change  its  place,  by  leaving  the  surfaces  that  become 
warmed  and  settling  farther  away  where  the  heat  has  not  yet  reached. 
Inconveniences  from  interior  moisture  are  especially  sensible  in  newly 
built  houses,  where  the  mortar  still  contains  a  large  proportion  of 
water,  and  in  ground-floors  built  on  a  damp  soil,  which  become  im- 
pregnated by  capillarity.  The  water  stops  up  the  invisible  phannels 
through  which  the  air  should  circulate,  and  the  wall  remains  damp 
notwithstanding  the  evaporation  that  takes  place  at  the  surface,  to  the 
great  harm  of  the  inmates.     Like  wet  clothes,  damp  walls  are  un- 


THE  HABITATION  AND    THE  ATMOSPHERE.      171 

healthy  because  the  water  they  contain  increases  their  conductibility, 
and,  consequently,  the  flow  of  heat  from  within  outward  ;  and  also 
because  evaporation  absorbs  or  neutralizes,  much  heat.  M.  Bouchar- 
dat,  remarking  in  his  "Treatise  on  Hygiene"  on  the  exposure  to 
which  the  tenement  population  are  subjected  in  wind-penetrated  Man- 
sard-roofs and  in  damp  basements,  adds  that  the  commissioners  of 
unhealthy  dwellings  are  wrong  when  they  rank  overcrowding  and 
uncleanliness  among  the  worst  sources  of  danger. 

Dr.  Pettenkofer  calculates  that  a  house  having  a  cellar  and  base- 
ment and  two  stories  of  five  rooms  and  a  kitchen  each,  would  take 
800,000  kilogrammes  of  bricks,  and  that  these  would  hold  about  40,000 
kilogrammes  of  water.  The  mortar,  although  less  bulky,  would  hold 
as  much  more  water.  Thus,  the  entire  masonry  would  hold,  in  a  house 
just  built,  80,000  kilogrammes  or  eighty  cubic  metres  of  water — a 
quantity  which  it  is  by  no  means  easy  to  drive  out.  Among  the 
various  means  that  have  been  devised  for  quickly  drying  the  walls  of 
newly-built  houses  preparatory  to  tenants  moving  in,  only  those  can 
be  of  real  effect  that  depend  on  the  employment  of  heat  combined 
with  an  active  aeration.  The  question  is  wholly  one  of  promoting 
ventilation.  The  lower  the  temperature,  the  greater  the  quantity  of 
air  that  is  needed.  At  50°  Fahr.  a  cubic  metre  of  air,  which  may  be 
already  supposed  to  be  three  fourths  saturated,  contains  seven 
grammes  of  vapor,  and  is  only  capable  of  receiving  a  little  more  than 
two  grammes  more.  Thus,  nearly  40,000,000  cubic  metres  of  air  at 
50°  will  be  needed  to  absorb  the  80,000  kilogrammes  of  water  in  the 
masonry.  A  moderate  wind  might,  it  is  true,  bring  this  volume  of  air 
in  contact  with  the  exposed  surface  in  the  course  of  twenty-four 
hours  ;  but  it  is  evident  that  the  moisture  can  not  be  carried  off  any 
faster  than  it  can  get  through  the  thickness  of  the  wall  to  the  outer 
surface  ;  and,  when  this  has  to  be  done,  the  time  required  for  a  more 
or  less  complete  desiccation  would  be  very  long.  A  suitable  degree 
of  heating  would  greatly  hasten  the  drying,  provided  the  air  were 
continually  renewed.  If,  for  example,  the  temperature  of  the  room 
were  raised  to  68°  Fahr.,  the  effect — depending  partly  on  the  increased 
capacity  of  the  air  to  absorb  vapor,  and  partly  on  the  greater  rapidity 
of  ventilation — would  be  five  or  six  times  as  great. 

Aeration  is  thus  the  sovereign  remedy  for  the  moisture  of  dwelling- 
houses,  and  it  is  favored  by  the  use  of  porous  materials.  Viewed  with 
respect  to  this  point,  direct  determinations  of  the  porosity,  permeabil- 
ity, and  hygroscopicity  of  different  building  materials  are  of  great 
interest.  Messrs.  F.  and  E.  Putzeys,  in  their  work  on  "Hygiene  in 
the  Building  of  Private  Houses,"  have  compiled  nearly  all  that  has 
been  published  on  this  subject.  It  appears  from  their  tables  that,  in 
the  stones  most  usually  employed,  the  pores  occupy  an  important  frac- 
tion of  the  whole  volume.  According  to  Hunt,  the  decimal  of  po- 
rosity is  from  0*07  to  0*20  for  some  sandstones,  from  0*06  to  0*14  for 


172  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

various  dolomites,  and  0*30  for  the  soft  Caen  limestone  and  Maltese 
sandstone.  These  figures  do  not,  however,  permit  us  to  predict  the 
relative  permeability  of  walls  into  which  the  stone  in  question  may 
enter,  for  that  will  depend  as  essentially  on  the  proportion  of  mortar 
used  and  the  kind  of  wash  or  plaster  that  is  put  over  the  stones,  as  on 
the  kind  of  stone  employed.  It  must,  then,  be  determined  by  direct 
experiments.  These  are  not  wanting.  Marker  has  shown  that  walls  of 
brick  let  more  air  through  than  walls  of  cut  sandstone.  Arranged  in 
the  order  of  increasing  permeability,  the  building  materials  here  men- 
tioned would  stand — sandstones,  rough  stones,  limestones,  brick,  cal- 
careous tufa,  and  adobe.  Adobe  has  been  found  to  be  twice  as  per- 
meable as  burned  brick,  having  a  porosity  of  sixty  per  cent,  while  brick 
has  only  twenty-five  per  cent,  by  volume.  Mr.  Lang  has  made  more 
complete  researches  on  the  co-efl[icient  of  permeability  of  different 
materials,  and  puts  calcareous  tufa  at  the  head  of  his  table.  Then 
follow,  in  the  order  of  decrease,  bricks  of  slag,  pine-wood,  mortar, 
hetoriy  hand-made  bricks,  green  sandstone,  molded  plaster,  oak-wood, 
and  enameled  bricks.  Plaster  is  extremely  compact,  and  little  favor- 
able to  natural  ventilation. 

Paints,  washes,  and  paper-hangings  diminish  the  permeability  of 
walls.  The  following  surfaces  are  mentioned  by  Lang,  in  the  order  of 
their  increasing  effects  :  whitewash,  mastic,  glazed  papers,  common 
papers,  and  oil-colors.  Common  papers  are  more  impermeable  than 
glazed  papers,  according  to  Messrs.  Putzeys,  on  account  of  the  greater 
quantity  of  starch  with  which  they  are  impregnated. 

Indispensable  as  is  the  renewal  of  the  air  as  a  means  of  preventing 
moisture  in  dwellings,  it  is  still  more  so  as  a  precaution  against  im- 
purities of  every  kind  that  would  finally  make  the  atmosphere  unfit 
for  respiration.  It  is,  then,  important  to  learn  by  what  sign  we  may 
know  when  an  atmosphere  is  vitiated,  and  what  is  the  volume  of  air 
which  a  man  requires  for  free  breathing  in  a  close  room.  Normal  air, 
according  to  the  mean  of  the  results  of  five  years  of  observations  at 
the  observatory  of  Mont  Souris,  contains  about  three  ten-thousandths 
by  volume  of  carbonic  acid.  Immense  quantities  of  this  gas  are,  how- 
ever, produced  in  cities  by  the  respiration  of  the  inhabitants  and  by 
the  fires,  but  the  whole  is  so  rapidly  removed  by  the  winds  that  the 
atmosphere  is  not  sensibly  vitiated  by  it ;  and  it  is  not  necessary  to 
estimate  the  proportion  of  carbonic  acid,  even  in  the  most  densely 
crowded  localities,  at  more  than  four  ten-thousandths. 

In  an  occupied  inclosure,  like  a  sleeping-room,  a  school-room,  or  a 
public  assembly-hall,  the  air  undergoes  a  progressive  change  through 
the  consumption  of  oxygen  and  by  exhalations  from  the  lungs  and  the 
skins  of  the  people  ;  and,  unless  a  sufficient  ventilation  is  kept  up,  it 
will  in  time  become  unfit  for  respiration.  This  will  be  the  case  when 
the  impurities  with  which  the  atmosphere  is  charged  become  percept- 
ible to  the  smell  and  provoke  the  uneasiness  which  is  usually  attributed 


THE  HABITATION  AND    THE  ATMOSPHERE,      173 

to  a  close  atmosphere.  It  is  generally  agreed  that  this  condition  is 
reached  when  the  proportion  of  carbonic  acid  approaches  one  thou- 
sandth.* Observation  shows,  in  fact,  that  the  proportion  of  carbonic 
acid  increases  in  the  same  degree  as  the  insalubrity  of  the  air,  and 
may,  up  to  a  certain  point,  afford  a  measure  of  it ;  but  the  inconven- 
ience we  suffer  from  bad  air  is  in  reality  attributable  rather  to  the 
putrescible  organic  products  of  respiration  and  transpiration  which  it 
contains.  According  to  Peclet,  the  air  driven  out  from  the  ventilating 
chimneys  of  crowded  rooms  exhales  an  odor  so  noxious  that  it  can  not 
be  borne  with  safety,  even  for  a  short  time.  According  to  some  chem- 
ists, the  disagreeable  odor  that  characterizes  close  air  is  due  to  a  partic- 
ular substance  possessing  an  alkaline  reaction  and  the  property  of  giv- 
ing off  ammonia,  which  escapes  from  the  lungs,  f  The  real  culprits  are 
these  miasms  which  affect  the  smell.  The  carbonic  acid,  which  is 
comparatively  an  inoffensive  gas,  only  indicates  the  change  the  air  has 
undergone.  The  experiments  of  MM.  Regnault  and  Reizet  go  to 
show  that  an  animal  can  live  in  an  atmosphere  containing  seven  hun- 
dredths of  carbonic  acid,  provided  the  proportion  of  oxygen  is  main- 
tained at  twenty-one  hundredths.  Animals  have  been  observed  to 
perish  in  a  tight  inclosure  even  when  the  carbonic  acid  is  eliminated 
as  fast  as  it  is  formed,  and  the  lost  oxygen  is  restored  ;  and  Mante- 
gazza  has  shown  that  if  two  birds  are  placed  under  two  different  bell- 
glasses,  and  the  carbonic  acid  formed  by  one  is  absorbed  by  quicklime, 
and  the  organic  matter  exhaled  by  the  other  is  taken  up  by  animal 
charcoal,  the  latter  bird  will  survive  considerably  longer  than  the 
former.  We  add  that  Dr.  Pettenkofer  has  been  able  to  breathe  for 
several  hours,  without  inconvenience,  air  containing  one  hundredth  of 
carbonic  acid  developed,  not  by  respiration,  but  by  a  chemical  process. 
These  facts  indicate  that  the  few  thousandths  of  carbonic  acid  diffused 
in  it  are  not  the  cause  of  the  effects  produced  by  an  atmosphere  viti- 
ated by  respiration.  The  oxygen  content  diminishes  in  nearly  the 
same  proportion  as  carbonic  acid  is  developed  ;  but  the  effects  pro- 
duced by  "  close  air  "  can  not  be  explained  by  the  deficiency — say  of 
one  per  cent — of  oxygen  ;  that  may  be  remedied  in  part  by  more  ac- 
tive breathing. 

Carbonic  acid  has  sometimes  been  wrongfully  charged  with  effects 
which  were  really  due  to  a  small  proportion  of  carbonic  oxide,  a  prod- 
uct of  imperfect  combustion  and  of  the  reduction  of  carbonic  acid. 
Carbonic  oxide  is  a  deadly  poison,  and  destroys  the  red  globules  of  the 
blood.     To  its  disengagement  may  be  attributed  the  unhealthy  effects 

*  According  to  M.  de  Chaumont's  observations  in  English  barracks,  the  odor  begins 
to  be  perceptible  when  the  proportion  reaches  0*0008 ;  and  this  hygienist  is  inclined  to 
reduce  the  admissible  proportion  to  0*0006 ;  but  I  believe  it  sufficient  to  adopt  one  thou- 
sandth as  a  limit  which  we  shall  be  fortunate  if  we  never  exceed  in  practice. 

f  It  blackens  sulphuric  acid,  discolors  permanganate  of  potash,  and  communicates  to 
water  in  solution  a  fetid  odor  (A.  Proust,  *'  Traite  d'Hygi^ne  "). 


174  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

of  cast-iron  stoves,  effects  from  which  sheet-iron  stoves,  which  are  not 
pervious  to  it,  are  free  ;  and  it  is  one  of  the  products  of  the  combus- 
tion of  poor  illuminating  gas.  It  is,  nevertheless,  customary  to  meas- 
ure the  degree  of  insalubrity  which  any  atmospheric  medium  has 
reached  by  the  quantity  of  carbonic  acid  it  contains.  This  is  found  to 
increase  rapidly  in  school-rooms,  hospital- wards,  and  assembly-rooms  of 
all  kinds,  but  not  nearly  so  rapidly,  unless  the  room  is  extremely  close, 
as  the  gas  is  actually  developed  by  the  life-processes  of  the  inhabit- 
ants of  the  rooms.  This  fact  indicates  that,  even  in  rooms  regarded 
as  close,  a  considerable  renewal  of  air  is  all  the  time  going  on  by  nat- 
ural or  spontaneous  ventilation. 

Dr.  Pettenkofer  has  made  an  ingenious  use  of  the  estimation  of 
the  proportions  of  carbonic  acid  to  measure  the  spontaneous  ventila- 
tion, or  the  speed  with  which  the  air  gradually  renews  itself  in  rooms. 
It  is  sufficient  for  this  purpose  to  develop  artificially  in  a  room  an  ex- 
actly ascertained  quantity  of  the  gas,  and  to  determine  by  repeated 
analyses  the  quantity  of  acid  that  disappears  in  a  certain  time.  The 
method  is  a  good  one,  provided  there  is  no  opportunity  for  the  acid  to 
be  absorbed  by  fresh  mortar.  By  gauging  in  this  manner  the  ventila- 
tion of  a  number  of  places,  and  then  observing  in  the  same  places  the 
degree  of  alteration  in  the  atmosphere  resulting  from  the  presence  of 
a  given  number  of  persons.  Dr.  Pettenkofer  found  that  the  atmos- 
phere remained  of  a  satisfactory  quality  when  it  was  renewed  at  the 
rate  of  sixty  cubic  metres  an  hour  per  head.  The  proportion  of  car- 
bonic acid  continued  under  these  conditions  to  be  less  than  a  thou- 
sandth. Experiments  were  made  in  a  room  with  brick  walls,  and  hav- 
ing a  capacity  of  seventy-five  cubic  metres.  On  the  first  day  when 
the  temperature  was  66°  in  the  room  and  below  the  freezing-point  out- 
of-doors — the  difference  being  nearly  36° — the  rate  of  change  (sev- 
enty-four cubic  metres)  was  sufficient  to  renew  all  the  air  in  the  room 
in  an  hour  ;  with  a  good  fire  in  the  stove,  the  rate  of  ventilation  was 
raised  to  ninety-four  cubic  metres  an  hour.  With  paper  pasted  over 
the  joints  of  the  doors  and  windows,  it  fell  to  fifty-four  cubic  metres. 
On  another  day,  when  the  difference  between  the  inner  temperature 
and  that  out-of-doors  was  about  seven  degrees,  the  rate  of  ventilation 
was  only  twenty-two  cubic  metres  an  hour  ;  and  with  a  window  half 
open  it  was  only  increased  to  forty-two  cubic  metres  ;  thus  an  open- 
ing of  eighty  square  decimetres  was  of  less  effect  upon  ventilation 
than  the  simple  transpiration  through  the  walls  assisted  by  a  difference 
of  about  36°  between  the  outer  and  inner  temperatures.  A  calcula- 
tion based  on  these  experiments  indicates  that  a  difference  in  tempera- 
ture of  1°  C.  (1*8°  Fahr.)  causes  to  pass  every  hour  about  two  hundred 
and  forty-five  litres  of  air  for  each  square  metre  of  exposed  wall-surface. 

The  question  of  the  volume  of  air  needed  by  a  man  for  free  respi- 
ration is  a  complex  one,  on  which  hygienists  do  not  readily  agree.  The 
answer  to  it  must  depend,  not  only  on  the  exterior  conditions  in  view, 


THE  HABITATION  AND    THE  ATMOSPHERE.      175 

but  also  upon  the  limit  of  variation,  or  tolerance,  which  is  regarded  as 
admissible  in  the  normal  composition  of  the  air.  In  a  room  hermeti- 
cally closed,  where  the  volume  of  available  air  is  limited  by  the  ca- 
pacity of  the  inclosure,  the  proportion  of  carbonic  acid  will  soon  reach 
the  one  thousandth,  which  we  have  adopted  as  the  tolerable  limit ; 
and  the  more  speedily  as  the  size  of  the  room  is  diminished,  the  more 
tardily  as  it  is  enlarged.  The  volume  of  air  required  will  also  evidently 
be  proportioned  to  the  time  the  man  stays  in  the  room.  Assuming  that 
about  twenty  litres  of  carbonic  acid  are  exhaled  in  an  hour  from  the 
lungs  of  an  adult  man,  we  find  that  he  will  require  about  thirty-three 
cubic  metres  of  fresh  air  every  hour  ;  for  this  quantity  of  air  already 
has  a  normal  content  of  thirteen  litres  of  carbonic  acid  ;  and  the  addi- 
tion to  this  of  the  twenty  litres  exhaled  will  bring  up  the  whole 
amount  to  thirty-three  litres,  or  the  one-thousandth  part  of  the  vol- 
ume of  air,  which  we  have  accepted  as  the  tolerable  limit.  Conse- 
quently the  space  a  person  must  have,  if  he  is  to  live  in  a  really  close 
room  for  an  hour,  is  thirty-three  cubic  metres  ;  if  he  is  to  live  there 
two  hours,  sixty-six  cubic  metres.  More  will  be  needed  if  lamps  or 
gas-lights  are  kept  burning  in  the  room,  for  a  candle  in  burning 
will  consume  as  much  oxygen  as  a  man  ;  but  the  carbonic  acid  pro- 
duced by  combustion  is  not  so  dangerous  as  are  the  exhalations 
from  a  living  being.  The  case  of  a  perfectly  close  room  will,  how- 
ever, never  be  realized  ;  for,  however  tightly  we  may  close  the  doors 
and  windows,  the  air  will  always  get  in  through  some  crack,  and,  if 
there  are  no  cracks,  it  will  penetrate  through  the  walls.  The  most 
thoroughly  calked  room  is  not  proof  against  the  natural  ventilation 
that  results  from  inequalities  of  temperature.  Houses  are  great  cen- 
ters of  draughts  in  cold  weather,  and  are  permeated  by  a  spontaneous 
ventilation  that  is  dependent  at  once  on  the  degree  to  which  the  outer 
atmosphere  is  agitated,  on  the  number  and  sizes  of  the  doors  and  win- 
dows, on  the  condition  of  the  chimneys,  and  lastly  on  the  permea- 
bility of  the  walls.  It  may  be  increased  by  a  suitable  distribution  of 
ventilators,  and  is  aided  by  the  draught  of  the  chimneys  when  fires 
are  kindled  in  them  ;  but  fires  may  be  regarded  as  artificial  means  of 
ventilation.  These  agencies  of  natural  ventilation  diminish  in  a  nota- 
ble degree  the  danger  of  the  air  within  houses  stagnating,  and  will 
always  prevent  its  becoming  vitiated  to  the  extent  that  might  other- 
wise be  apprehended  from  the  causes  of  contamination  which  we  have 
reviewed.  Their  effect  should  be  taken  account  of  in  estimating  what 
extent  of  artificial  ventilation  may  be  required  ;  otherwise,  we  might 
make  exaggerated  provisions  for  it. 

When  an  inclosure  containing  a  given  number  of  persons  is  sub- 
jected to  a  regular  ventilation,  there  is  established,  at  the  end  of  a 
certain  time,  a  permanent  regime  ;  the  adulteration  of  the  air,  having 
reached  a  certain  limit,  does  not  vary  any  more,  the  noxious  gases 
being  eliminated  as  fast  as  they  are  developed.     The  proportion  of 


176  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

carbonic  acid  is  from  that  time  constant ;  we  obtain  it  simply  by 
assuming  that  the  acid  disengaged  is  distributed  through  the  volume 
of  air  introduced  by  the  ventilation.  This  proportion-limit  is,  then, 
independent  of  the  disposable  cubic  space.  A  ration  of  forty  cubic 
metres  of  air,  for  example,  with  a  production  of  twenty  litres  of  car- 
bonic acid,  to  which  are  added  the  sixteen  litres  of  acid  contained  in 
the  forty  cubic  metres  of  fresh  air,  gives  the  proportion  of  0-0009, 
whatever  may  be  otherwise  the  disposable  space.  The  capacity  of  the 
inclosure  plays  no  other  part  than  that  of  delaying  the  moment  when 
the  constant  regime  is  established  ;  the  space  acts  as  a  reservoir  which 
is  gradually  filled  till  it  contains  the  same  proportion  of  acid  as  the  cur- 
rent of  air  that  traverses  it ;  but,  once  saturated,  it  intervenes  no  more 
in  the  course  of  the  phenomenon.  The  advantage  of  a  considerable 
cubic  space  consists,  then,  chiefly  in  the  fact  that  it  retards  the  approach 
of  the  moment  when  the  alteration  of  the  air  attains  the  limit  which 
it  will  not  pass.  This  consideration  becomes  of  some  importance  in 
fixing  the  size  of  rooms  that  are  to  be  occupied  only  for  a  definite 
number  of  hours  at  a  time  ;  for  it  will  be  always  possible  to  arrange 
matters  so  that  the  proportion-limit  shall  not  be  reached  before  the 
end  of  the  contemplated  time. 

Let  us  suppose,  for  example,  that  the  ventilation  can  supply  six 
cubic  metres  of  fresh  air  per  person  per  hour.  This  is  the  ration  of 
air  which,  according  to  Peclet,  might  be  sufficient  in  case  of  extremi- 
ty, because  six  cubic  metres  of  air,  half  saturated  at  60°,  can  absorb 
the  thirty-five  or  forty  grammes  of  vapor  given  out  by  transpiration. 
The  fresh  air  containing  already  a  proportion  of  0*0004  of  carbonic 
acid,  to  which  respiration  adds  0*0033,  we  find  that  the  proportion- 
limit  will  be  0*0037.  This  limit  will  be  almost  reached  and  the  regime 
will  be  constant  when  the  air  has  been  renewed  three  times,  for  the 
proportion  of  air  will  then  exceed  0*0035.  If  the  allotted  space  is  only 
one  cubic  metre,  as  we  know  happens  sometimes  to  be  the  case  in 
theatres  and  other  assembly-halls,  a  half  an  hour  will  be  long  enough 
to  bring  about  this  state  of  things  ;  if  the  cubic  space  is  increased  to 
ten  cubic  metres,  five  hours  will  be  required,  and  ten  hours  if  it  is  in- 
creased to  twenty  cubic  metres,  to  reach  the  same  degree  of  alteration. 
Such,  then,  would  be  the  effect  of  a  ventilation  at  the  rate  of  six  cubic 
metres  an  hour,  according  to  the  capacity  of  the  building.  By  rais- 
ing the  ration  of  air  to  thirty  cubic  metres,  the  proportion-limit  be- 
comes 0*0011,  and  we  may  assume  that  this  has  been  reached  when 
the  air  has  been  renewed  twice  (the  real  proportion  being  then  0*0010). 
This  will  happen  at  the  end  of  four  minutes  in  a  space  of  one  cubic 
metre,  after  forty  minutes  in  ten  cubic  metres,  etc.  But  the  pro- 
longation of  time  obtained  under  these  circumstances  is  not  of  the 
same  importance  as  in  the  preceding  case,  for  the  limit  of  0*001  is  a 
characteristic  of  respirable  air.  With  so  energetic  a  ventilation  as 
this,  the  consideration  of  cubic  space  becomes  a  minor  affair ;  but  it 


THE  HABITATION  AND    THE  ATMOSPHERE,       177 

is  of  great  importance  when  the  only  dependence  is  upon  natural  ven- 
tilation, for  that  is  greatly  facilitated  by  any  increase  of  the  extent 
of  exposed  surfaces,  and  of  doors  and  windows.  We  should  also 
keep  in  view  that  a  like  quantity  of  air  will  more  readily  traverse  a 
large  than  a  small  space  without  producing  inconvenient  currents  ; 
and  that  the  air  in  a  large  space  requires  less  frequent  renewal,  and 
does  not  have  to  be  kept  in  as  rapid  motion.  Natural  ventilation, 
which  is  uniform  and  almost  insensible,  must  not  be  confounded  with 
draughts  and  currents  of  air,  with  the  injurious  effects  of  which  all 
are  acquainted. 

The  rules  as  to  the  amount  of  space  that  should  be  allowed  in  con- 
nection with  natural  ventilation  are  various  and  indefinite.  Aeration 
from  this  source  can  not  always,  however,  be  depended  upon  ;  and  even 
the  opening  of  windows  on  opposite  sides  of  an  apartment  frequently 
fails  to  produce  the  changes  of  air  that  are  needed.  General  Morin,  who 
has  distinguished  himself  as  an  apostle  of  ventilation,  and  who  made 
numerous  experiments  bearing  upon  the  subject,  has  given  the  follow- 
ing estimates  of  the  volume  of  air  that  should  be  withdrawn  and  in- 
troduced every  hour,  for  each  person,  in  public  institutions  of  different 
kinds  :  Children's  schools,  twelve  to  fifteen  cubic  metres  ;  schools  for 
adults,  twenty -five  to  thirty  cubic  metres  ;  amphitheatres,  thirty  cubic 
metres  ;  assembly-halls  and  long-continued  meetings,  sixty  cubic  me- 
tres ;  play-houses,  forty  cubic  metres  ;  barracks,  thirty  cubic  metres  dur- 
ing the  day,  forty  to  fifty  cubic  metres  at  night  ;  hospitals  for  the  ordi- 
nary sick,  sixty  to  seventy  cubic  metres  ;  hospitals  for  the  wounded  and 
for  women  in  childbirth,  one  hundred  cubic  metres  ;  the  same  in  times 
of  epidemic,  one  hundred  and  fifty  cubic  metres  ;  prisons,  fifty  cubic 
metres  ;  stables,  one  hundred  and  eighty  to  two  hundred  cubic  metres. 
These  numbers  certainly  represent  the  maximum  of  reasonable  de- 
mands ;  and  M.  Bouchardat  thinks  that  they  are  exaggerated  and  not 
justified  by  clinical  experience.  Besides  effecting  the  renewal  of  the 
air,  ventilation  also  furnishes  the  means  of  obtaining  a  nearly  constant 
temperature — in  winter  by  means  of  the  circulation  of  hot  air  through 
the  house,  in  summer  by  air  drawn  from  the  cellar.  The  latter  method 
is  quite  effective  for  securing  an  agreeable  temperature  in  hot  weather 
without  much  expense,  whenever  a  sweet,  dry  cellar  can  be  had.  The 
cabinet  of  the  Conservatoire  des  Arts  et  Metiers,  in  Paris,  is  kept  cool  in 
this  way,  the  draught  of  air  being  promoted  by  gas-jets  kept  burning 
in  the  ventilating  shafts  ;  as  is  also  M.  Daville's  laboratory  at  the  Nor- 
mal School,  where  the  opening  of  a  few  squares  in  the  glass-roof  fur- 
nishes the  required  stimulus  to  the  circulation.  Similar  principles  have 
been  adopted  at  the  palace  of  the  Corps  Legislatif.  The  subject  of 
applying  the  artificial  refrigeration  of  the  air  in  colonial  life  in  hot 
countries  has  been  studied  by  M.  Dessoliers,  and  elaborated  by  him 
with  a  number  of  ingenious  devices,  among  which  the  storing  of  cold 
night-air  for  use  during  the  day  plays  a  part. 

VOL.   XXIY. 12 


178  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

In  temperate  climates  the  principal  object  of  ventilation  is  the  re- 
placement of  vitiated  air  with  fresh.  Artificial  ventilation  is  produced 
either  by  inducing  a  movement  of  air  by  means  of  draught-chimneys, 
or  by  forcing  in  air  through  the  agency  of  mechanical  ventilators.  A 
trial  has  been  made  at  the  Lariboisi^re  Hospital  of  a  system  of  venti- 
lation in  which  the  air  is  drawn  from  the  roof  and  forced  into  flues 
that  ramify  into  the  several  halls  to  be  ventilated.  At  the  moment  of 
entering  the  halls  the  air  is  heated  by  being  brought  in  contact  w^ith 
steam-pipes,  so  that  a  uniform  temperature  of  78°  is  maintained  in  the 
wards,  with  an  atmosphere  free  from  odor.  Notwithstanding  purity 
of  air  is  secured,  the  mortality  in  this  institution  is  not  inferior  to  that 
in  non-ventilated  hospitals.  This  is  attributed  by  M.  Bouchardat  to 
the  mischievous  influence  of  the  high  temperature  which  they  endeavor 
to  maintain.  He  favors  heating  and  ventilation  by  open  fire-places. 
This  method  is  preferred  in  London,  where  fires  are  kept  up  in  summer 
as  well  as  in  winter,  at  least  in  the  principal  office  of  the  institution, 
and  the  windows  are  opened  at  all  times  when  it  is  possible,  while  me- 
chanical ventilating  apparatus  is  used  only  exceptionally.  The  air, 
sucked  in  by  the  strong  draught  of  the  chimneys,  enters  by  the  joints 
of  the  doors  and  windows.  The  patients  enjoy  the  sight  of  the  fire  and 
the  pleasant  feeling  of  direct  radiation,  while  they  collect  around  the 
hearths  and  breathe  an  air  that  has  not  been  changed  by  contact  with 
a  heated  surface.  Possibly  the  English  go  too  far  in  this  direction. 
"  The  importance  of  pure  air,"  says  M.  Proust,  "  has  perhaps  been 
exaggerated  in  some  cases  by  the  English  physicians,  whose  example 
the  Americans  have  followed.  It  is  advisable,  according  to  them,  to 
leave  the  larger  openings,  no  matter  what  the  weather  may  be,  the 
windows  of  dormitories  and  bedrooms,  open  during  the  night.  These 
principles,  almost  universally  observed  in  the  countries  of  which  we 
speak,  entail,  in  our  opinion,  great  inconveniences."  There  is  really 
some  danger  in  exposing  one's  self  to  cold  during  sleep. 

The  study  of  the  questions  of  heating  and  ventilation  has  made 
considerable  progress  in  France  during  the  last  fifteen  or  twenty  years. 
The  construction  of  numerous  school-houses  has  especially  been  the 
occasion  of  many  praiseworthy  improvements,  but  much  still  remains 
to  be  done.  Dr.  Larget,  in  an  interesting  w^ork  on  rural  habitations, 
has  pointed  out  an  apparent  relation  between  the  number  of  openings 
indicated  in  the  tax-list  of  doors  and  windows  and  the  mortality.  The 
general  average,  for  France,  of  the  number  of  openings  per  inhabitant, 
is  one  and  a  half.  In  one  hundred  departments,  in  which  the  number 
is  less  than  the  mean,  fifty-five  show  a  higher  mortality,  and  forty- 
five  a  mortality  equal  to  the  average  ;  while,  in  a  hundred  departments 
in  which  the  number  is  greater  than  the  mean,  sixty  show  a  lower  rate 
of  mortality  than  the  average,  and  only  twenty-five  a  higher  rate. 

Another  point  which  is  too  easily  forgotten  is  that,  like  the  walls, 
floors  are  permeable  to  the  air.     The  atmosphere  is  not  bounded  by 


THE  HABITATION  AND    THE  ATMOSPHERE,      179 

the  level  of  the  soil,  but  extends  below  it  to  a  considerable  depth. 
The  most  compact  soils  include  a  considerable  volume  of  air,  as  well 
as  an  ever-varying  quantity  of  moisture.  When  we  pour  water  into  a 
vessel  full  of  well-packed  gravel,  and  displace  the  air  which  is  present, 
we  find  that  it  generally  forms  one  third  of  the  total  volume  of  the 
mass.  The  porosity  of  the  earth  sometimes  reaches  fifty  per  cent  ; 
and  miners  and  well-diggers  accidentally  buried  under  cavings-in  have 
sometimes  been  known  to  live  for  several  days  by  the  aid  of  the  air 
circulating  through  the  earth. 

Porous  soil  does  not  become  impermeable  to  air  till  below  the  level 
at  which  the  subterranean  water  ceases  to  exist.  Frozen  ground  does 
not  lose  its  porosity  by  the  solidification  of  the  water.  Incessant  in- 
terchanges are  taking  place  between  the  underground  air  and  the  free 
atmosphere.  It  is  by  such  means  that  infiltrations  of  lighting-gas  im- 
pregnate the  soil  of  the  street,  penetrate  sewers,  and  cause  ills  which 
are  wrongly  attributed  to  typhoid  affections  ;  and  this  is  most  liable  to 
take  place  in  winter  when  the  rise  of  gas  from  the  soil  is  promoted  by  the 
draught  of  the  chimneys.  Ventilation  is  thus  partly  carried  on  through 
the  floor,  to  such  an  extent  that  the  atmosphere  of  a  room  sometimes 
contains  from  ten  to  fifteen  per  cent  of  air  from  the  ground.  Hence 
the  danger  from  impurities  absorbed  by  the  soil.  They  rise,  pitilessly  re- 
turning from  the  earth,  as  if  to  chastise  us  for  our  carelessness.  The 
air  included  in  a  garden-soil,  and  generally  in  any  soil  rich  in  organic 
matters,  always  contains  a  strong  proportion  of  carbonic  acid.  At 
the  same  time  the  oxygen  is  in  diminished  quantity,  proving  that  the 
carbonic  acid  proceeds  from  slow  combustions,  and  not  from  subter- 
ranean emanations.  According  to  the  observations  of  Pettenkofer, 
Fleck,  and  Fodor,  the  proportion  of  acid  increases  with  the  depth,  and 
at  a  few  yards  beneath  the  surface  sometimes  exceeds  ten  per  cent. 
This  presence  of  carbonic  acid  is  a  sign  of  the  activity  of  the  life  in 
the  soil.  We  do  not  know  the  exact  manner  in  which  the  soil  and 
subsoil  intervene  in  the  etiology  of  endemic  diseases  and  the  appear- 
ance of  epidemics.  It  is  a  subject  of  active  controversy.  We  can, 
nevertheless,  approve  the  teaching  of  the  hygienists  who  advise  us  to 
render  our  dwellings  independent  of  the  soil-air  by  making  provisions 
for  aeration  under  the  basements,  or  by  making  the  floors  impermeable. 

Parks  and  gardens  are  beneficial,  not  only  because  they  give  a  de- 
gree of  shade  and  coolness  in  hot  weather,  but  also  because  vegetation 
absorbs  waste  matter  and  purifies  the  soil,  and  thus  diminishes  the  lia- 
bility to  epidemics.*  It  is  well,  for  other  reasons,  to  increase  these  oases 
in  cities  where  the  air  is  not  directly  vitiated.  But  the  quantity  of  oxy- 
gen which  the  plants  disengage  is  too  small  to  be  made  an  object.  The 
phenomena  of  vegetation  are  extremely  slow  of  accomplishment.  Yast 
spaces  and  a  long  time  are  needed  to  produce  the  grass  and  the  wood 

*  We  may  here  take  notice  of  a  scheme  of  M.  Autier's  for  serving  the  citizens  of  Paris 
in  their  houses  with  pure  air  brought  through  pipes  from  the  forests. 


i8o  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

that  are  consumed  in  a  few  hours.  Oxygen  is  absorbed  more  rapidly 
than  it  is  set  free.  We  shall  also  have  to  give  up  the  prevalent  idea 
that  a  little  verdure  can  improve  the  atmosphere  of  a  room.  The  ad- 
vantage of  plants,  as  Dr.  Pettenkofer  remarks,  is  rather  in  their  moral 
than  in  their  physical  influence.  Public  gardens  are  also  desirable  be- 
cause they  enliven  the  view.  Even  on  hygienic  grounds,  we  should 
be  careful  not  to  underestimate  the  importance  of  whatever  acts  upon 
the  mind.  We  have  endeavored,  in  this  and  a  former  essay,*  to  study 
clothing  and  the  habitation,  with  particular  reference  to  their  relations 
with  the  atmosphere  ;  but,  even  as  thus  limited,  the  subject  has  proved 
to  be  a  very  complex  one,  and  in  our  progress  we  have  struck  upon  more 
than  one  question  that  is  still  imperfectly  elucidated.  It  may,  however, 
not  have  been  without  use  to  attract  attention  to  these  questions,  which 
demand  new  investigations.  Hygienic  societies  are  multiplying  ;  de- 
partments of  hygiene  have  been  created  in  numerous  cities  ;  and  the 
hygienic  conferences  which  have  been  held  at  Paris,  Turin,  and  Ge- 
neva, attest  the  growing  interest  that  attaches  to  the  development  of 
a  science  all  of  whose  conquests  redound  to  our  physical  and  moral 
profit.  Every  facility  should  be  given  for  widening  its  scope  and  ex- 
tending its  sphere  of  action.  Diseases  that  might  have  been  avoided 
constitute  the  heaviest  taxes  that  can  be  laid  upon  a  city. — Translated 
for  the,  Popular  Science  Monthly  from  the  Hevue  des  Deux  Mondes. 


A  BELT  OF  SUN-SPOTS. 

By  GAEEETT  P.  SEEVISS. 

EVERYBODY  who  watched  the  sun  with  a  telescope  last  summer 
must  have  wondered  at  the  great  belt  of  spots  lying  across  the 
southern  part  of  the  disk  during  the  last  half  of  July.  Several  of  the 
spots  and  groups  were  of  extraordinary  size,  and  their  arrangement 
was  very  singular.  When  the  belt  extended  completely  across  the 
sun,  there  was  visible  at  one  time  almost  every  characteristic  form  that 
sun-spots  present.  There  was  the  yawning  black  chasm  with  sharply 
defined  yet  ragged  edges,  vast  enough  to  swallow  up  the  whole  earth, 
with  room  to  spare,  and  surrounded  by  a  regular  penumbral  border  as 
evenly  shaded  as  an  artist  could  have  made  it ;  there  was  the  double 
or  triple  spot  whose  black  centers,  though  widely  separated  from  one 
another,  were  tangled,  as  it  were,  in  one  twisted  and  torn  veil  of 
penumbra,  or  connected  by  long,  shadowy  bands  ;  there  was  the  mon- 
strous spot  of  grotesque  form  surrounded  by  a  crowd  of  smaller  spots 
of  even  more  fantastic  shape,  and  enveloped  in  a  broad,  irregular  pe- 
numbra as  bizarre  and  wonderful  as  the  mighty  sun-chasms  inclosed 
*  "Popular  Science  Monthly  "  for  October,  1883,  p.  787. 


A  BELT   OF  SUN-SPOTS. 


181 


in  it  ;  there  was  the  great  spot,  often  of  singular  outline,  accompanied 
outside  its  shadowy  borders  by  one  or  more  swarms  of  minute  black 
specks  pitting  the  white  photosphere  in  the  most  extraordinary  fash- 
ion ;  there  was  the  huge  group,  visible  even  to  the  unassisted  eye,  and 
consisting  of  half  a  dozen  or  more  large  spots  intermingled  with 
smaller  ones  whose  number  seemed  to  defy  counting,  and  enveloped 
in  a  penumbral  cloak  of  becoming  amplitude  ;  there,  near  the  edges  of 
the  disk,  were  the  crinkling  lines  and  heaped-up  masses  of  faculae,  the 
mountainous  hydrogen  -  flames  which  marked  the  places  where  the 
intensest  solar  action  was  going  on — in  short,  there  was  a  panorama  in 
which  every  variety  of  sun-spot  seemed  to  be  passing  in  a  gigantic  pro- 
cession across  the  disk.  And  what  a  procession  it  was  !  — long  enough, 
nearly,  to  reach  from  the  earth  to  the  moon  and  back  again  three 
times  ! 

But  the  most  extraordinary  feature  of  this  great  solar  display  was 
the  linear  arrangement  of  the  spots  making  a  belt,  or  band,  that  half 
encircled  the  sun  ;  there  was  also  a  noticeable  regularity  in  the  distances 
separating  the  groups  composing  this  singular  belt,  and  this  peculiarity 
increased  the  likeness  to  a  procession  which  must  have  impressed  every 
observer  who  beheld  the  gradual  march  of  the  sun-spot  army  across  the 


Fig.  1. 

solar  disk.  It  was  like  watching  a  parade  of  masqueraders  ;  each 
company  of  spots  had  its  own  characteristic  and  conspicuous  make-up, 
and  each  kept  its  place  in  the  line  at  a  nearly  invariable  distance  from 
the  group  in  front  of  it  and  the  one  that  followed. 

The  separate  spots  and  groups  did  not,  however,  present  an  unva- 
rying appearance.    There  was  change  as  well  as  variety  in  this  un- 


i82  THU  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

paralleled  pageant  on  the  sun.  Changes  were  continually  going  on  in 
the  shape  and  even  the  size  of  the  spots,  and  in  the  configuration  of 
the  different  members  of  the  groups — minor  evolutions  in  the  ever- 
advancing  column.  New  spots  of  small  size  made  their  appearance  in 
the  neighborhood  of  larger  ones  ;  and  in  one  instance,  at  least,  a  per- 
fect swarm  of  little  spots  broke  out  near  one  of  the  largest  components 
of  the  belt,  as  if  the  surface  of  the  sun  had  been  suddenly  punctured 
by  huge  needles. 

A  very  good  idea  of  the  appearance  of  the  band  of  spots,  and  of 
their  progressive  motion  from  east  to  west  with  the  revolution  of  the 
sun,  as  well  as  of  the  principal  changes  that  took  place  in  their  form 
and  arrangement,  can  be  obtained  from  the  series  of  sketches  accom- 
panying this  article.  The  originals  of  these  sketches  I  made  at  the 
time  the  spots  were  visible,  and  they  represent  with  approximate  ac- 
curacy the  appearance  of  the  spots  with  a  magnifying  power  of  sixty- 
five  diameters.  They  do  not,  however,  by  any  means  show  all  the 
details  visible  with  such  a  power.  With  higher  magnifying  powers 
the  crowd  of  details  in  some  of  the  larger  groups  was  so  great  and 
confusing  as  to  defy  the  power  of  the  pencil  to  represent  them.  Some 
remarkable  phenomena  were  also  observed  with  the  spectroscope  dur- 


/ 
/ 


Fig.  2. 


ing  this  sun-spot  display.  When  the  huge  group,  seen  near  the  left- 
hand  edge  of  the  sun  in  Fig.  2,  was  just  coming  around  the  edge,  its 
approach  was  announced  by  an  outburst  of  gas  which  M.  Thollon  ob- 
served as  a  small  but  extremely  brilliant  protuberance,  that  exhibited 
very  marked  displacement  of  the  C-line  toward  the  violet  end  of  the 


A  BELT  OF  SUJf-SPOTS. 


83 


spectrum.  In  a  communication  to  the  French  Academy  of  Sciences, 
M.  Thollon  says  that  an  hour  before  his  observation  on  the  C-line  he 
had  observed  in  the  same  region  a  slighter  displacement  not  only  of 
the  lines  of  hydrogen  and  of  the  ^-group  but  also  of  the  coronal  line 
1,474.  He  observed  on  several  days  other  remarkable  spectroscopic 
phenomena,  and  noticed  that  nearly  the  whole  southern  half  of  the 
sun's  disk  gave  manifest  signs  of  violent  agitation.  In  view  of  these 
facts,  it  seems  surprising  that  little  apparent  effect  was  produced  upon 
the  earth  by  these  solar  outbursts.  Two  or  three  times  in  1882  the 
earth  responded  instantly  with  magnetic  storms  and  brilliant  auroral 
displays  to  the  solar  activity,  but  this  year  the  great  sun-spots  and  their 
accompanying  phenomena  have  shown  comparatively  little  power  to 
affect  terrestrial  magnetism. 

Fig.  1  shows  the  sun  as  it  appeared  on  the  16th  of  July,  when 
the  advancing  procession  of  spots  had  reached  two  thirds  of  the  way 
across  the  disk. 

Fig.  2  represents  the  sun  on  the  20th  of  July,  when  the  spot  belt 
extended  completely  across  the  disk. 


Fig.  3. 


Fig.  3  shows  the  appearance  of  the  sun  on  the  25th  of  July,  when 
more  than  half  of  the  procession  had  disappeared  around  the  western 
edge,  and  the  great  group  bringing  up  the  rear  was  near  the  meridian. 

In  the  latter  part  of  August  and  early  in  September  a  row  of  spots, 
principally  in  the  southern  hemisphere,  was  again  seen  upon  the  sun, 
but  it  was  shorter,  more  crooked,  and  composed  of  fewer  spots  and 
groups,  than  the  great  belt  of  July. 

There  is  one  point  of  view  from  which  the  sun-spot  belt  just  de- 


i84  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

scribed  appears  particularly  interesting,  and  that  relates  to  the  sup- 
posed resemblance  between  the  larger  planets,  and  more  especially 
Jupiter,  and  the  sun.  Everybody  knows  that  Jupiter  has  a  conspicu- 
ous dark-colored  belt  on  each  side  of  his  equator,  for  those  belts  are 
one  of  the  commonest  objects  of  celestial  sight-seeing.  Saturn  too 
has  belts  similarly  situated,  although  they  are  less  conspicuous  than 
those  of  Jupiter.  All  the  trustworthy  evidence  we  have  points  to 
the  conclusion  that  these  huge  planets  are  j^et  in  a  state  which  has 
more  points  of  resemblance  to  the  condition  of  a  sun  than  to  that  of 
a  cool  and  solid  globe.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  Jupiter  is  sur- 
rounded by  a  cloud-laden  atmosphere  of  great  depth,  and  that  his 
geological  development,  so  to  speak,  is  in  a  stage  much  earlier  than 
any  whose  former  existence  is  recorded  in  the  present  rock  strata  of 
the  earth.  In  other  words,  Jupiter  probably  has  not  yet  a  continuous 
solid  crust,  even  if  the  formation  of  such  a  crust  has  been  begun. 
But,  accepting  the  nebular  hypothesis,  we  must  conclude  that  Jupiter 
is  gradually  cooling  and  contracting,  and  that  eventually  he  will  have 
as  solid  a  surface  as  the  earth's.  He  seems,  then,  to  be  in  a  transition 
state  between  a  luminous  sun  and  an  opaque  world,  and,  if  so,  his  pres- 
ent condition  may  throw  light  upon  the  future  condition  of  the  sun, 
just  as  the  moon  throws  light  upon  the  future  condition  of  our  own 
earth.    For  this  reason  it  may  be  interesting  for  the  reader  to  compare 


Fig.  4. 


with  the  figures  representing  the  belt  of  sun-spots  seen  last  summer  a 
picture  of  Jupiter  and  his  belts,  shown  in  Fig.  4.  It  is,  of  course  a 
long  step  from  the  string  of  separate  spots  in  one  case  to  the  unbroken 
bands  in  the  other,  and  yet  it  is  easily  seen  that  some  resemblance 


A  BELT   OF  SUN-SPOTS,  185 

exists,  which  becomes  all  the  more  striking  if  we  believe  that  Jupiter 
was  once  a  true  sun,  which  has  parted  with  most  of  its  light  and  heat, 
and  is  approaching  the  condition  of  a  crusted  globe.  It  would  only 
be  necessary  to  increase  the  number  of  sun-spots  in  order  to  make  a 
continuous  belt  around  the  sun,  and,  when  one  such  belt  was  formed, 
it  is  likely  that  there  would  be  another  to  match  it  on  the  other  side 
of  the  equator,  for,  as  is  well  known,  the  regions  in  which  the  greatest 
number  of  sun-spots  appear  lie  on  each  side  of  the  solar  equator,  and 
any  general  cause  which  increased  the  absolute  number  of  sun-spots 
would  proportionally  increase  the  number  seen  in  the  two  regions  of 
their  greatest  frequency. 

There  are  other  points  of  resemblance  between  the  sun  and  Jupiter 
which  add  strength  to  the  suggestion  that  the  sun  may  now  be  just 
entering  upon  a  stage  which  is  the  precursor  of  the  gradual  loss  of  its 
light  and  heat,  and  of  its  approach  to  the  present  condition  of  Jupiter. 
Careful  observation  has  shown  that  different  portions  of  the  sun  rotate 
in  different  times,  the  equatorial  region  moving  faster  than  any  other 
part,  and  curiously  enough  the  same  peculiarity  is  seen  in  Jupiter. 
This  fact  came  out  very  clearly  through  the  study  of  the  great  red 
spot  which  made  its  appearance  in  the  southern  hemisphere  of  the 
planet  in  the  summer  of  1878,  and  which  has  only  just  now  faded  out 
of  sight.  It  was  found  that  the  red  spot  lagged  behind  the  equatorial 
spots,  so  that  the  latter  made  a  complete  circuit  of  the  planet,  with 
respect  to  the  red  spot,  in  about  forty-four  and  a  half  days. 

It  must  not  be  overlooked,  however,  that  belts  of  sun-spots,  no 
matter  how  numerous  the  spots  composing  them  might  be,  would  bear 
only  a  superficial  resemblance  to  the  belts  of  Jupiter,  for  the  latter 
have  a  cloud-like  appearance,  while  sun-spots  are  clearly  huge  chasms 
in  the  photosphere.  In  fact,  a  continuous  band  of  sun-spots,  as  such, 
could  not  exist.  But  in  view  of  the  close  resemblance  between  the 
situation  of  Jupiter's  belts  with  respect  to  his  equator,  and  that  of  the 
zones  of  sun-spots  with  respect  to  the  sun's  equator,  it  is  easy  to  con- 
ceive that  similar  causes  may  be  concerned  in  the  production  of  both 
phenomena,  the  effects  varying  with  the  difference  in  condition  of  the 
two  bodies.  One  of  these  causes,  which  would  probably  be  operative 
in  both  cases,  is  the  rotation  of  the  body  acting  upon  its  fluid  envelope. 
Even  on  the  earth  we  have  a  zone  of  winds  and  violent  revolving 
storms  produced  in  the  atmosphere  on  each  side  of  the  equator.  On 
Jupiter,  in  corresponding  latitudes,  we  see  the  great  belts  and  spots, 
whose  broken  and  ever-changing  aspect  indicates  the  action  of  tem- 
pestuous forces  in  the  deep  and  dense  atmosphere  of  that  planet  of  a 
magnitude  incomparably  greater  than  anything  of  the  kind  upon  the 
earth.  On  the  sun,  still  in  corresponding  latitudes,  we  have  the  spot- 
zones  wherein  rage  solar  tornadoes  and  hurricanes,  as  far  exceeding 
the  storms  upon  Jupiter  as  the  latter  exceed  those  upon  the  earth. 
We  see,  then,  that  in  three  members  of  the  solar  system — the  Earth, 


i86  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Jupiter,  and  the  Sun — representing  stages  of  development  separated 
by  vast  intervals  of  time,  certain  regions  north  and  south  of  their 
equators  are  the  scene  of  violent  disturbances  in  their  fluid  shells  or 
envelopes.  But  it  will  not  do  to  liken  these  phenomena  upon  the 
three  different  globes  too  closely  to  one  another,  for  they  unquestiona- 
bly differ  not  merely  in  magnitude  but  in  kind  and  in  mode  of  opera- 
tion, and  this  is  specially  true  as  to  the  earth  and  the  sun.  We  may 
speak  of  a  sun-spot  as  a  solar  cyclone,  but  we  must  not  forget  that  it  is 
very  different  from  our  West  Indian  cyclones  or  East  Indian  typhoons. 
The  point  is  that  in  each  case — that  of  a  solidified  globe  like  the  earth, 
surrounded  by  a  comparatively  rare  atmosphere  ;  that  of  a  partially 
cooled  globe,  like  Jupiter,  enveloped  in  a  dense  atmosphere  of  great 
depth  ;  and  that  of  a  completely  gaseous  globe  like  the  sun,  possessing 
a  sort  of  shell  of  partly  condensed  gases — certain  regions  near  the 
equator  are  those  in  which  the  greatest  disturbance  is  visible,  and  in 
every  case,  probably,  the  force  of  rotation  is  a  powerful  factor  in  the 
production  of  these  zones  of  commotion.  This  shows  a  sort  of  sur- 
vival of  the  action  of  certain  causes  under  changed  conditions,  as  a 
globe  proceeds  in  the  process  of  cooling  and  condensation  from  the 
condition  of  a  sun  to  that  of  an  unsolidified  planet,  and  so  on  to  the 
condition  of  a  crusted  or  solid  earth.  So,  then,  we  may  with  some 
show  of  reason  suggest  that  the  half -belted  appearance  of  the  sun  last 
summer  was  in  a  certain  sense  prophetic  of  its  future  condition,  and 
that  in  time  its  spot-zones  will  be  succeeded  by  continuous  belts  re- 
sembling those  of  Jupiter.  But  no  human  eye  will  ever  behold  the 
sun  thus  robbed  of  his  majesty,  with  his  glorious  light  extinguished 
by  bands  of  gloomy  vapors  ;  for,  long  before  he  could  reach  such  a 
condition,  life  would  cease  in  the  solar  system,  from  want  of  his  vivi- 
fying radiations. 

The  picture  of  Jupiter  here  given  possesses  some  interest  in  itself, 
as  it  is  a  representation  of  the  planet  as  it  appeared  in  September, 
1879,  when  the  celebrated  red  spot  was  a  very  striking  object.  The 
spot  is  seen  at  the  left  hand  edge  of  the  disk,  just  above  the  great 
southern  belt  which  is  narrowed,  or  indented,  in  a  very  singular  way, 
opposite  the  spot.  The  red  spot  is  no  longer  visible,  and  as  it  was, 
perhaps,  the  most  remarkable  marking,  except  the  belts  themselves, 
ever  seen  upon  Jupiter,  pictures  of  it  will  possess  great  interest  in 
the  future. 


THE  MORALITY  OF  HAPPINESS,  187 

THE  MOKALITY  OF  HAPPIKESS. 

By  THOMAS   FOSTEE. 
I.    INTKODUCTOEY. 

IT  is  known  to  all  wbo  watch  the  signs  of  the  times — ol^vious,  in- 
deed, to  them,  and  known  to  many  who  are  less  observant — that 
those  moral  restraints  which  claim  to  be  of  sacred  origin  are  no  longer 
accepted  by  a  large  and  increasing  number  of  persons.  I  have  no  wish 
to  inquire  here  whether  those  restraints  should  be  regarded  as  of  divine 
origin  or  not.  I  note  only  the  fact  that  by  many  they  are  not  so  re- 
garded. I  am  not  concerned  to  ask  whether  it  is  well  or  ill  that  their 
authority  should  be  rejected,  and  their  controlling  influence  be  dimin- 
ishing or  disappearing  among  many  ;  it  suffices,  so  far  as  my  present 
purpose  is  concerned,  that  the  fact  is  so.  The  question  then  presents 
itself,  Does  any  rule  of  conduct  promise  to  have  power  now  or  soon 
among  those  who  have  rejected  the  regulative  system  formerly  preva- 
lent ?  We  need  not  consider  whether  such  a  rule  of  conduct,  neces- 
sarily secular  in  origin,  is  in  itself  better  or  worse  than  a  rule  based  on 
commandments  regarded  as  divine.  All  we  have  at  present  to  ask  is 
whether  such  a  regulative  system  is  likely  to  replace  the  older  one 
with  those  over  whom  that  older  law  no  longer  has  influence. 

Here  at  the  outset  we  find  that  those  who  hold  extreme  views  on 
either  side  of  the  questions  I  have  left  untouched  agree  in  one  view 
which  is,  I  think,  erroneous.  On  the  one  hand,  those  who  maintain 
the  divine  character  of  the  current  creed  insist,  not  only  that  it  is  suffi- 
cient for  all,  but  that,  in  the  nature  of  things,  no  other  guide  is  possi- 
ble. On  the  other  hand,  those  who  reject  the  authority  of  that  creed 
most  energetically,  assert  as  positively  that  no  new  regulative  system, 
no  new  controlling  agency,  is  necessary.  As  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has 
well  put  it,  "  both  contemplate  a  vacuum,  which  one  wishes  and  the 
other  fears."  But  those  who  take  wiser  and  more  moderate  views, 
who,  in  the  first  place,  recognize  facts  as  they  are,  and,  in  the  next, 
are  ready  to  subordinate  their  own  ideas  of  what  is  necessary  or  best 
for  the  ideal  man  to  the  necessities  of  man  as  he  really  is,  perceive  that 
for  the  many  who  no  longer  value  a  regulative  system  which,  so  far  as 
they  are  concerned,  is  decaying,  if  not  dead,  another  regulative  system 
is  essential.  Again,  to  use  the  words  of  the  great  philosopher  whose 
teachings  are  to  be  our  chief  guide  in  this  series  of  papers,  "  Few 
things  can  happen  more  disastrous  than  the  decay  and  death  of  a 
regulative  system  no  longer  fit "  (for  those  we  are  considering),  "  be- 
fore another  and  fitter  regulative  system  has  grown  up  to  replace  it." 

My  purpose  in  these  papers  is  to  show  how  rules  of  conduct  may 
be  established  on  a  scientific  basis  for  those  who  regard  the  so-called 


i88  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

religious  basis  as  unsound.*  I  shall  follow  chiefly  the  teachings  of  one 
who  has  inculcated  in  their  best  and  purest  form  the  scientific  doc- 
trines of  morality,  and  may  be  regarded  as  head,  if  not  founder,  of 
that  school  of  philosophy  which,  on  purely  scientific  grounds,  sets  hap- 
piness as  the  test  of  duty — the  measure  of  moral  obligation.  To  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer  we  owe,  I  take  it,  the  fullest  and  clearest  answer  to 
the  melancholy  question,  "  Is  Life  Worth  Living  ?  "  whether  asked 
whiningly,  as  in  the  feeble  lamentations  of  such  folk  as  Mr.  Mallock, 
or  gloomily  and  sternly,  as  in  the  Promethean  groans  of  Carlyle.  The 
doctrine  that  happiness  is  to  be  sought  for  one's  self  (but  as  a  duty  to 
others  as  well  as  to  self),  that  the  happiness  of  others  is  to  be  sought 
as  a  duty  (to  one's  "self  as  well  as  to  them) — happiness  as  a  means,  hap- 
piness as  the  chief  end — such  has  been  the  outcome  of  the  much- 
maligned  philosophy  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  such  has  been  the  lesson 
resulting  from  his  pursuance  of  what  he  himself  describes  as  his  "  ulti- 
mate purpose,  lying  behind  all  proximate  purposes,"  that  of  "finding  for 
the  principles  of  right  and  wrong,  in  conduct  at  large,  a  scientific  basis." 

If  I  can  help  to  bring  this  noble  and  beautiful  doctrine — for  noble 
and  beautiful  even  those  must  admit  it  to  be  who  deny  its  truth — be- 
fore the  many  who  regard  Herbert  Spencer's  teachings  with  fear  and 
trembling,  not  knowing  what  they  are,  I  shall  be  content.  But  I 
would  advise  all,  who  have  time,  to  read  the  words  of  the  master  him- 
self. Apart  from  the  great  doctrines  which  they  convey,  they  are  de- 
lightful reading,  clear  and  simple  in  language,  graceful  and  dignified 
in  tone,  almost  as  worthy  to  be  studied  as  examples  of  force  and  clear- 
ness in  exposition  as  for  that  which  nevertheless  constitutes  their  real 
value — the  pure  and  beautiful  moral  doctrines  which  they  offer  to  those 
over  whom  current  creeds  have  lost  their  influence. 

Let  me  hope  that  none  will  be  deterred  from  following  this  study, 
by  the  inviting  aspect  of  the  moral  rules  advanced  by  the  great  mod- 
ern teacher — even  as  in  past  times  men  were  anxious,  or  even  angry, 
when  another  teacher  showed  more  consideration  for  human  weak- 
nesses than  had  seemed  right  to  the  men  of  older  times.  I  will  not 
ask  here  whether  doctrines  of  repellent  aspect  are  likely  to  be  more 
desirable  than  those  which  are  more  benignantly  advanced.  It  suffices 
that  with  many  the  former  now  exert  no  influence,  w^hether  they  should 
do  so  or  not.  So  that,  as  far  as  these  (for  whom  I  am  chiefly  writing) 
are  concerned,  all  must  admit  the  truth  of  what  Mr.  Spencer  says  re- 
specting the  benefits  to  be  derived  from  presenting  moral  rule  under 
that  attractive  aspect  which  it  has  when  undisturbed  by  superstition 
and  asceticism.  To  close  these  introductory  remarks  by  a  quotation 
from  the  charming  pages  of  his  "  Data  of  Ethics  ": 

*  I  say  "  so-called,"  referring  rather  to  the  loord  "  religious  "  than  to  any  question  con- 
cerning the  divine  origin  of  current  creeds.  Strictly  speaking,  the  word  religious  may  be 
as  correctly  applied  to  moral  rules  based  on  scientific  considerations  as  to  those  formu- 
lated in  company  with  any  of  the  diverse  creeds  prevailing  among  men. 


THE  MORALITY   OF  HAPPINESS.  189 

"  If  a  father,  sternly  enforcing  numerous  commands,  some  needful 
and  some  needless,  adds  to  his  severe  control  a  behavior  wholly  un- 
sympathetic— if  his  children  have  to  take  their  pleasures  by  stealth, 
or,  when  timidly  looking  up  from  their  play,  ever  meet  a  cold  glance, 
or  more  frequently  a  frown,  his  government  will  inevitably  be  disliked, 
if  not  hated  ;  and  the  aim  will  be  to  evade  it  as  much  as  possible. 
Contrariwise,  a  father  who,  equally  firm  in  maintaining  restraints 
needful  for  the  well-being  of  his  children,  or  the  well-being  of  other 
persons,  not  only  avoids  needless  restraints,  but,  giving  his  sanction  to 
all  legitimate  gratifications,  and  providing  the  means  for  them,  looks 
on  at  their  gambols  with  an  approving  smile,  can  scarcely  fail  to  gain 
an  influence  which,  no  less  efficient  for  the  time  being,  will  also  be  per- 
manently efficient.  The  controls  of  such  two  fathers  symbolize  the 
controls  of  morality  as  it  is  and  morality  as  it  should  be." 

II.     CONDUCT   AND    DUTY.* 

Morality  relates  to  those  parts  of  our  conduct  of  which  it  can  be 
said  that  they  are  right  or  wrong.  Under  the  general  subject  conduct, 
then,  morality  is  included  as  a  part.  On  regarding  the  word  "  duty  " 
as  implying  all  that  we  ought  to  do  and  all  that  we  ought  to  avoid, 
we  may  say  that  duty  is  a  part  of  conduct.  All  actions  which  are  not 
purposeless  may  be  regarded  as  included  under  the  word  "  conduct," 
as  well  as  some  which,  though  purposeless  at  the  time,  result  from 
actions  originally  done  with  purpose  until  a  fixed  habit  had  been  ac- 
quired. But  only  those  actions  which  we  consider  good  or  bad  are 
referred  to  when  we  speak  of  duty  ;  and  the  principles  of  what  we  call 
morality  relate  only  to  these. 

Here,  however,  we  have  already  recognized  a  connection  between 
duty  and  conduct  generally,  which  should  show  all  who  are  familiar 
with  scientific  methods  that  morality  can  not  properly  be  discussed 
in  its  scientific  aspect  without  discussing  conduct  at  large.  Every 
student  of  science  knows  that,  rightly  to  consider  a  part,  he  must 
consider  the  whole  to  which  it  belongs.  In  every  department  of  sci- 
ence this  general  law  holds,  though  it  is  not  always  recognized.  No 
scientific  subject  has  ever  been  properly  dealt  with  until  it  has  been 

*  I  remind  the  reader  that  in  these  papers,  as  stated  in  the  introductory  one,  I  am 
following  the  lines  along  which  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has  already  traced  the  general  doc- 
trine of  the  morality  of  happiness.  Where  his  reasoning  seems  open  to  objection  or  too 
recondite  to  be  quite  readily  followed,  I  shall  indicate  such  objections,  and  my  own  opin- 
ion respecting  them,  or  endeavor  to  remove  such  difficulties ;  but  the  moral  doctrine  I 
am  here  dealing  with  is  that  of  which  he  has  been  the  chief  teacher,  if  he  may  not  be  re- 
garded as  its  only  founder.  Even  if  the  scientific  study  of  ethics,  on  principles  analogous 
to  those  which  have  made  astronomy,  geology,  and  more  recently  biology,  true  sciences, 
has  been  taken  up  by  others  and  pursued  till  new  truths  have  been  recognized  and  per- 
haps some  errors  pointed  out  in  his  treatment  of  it,  it  remains  still  true  that  he  was  the 
first  to  indicate  the  true  scientific  method,  and  to  show  where  hitherto  it  had  been  de- 
parted from  even  by  the  founders  of  the  school  of  philosophy  to  which  he  belongs-. 


190  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

considered  in  its  relations  to  its  surroundings  as  well  as  separately. 
Even  in  matters  not  usually  considered  from  a  scientific  stand-point 
the  same  law  holds.  To  go  no  further  than  our  own  pages,  the  writer 
who  is  dealing  with  the  question  "  How  to  get  strong  ? "  would  not 
consider  how  the  arms  are  to  be  strengthened  without  duly  considering 
that  the  arms  are  part  of  the  body,  their  exercise  related  to  the  exer- 
cise of  other  portions,  their  development  associated  with  the  develop- 
ment of  other  limbs,  with  the  action  of  other  parts  of  the  body,  with 
the  regimen  proper  for  the  whole  frame. 

It  may  not  by  many  be  regarded  as  a  fault  of  most  systems  of 
morality  that  they  overlook  the  necessary  connection  between  con- 
duct in  general  and  conduct  as  guided  by  moral  considerations.  For 
many  are  content  to  regard  moral  laws  as  existing  apart  from  any  of 
the  results  of  experience — whether  derived  from  individual  conduct, 
the  conduct  of  men  generally,  or  conduct  as  seen  among  creatures  of 
all  orders.  With  many,  morality  is  looked  upon  as  a  whole — the  whole 
duty  of  man — not  as  a  part  of  conduct.  They  even  consider  that  moral 
obligations  must  be  weakened  when  their  dependence  on  conduct  in 
general  is  insisted  upon.  Moral  rules,  with  them,  are  right  in  them- 
selves and  of  necessity — and  whether  inculcated  by  extra-human  au- 
thority, or  enjoined  by  law,  or  perceived  intuitively,  are  open  neither, 
to  inquiry  nor  objection.  Clearly  if  this  were  so,  morality  would  not 
be  a  fitting  subject  for  the  scientific  method.  Its  rules  would  be  deter- 
minable apart  from  the  discussion  of  evidence  based  on  experience, 
whether  observational  or  experimental.  I  do  not  here  inquire  whether 
this  view  is  right  or  wrong.  Later  on  it  will  fall  into  my  plan  to  do 
so.  At  present  I  only  note  that  we  are  considering  our  subject  from 
the  stand-point  of  those  who  desire  to  view  morality  in  its  scientific 
aspect.  For  them  it  is  essential  that,  as  conduct  in  general  includes 
conduct  depending  on  duty,  the  discussion  of  questions  of  duty  can 
not  be  complete  or  satisfactory  unless  it  is  conducted  with  due  refer- 
ence to  the  whole -of  which  this  subject  forms  a  part. 

If  any  doubt  could  exist  in  the  mind  of  the  student  on  this  point, 
it  should  be  removed  when  he  notes  that  it  is  impossible  to  draw  any 
sharply  defined  line  between  duty  and  the  rest  of  conduct  not  depend- 
ing on  considerations  of  duty.  Not  only  are  those  actions  which  un- 
der particular  circumstances  seem  absolutely  indifferent  found  under 
other  circumstances  to  be  right  or  wrong  and  not  indifferent,  not  only 
do  different  persons  form  different  ideas  as  to  what  part  of  conduct  is 
indifferent  or  otherwise,  but  one  and  the  same  person  in  different  parts 
of  his  life  finds  that  he  draws  different  distinctions  between  conduct 
in  general  and  conduct  to  be  guided  by  moral  considerations.  In  the 
evolution  of  conduct  in  a  nation,  in  a  town,  in  a  family,  or  in  the  indi- 
vidual man,  the  line  separating  conduct  regarded  as  indifferent  from 
conduct  regarded  as  right  or  wi'ong  is  ever  varying  in  position — some- 
times tending  to  include  among  actions  indifferent  those  which  had 


GENIUS  AND   HEREDITY, 


19] 


been  judged  bad  or  good,  oftener  tending  to  show  right  or  wrong  in 
conduct  which  had  been  judged  indifferent. 

If  moral  laws,  then,  are  to  be  established  on  a  scientific  basis,  it  is 
essential  that  conduct  at  large  should  be  carefully  considered  ;  and  not 
conduct  only  as  it  is  seen  in  man,  but  as  it  is  seen  in  animals  of  every 
grade.  Thus  and  thus  only  can  the  evolution  of  conduct  be  rightly 
studied  ;  by  the  study  of  the  evolution  of  conduct  only  can  the  scien- 
tific distinction  between  right  and  wrong  be  recognized  ;  from  and  out 
of  this  distinction  only  can  moral  laws  be  established  for  those  with 
whom  the  authoritative  enunciation  of  such  laws  has  no  longer  the 
weight  it  once  had,  those  who  find  no  other  inherent  force  in  moral 
statutes  than  they  derive  as  resulting  from  experience,  and  who  reject 
as  unreasonable  all  belief  in  the  intuitive  recognition  of  laws  of  morality. 

We  proceed,  then,  to  consider  the  evolution  of  conduct  in  the  various 
types  of  animal  life,  from  the  lowest  upward  to  man. — Knowledge. 


GEOTUS  AIN-D  HEKEDITY. 

Br  M.  E.  CARO, 

OF   THE   INSTITUTE   OF   FEANCE. 

IT  has  been  shown  by  the  researches  of  Galton,  Ribot,  and  others, 
that  a  law  of  heredity  exists,  and  is  applicable  to  our  psychological 
qualities.  Without  attempting  to  deny  the  operation  of  this  law,  it  is 
our  intention  here,  believing  that  its  scope  has  been  considerably  mag- 
nified, to  endeavor  to  determine  its  limits  in  particular  directions. 
With  this  object,  we  shall  confine  our  inquiry  to  two  points  :  Is  it 
according  to  a  good  philosophical  method  to  explain  by  heredity  alone 
all  the  most  complex,  most  delicate,  and  most  considerable  phenomena 
of  human  life,  when  we  can,  with  at  least  as  much  probability,  bring 
in  other  causes  which,  though  they  have  been  much  neglected,  are  very 
perceptible  and  even  more  directly  observable  ?  And  is  it  true,  as  is 
assumed,  that  all  the  exceptions  to  the  law  of  heredity,  even  in  the 
intellectual  and  moral  order,  are  only  apparent  ?  We  shall  speak  first 
of  those  curious  facts  concerning  intellectual  heredity,  some  of  which, 
and  those  the  most  extraordinary  ones,  can  not  be  accounted  for  by 
any  assignable  cause.  Other  facts  in  the  category  can  equally  well, 
perhaps  better  than  by  heredity,  be  explained  by  reference  to  the  me- 
dium, to  education,  to  habit,  to  the  moral  and  intellectual  atmosphere 
in  which  the  child  lives,  to  the  force  of  the  influences  to  which  it  is  sub- 
ject, and  to  the  examples  that  are  set  before  it.  We  acknowledge  that 
the  medium  can  not  afford  an  explanation  of  genius  and  can  not  create 
superior  faculties  ;  but  it  furnishes  the  opportunity  for  their  manifes- 
tation, and  reveals  them  where  they  exist.  How  many  noble  and  high 
minds  have  been  extinguished  by  unfavorable  cricumstances  and  hos- 


192  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

tile  mediums  !  What  an  important  part,  on  the  other  hand,  may  have 
been  played  in  the  expansion  of  superior  minds  in  certain  favored 
families,  by  the  influence  of  examples  of  the  most  delicate  methods  of 
investigation  in  questions  of  the  natural  sciences,  by  habituation  to 
rigorous  methods  in  the  exact  sciences  !  Who  could  in  such  cases  sep- 
arate what,  in  the  working  of  such  different  influences,  is  attributable 
to  education  and  what  to  heredity  ? 

We  must  first  leave  out  of  the  consideration  genius,  properly  so 
called,  which  can  not  be  included  in  any  determinate  category.  At 
this  point  we  meet  the  error  which  has  vitiated  Mr.  Galton's  whole 
work,  and  which  is  curiously  illustrated  in  the  title  itself  of  his  book, 
"  Hereditary  Genius."  Genius  is  of  all  things  not  a  phenomenon  of 
heredity.  It  is  precisely  in  what  is  extraordinary  and  exceptional  in  it 
— that  is,  in  its  essential  quality — that  genius  escapes  all  our  formulas. 
It  is  pre-eminently  the  abnormal  phenomenon,  the  one  that  we  can  not 
reduce  to  its  elements,  or  put  into  a  classification,  an  irreducible  form- 
ula, the  resolution  of  which  recognizes  no  law  within  the  compass  of 
human  knowledge.  At  this  point,  certainly,  Mr.  Galton's  lists  betray 
their  poverty  ;  and  he  tries  in  vain  to  connect  the  lines  of  artists  and 
scientific  men  with  the  illustrious  genius  who  all  at  once  bursts  out 
from  among  them.  Even  in  the  musical  family  of  the  Bachs,  which 
was  distinguished  for  eight  generations  and  through  two  centuries,  we 
may  count  up  all  the  examples  of  the  special  musical  talent  which 
appeared  again  and  again  in  each  generation  ;  we  may  review  all  those 
gifted  persons,  the  organists,  the  choir-singers,  the  choir-leaders,  the 
city  musicians,  whether  they  be  ancestors,  sons,  or  grandsons  ;  but  we 
can  find  only  one  Sebastian  Bach.  Whence  came  that  particular 
impulsion,  that  soaring  force,  that  carried  him  to  the  very  summit  of 
inspiration  ?  Why  is  it  that  he  alone  of  the  whole  family  could  com- 
pose that  marvelous  series  of  preludes,  fugues,  and  oratorios  which 
stand  as  isolated  monuments  in  the  history  of  the  great  art  ?  Why 
were  none  of  the  others  like  him  ?  Mr.  Galton's  tables  do  not  give  us 
the  key  to  this  mystery  ;  they  simply  reveal  a  transmission  of  the 
musical  faculty,  a  community  of  aptitudes  among  the  members  of  this 
family.  But  that  which  was  not  common  to  him  with  the  others,  that 
which  made  Sebastian  Bach,  is  the  thing  we  want  explained,  and  it 
is  precisely  this  that  heredity  does  not  explain.  The  aptitudes  were 
transmitted  like  a  patrimony,  but  the  grand  phenomenon  of  genius 
was  the  property  of  only  one,  and  was  produced  but  once.  It  is,  then, 
outside  of  heredity,  for  it  is  unique.  The  same  thoughts  might  be 
applied  to  Beethoven,  and  with  still  more  force,  for  the  only  musical 
examples  in  his  line  were  those  of  his  father  and  grandfather,  chapel- 
masters.  Similar  instances  are  abundant.  We  might  cite,  among  the 
painters,  Raphael,  whose  father,  and  Titian,  whose  sons  and  brother, 
were  respectable  but  not  illustrious  artists.  Among  great  men  of  sci- 
ence what  real  relation  can  exist,  in  the  order  of  skill  and  genius,  be- 


GENIUS  AND  HEREDITY.  193 

tween  Aristotle  and  his  father  Nicomachus,  court-physician,  o£  whom 
we  hardly  know  anything  ;  or  between  Galileo  and  his  father  Yicenzo, 
who  wrote  on  the  theory  of  music  ;  or  between  Leibnitz  and  his  father, 
law-professor  at  Leipsic  ?  In  fact,  only  a  single  example  can  be  op- 
posed to  our  criticism,  that  of  the  family  of  the  Bernouillis,  which  was 
celebrated  for  the  number  of  mathematicians  and  physicists  whom  it 
produced  through  several  generations.  Yet  here  we  have  to  take  notice 
of  the  fact  that  only  one  of  the  family,  John,  was  rated  by  his  con- 
temporaries alongside  of  !N'ewton  and  Leibnitz  on  account  of  his  brill- 
iant mathematical  discoveries.  The  others  were  very  distinguished 
men,  but  that  is  a  different  thing.     The  genius  stands  apart. 

Still,  we  can  say  that  in  these  three  orders  of  the  creative  art  there 
is  something  hereditary — not  genius,  indeed,  but  a  kind  of  necessary 
apprenticeship,  or  perhaps  a  physiological  and  mental  aptitude  tend- 
ing to  determine  to  certain  vocations.  In  this  way  we  can  understand 
why  we  meet  so  many  musicians,  or  painters,  or  men  of  science,  in  the 
same  family.  In  the  case  of  the  painters^  for  example,  there  is  some- 
thing that  inspiration  can  not  do  without,  there  are  a  number  of  pri> 
mary  gifts  and  technical  properties  in  design  or  color  which  are  easily 
transmitted  by  example  and  imitation  in  the  father's  studio,  and  are- 
distributed  as  a  common  patrimony  among  the  children.  Only  one  of 
the  family  will  rise  to  the  first  rank  ;  but  this  initiation  into  hia  art  is, 
indispensable  to  him  as  a  matter  of  economy  of  time  and  labor,  and: 
also  to  give  greater  freedom  to  his  inspiration.  Macaulay  has  well  said 
that  Homer  could  never  have  made  himself  known  to  us  in  the  lan- 
guage of  a  savage  tribe,  and  that  Phidias  could  never  have  carved  his^ 
Minerva  out  of  a  log  with  a  fish-bone.  It  is  necessary  to  take  account 
of  these  favorable  circumstances,  which  in  some  families  help  to  over^ 
come  the  first  difficulties  of  the  art,  and  furnish  the  future  genius  with 
convenient  instrumentalities  with  which  he  can  make  himself  familiar- 
and  skillful  from  his  earliest  childhood.  So  the  taste  for  music — that 
is,  an  aptitude  for  measuring  time  and  distinguishing  notes — ^is  innate^ 
with  many  children,  and  is  often  derived  from  the  father,  mother,  or 
other  ancestors.  If  both  parents  are  musicians,  all  the  children  will 
generally  have  a  correct  ear  ;  if  only  one  of  them  is  a  musician,  some- 
of  the  children  may  have  the  taste,  while  others  may  not.  Likewise,, 
a  facility  in  quickly  grasping  and  handling  numerical  or  algebraic 
values  is  indispensable  to  the  operations  of  the  mathematician,  and 
may  be  remarked  as  a  peculiar  gift  in  certain  families,  among  whom 
may  some  time  arise  one  illustrious  in  the  science.  These  conditions 
are  not  essentials  of  genius,  but  they  are  useful  to  it  in  helping  it  to 
disengage  and  reveal  itself.  They  are,  as  it  were,  the  alphabet  of  his 
art  to  the  composer,  mathematician,  or  painter  ;  and  it  is  not  without 
advantage  that  the  art  has,  by  means  of  the  example  and  traditions  of 
the  family,  become  a  kind  of  instinct  for  the  future  great  man.  This 
explains  how  it  is  that  great  painters,  mathematicians,  or  musicians, 
VOL.  xxiy. — 13 


194  ^^^  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

are  so  frequently  produced  in  families  in  which  the  practice  of  those 
arts  and  sciences  is  familiar.  The  same  aptitude  may  be  shared  by 
several  members  of  the  family,  who  will  remain  in  the  secondary  rank, 
while  a  single  one  rises  above  them  all.  It  is  the  aptitude,  not  genius, 
that  is  hereditary,  while  Mr.  Galton  has  constantly  confounded  the 
two.  In  the  other  orders  of  invention,  as  in  poetry  and  eloquence, 
there  is  nothing  inconsistent  with  a  solitary  instance  of  genius  being 
produced  in  a  family  that  does  not  seem  to  have  been  prepared  for  it. 
The  preparatory  training,  the  special  aptitude,  are  less  necessary  in 
them.  It  is  enough  if  the  national  language  has  reached  a  degree  of 
clearness  and  vigor  in  which  it  can  give  perfect  expression.  Gener- 
ally, the  great  writer  blossoms  out  alone.  He  seems  to  appear,  an 
unexpected  phenomenon,  in  a  succession  of  modest  generations,  the 
uniform  course  of  which  he  breaks  at  a  blow.  Sometimes  similar 
aptitudes  may  be  found  among  other  members  of  the  family,  but  the 
fact  is  without  significance  or  consequences.  Bossuet,  Pascal,  Moli^re, 
Voltaire,  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau,  Byron,  and  Goethe,  however  we  may 
try  to  account  for  them,  can  not  be  explained  by  heredity.  They  are 
the  first  and  the  last  in  the  families  that  produced  them,  without  any 
visible  transmission  of  superior  gifts.  Going  back  in  history,  but  still 
keeping  to  modern  times,  are  not  Dante,  Milton,  and  Shakespeare  also 
solitary  great  ones,  who  can  not  be  satisfactorily  accounted  for,  either 
by  organic  evolution,  the  intellectual  medium,  or  generation  ?  All  those 
external  conditions  of  genius  that  have  been  so  often  analyzed  and  de- 
scribed may  have  prepared  for  the  event  and  primed  for  the  occasion. 
The  last  turn  was  still  wanting,  the  supreme  gift  that  should  be  de- 
cisive over  all  the  rest,  and  bring  it  about  that  among  so  many  heads 
in  the  same  family  or  the  same  nation,  equally  predestined  by  the 
same  concurrence  of  circumstances,  one  only  should  have  been  chosen, 
and  that  the  light  should  have  shone  upon  that  elect  head  only  ;  and 
we  may  keep  on  asking,  Why  on  that  head,  and  not  on  another  ?  No, 
to  this  day  the  great  gift  of  inspiration  in  science,  poetry,  and  art  has 
not  revealed  its  secret.  Those  sovereign  minds,  precisely  by  what 
they  possess  that  is  incommunicable,  rise  high  and  alone  above  the 
flood  of  generations  which  precede  and  follow  them,  and  by  reason  of 
this  superior  side  of  their  nature  they  do  not  belong  to  nature.  Those 
exalted  originals  in  mind  who  tower  above  mankind  have  no  fathers 
and  leave  no  sons  in  the  blood.  Notwithstanding  Mr.  Galton,  the 
least  hereditary  thing  in  the  world  is  genius. 

M.  de  Candolle  *  appears  to  us  to  have  exactly  analyzed  the  origin 
and  conditions  of  the  kind  of  mental  heredity  in  a  slighter  degree  that 
we  might  represent  by  the  words  talent,  vocation,  and  aptitude.  While 
he  does  not  deny  the  influence  of  heredity  in  the  development  of  vo- 
cations, especially  of  scientific  vocations,  which  are  the  special  object 
of  his  study,  he  does  not  declare  it  exclusive  and  decisive.  After  ma- 
*  "Histoire  des  Sciences  et  des  Sayants  depuis  Deux  Si^cles." 


GENIUS  AND  HEREDITY.  195 

ture  examination,  he  does  not  believe  that  there  is  any  special  heredity 
for  a  particular  science,  but  only  admits  a  transmission  of  the  element- 
ary faculties  in  a  condition  of  harmony  and  vigor  agreeable  to  a  sound 
mind.  This  precious  heritage  may  be  applied  in  several  very  differ- 
ent ways.  A  person  who  has  received  from  his  parents  a  certain  de- 
gree and  a  favorable  combination  of  the  faculties  of  attention,  memory, 
judgment,  and  will,  is  not  destined  to  be  condemned  by  a  kind  of  fatal 
heritage  to  any  special  kind  of  work.  Generally,  a  reflexive  choice,  or 
the  rule  of  circumstances,  rather  than  a  special  heredity,  determines 
the  use  that  is  made  of  these  faculties ;  its  particular  direction  is 
decided  by  the  medium  and  the  family  ;  and  the  success  of  the 
effort  is  determined  by  the  energetic  application  of  the  will.  A  res- 
ervation should  doubtless  be  made  in  the  case  of  a  determined  taste 
for  a  certain  career  imposing  itself  upon  a  young  man  when  he  enters 
into  life  ;  but  the  facts  that  such  tastes  and  inclinations  are  often 
opposed  to  paternal  habits,  and  that  they  may  be  very  different  as 
between  brothers,  are  proofs  that  they  are  not  hereditary ;  they  are 
often  the  products  of  an  active  imagination  called  forth  by  certain 
attractions,  which  it  has  forged  for  itself,  or  of  notions  suggested  by 
some  conversation  or  some  entertaining  lecture.  Much  room,  then, 
is  left  for  circumstances  and  liberty  in  the  employment  of  the  facul- 
ties which  one  has  received.  "  The  man  endowed  with  marked  traits 
of  perseverance,  attention,  and  judgment,  with  no  considerable  defect 
in  his  other  faculties,  will  become  a  jurist,  historian,  scholar,  chemist, 
geologist,  or  physician,  according  as  his  will  is  influenced  by  a  host  of 
circumstances.  In  each  of  these  occupations  he  will  advance  in  pro- 
portion to  his  strength,  his  zeal,  and  the  concentration  of  his  energy 
upon  a  single  specialty.  I  have  little  faith  in  the  necessity  of  innate 
and  imperious  vocations  for  particular  objects.  This  is  not  to  deny 
the  influence  of  heredity,  but  to  reduce  it  to  something  very  general, 
compatible  with  the  liberty  of  the  individual,  and  susceptible  of  being 
inclined  or  modified  according  to  ulterior  influences,  the  action  of 
which  increases  as  the  child  becomes  a  man."  Moreover,  even  when 
mental  heredity  seems  to  have  been  effectual,  it  may  be  regarded  as 
working  in  the  line  of  the  grand  categories  of  faculties,  rather  than  of 
special  faculties.  Thus,  it  is  not  uncommon  to  find  two  brothers,  or 
father  and  son,  celebrated,  one  in  the  natural  sciences,  the  other  in  his- 
torical and  social  sciences :  as,  for  instance,  the  two  Humboldts;  Oersted 
and  his  brother  the  jurist  ;  Hugo  de  Mohl,  the  botanist,  and  his  brother 
Jules  de  Mohl,  the  Orientalist ;  Madame  Necker,  daughter  of  the  ge- 
ologist De  Saussure  ;  Ampere,  scholar  and  literary  man,  son  of  a  physi- 
cist. If  there  were  a  special  heredity  guiding  to  a  particular  science, 
these  examples  would  be  inexplicable,  while  they  are  quite  natural 
under  the  supposition  of  a  transmission  of  general  faculties  applicable 
to  all  sciences  having  analogous  methods. — Translated  for  the  Popular 
Science  Monthly  from  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes. 


196  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

THE  KEMEDIES  OF  NATUEE. 

By  FELIX  L.  OSWALD,  M.  D. 
ENTERIC    DISORDERS. 

ABOUT  a  century  before  the  birth  of  the  Emperor  Augustus,  the 
most  popular  physician  in  Rome  was  the  Grecian  philosopher 
Asclepiades.  His  system  seems  to  have  resembled  that  of  our  "  move- 
ment-cure "  doctors.  Instead  of  being  stuffed  with  drugs,  his  patients 
were  invited  to  his  palcestra^  a  sort  of  out-door  gymnasium  or  hygienic 
garden,  where  they  were  doctored  with  gymnastics,  wholesome  comes- 
tibles, and,  as  some  writers  assert,  with  flattery — probably  courteous 
attention  to  the  jeremiads  of  crapulent  senators.  At  all  events,  his 
method  proved  eminently  successful,  though  we  need  not  doubt  that 
all  respectable  druggists  retailed  canards  about  his  establishment.  He 
had  devised  a  special  course  of  gymnastics  for  every  disorder  of  the 
human  organism,  and  repeatedly  declared  that  he  would  utterly  re- 
nounce the  claim  to  the  title  of  a  physician  if  he  should  ever  be  sick 
for  a  single  day.  Medicines  he  rejected  on  the  ground  that  they  ac- 
complish hy  violent  means  what  the  palcestra-method  would  effect  in  aii 
easier  way. 

Still,  in  certain  cases,  a  short,  sharp  remedy  might  be  preferable  to 
an  easy-going  one,  but  unfortunately  there  is  a  more  serious  objection 
to  the  use  of  drugs,  viz.,  the  danger  of  complicating  instead  of  curing 
the  disease.  For — 1.  The  diagnosis  may  fail  to  establish  the  true 
cause  of  the  disorder.  No  watch-maker  would  undertake  to  explain 
the  irregularities  of  a  timepiece  by  merely  listening  to  a  description  of 
the  symptoms,  and  before  he  can  trace  the  effect  to  its  cause  he  must 
minutely  inspect  the  interior  mechanism.  But  a  physician  is  not  only 
generally  obliged  to  content  himself  with  the  evidence  of  the  external 
symptoms,  but  he  has  to  deal  with  an  apparatus  so  infinitely  more 
complex  than  the  most  intricate  chronometer,  that,  even  under  normal 
circumstances,  the  process  of  its  plainest  functions  has  never  been  fully 
explained.* 

2.  We  risk  to  mistake  the  suppression  of  the  symptoms  for  the  sup- 
pression of  the  disease.  We  would  try  in  vain  to  subdue  a  conflagra- 
tion by  demolishing  the  fire-bells,  but  on  exactly  the  same  principle 
the  mediaeval  drug-mongers  attempted  to  restore  the  health  of  their 

*  "  Every  organic  process  is  a  miracle,  that  is,  in  every  essential  sense  an  unexplained 
phenomenon." — Lorenz  Oken. 

"  He  obstinately  refused  to  take  medicine.  "  Doctor,"  said  he,  "  no  physicking.  Do 
not  counteract  the  living  principle.  Let  it  alone ;  leave  it  the  liberty  of  defending  it- 
self ;  it  will  do  better  than  your  drugs.  The  watch-maker  can  not  open  it,  and  must,  in 
handling  it,  grope  his  way  blindfold  and  at  random.  For  once  that  he  assists  and  relieves, 
by  dint  of  torturing  it  with  crooked  instruments,  he  injures  it  ten  times,  and  at  last  de- 
stroys it."— (Scott's  "  Life  of  Napoleon,"  p.  368.) 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE.  197 

patients  by  attacking  the  outward  symptoms  of  the  disorder.  Habitual 
overeating  produced  a  sick-headache  :  they  applied  a  blister  to  the 
head.  Impure  blood  covered  the  neck  with  ulcers  :  they  applied  a 
salve  to  the  neck.  The  alcohol-vice  resulted  in  a  rheumatic  affection 
of  the  knee-joint  :  they  covered  the  knee-pan  with  leeches.  They  sup- 
pressed the  alarm-signals  of  the  disease,  but,  before  the  patient  could 
really  recover,  his  constitution  had  to  overcome  both  the  malady  and 
the  medicine. 

3.  We  risk  to  confound  an  appeal  for  rest  with  an  appeal  for  active 
interference,  and  thus  to  turn  a  transient  and  necessary  suspension  of 
an  organic  function  into  an  actual  disease.  Numerous  enteric  disor- 
ders, or  bowel-complaints,  are  thus  artificially  developed.  The  mar- 
velous self -regulating  principle  of  the  human  organism  now  and  then 
limits  the  activity  of  special  organic  functions,  in  order  to  defray  an 
unusual  expenditure  of  vital  energy.  The  after-dinner  lassitude  can 
thus  be  explained  :  the  process  of  digestion  engrosses  the  energies  of 
the  system^  Mental  labor  retards  digestion  ;  a  strenuous  muscular 
effort  often  suspends  it  entirely  for  hours  together.  Fevers,  wounds, 
etc.,  have  an  astringent  tendency  :  the  potential  resources  of  the  organ- 
ism are  engaged  in  a  process  of  reconstruction.  Perspiration  is  Na- 
ture's effort  to  counteract  the  influence  of  an  excessive  degree  of  heat, 
and,  when  the  effect  of  sun-heat  is  aggravated  by  calorific  food  and 
superfluous  clothing,  the  work  of  reducing  the  temperature  of  the  blood 
almost  monopolizes  the  energies  of  the  system,  while  at  the  same  time 
the  diminished  demand  for  animal  caloric  lessens  the  influence  of  a 
chief  stimulus  of  organic  activity.  Warm  weather,  therefore,  indis- 
poses to  active  exercise,  and  produces  a  (temporary)  tendency  to  cos- 
tiveness.  That  tendency  is  neither  abnormal  nor  morbid,  and  to  coun- 
teract it  by  dint  of  drastic  drugs  means  to  create,  instead  of  curing,  a 
disease.  If  a  foot-messenger  stops  at  the  wayside  to  tie  his  shoe-strings, 
the  time  thus  employed  is  not  wasted.  The  sudden  application  of  a 
horsewhip  would  force  him  to  take  as  suddenly  to  his  heels,  but  dur- 
ing his  flight  he  might  lose  his  way,  and  perhaps  his  shoes. 

With  a  few  exceptions,  which  we  shall  presently  notice,  chronic 
constipation  results  from  the  abuse  of  aperient  medicines.  A  spell  of 
dry,  warm  weather,  sedentary  work  in  an  overheated  room,  a  change 
from  summer  to  winter  diet — perhaps  a  mere  temporary  abstinence 
from  a  wonted  dish  of  aperient  food — has  diminished  the  stools  of  an 
otherwise  healthy  child.  The  simultaneous  want  of  appetite  yields  to 
a  short  fast,  but  the  stringency  of  the  bowels  continues,  and  on  the 
third  day  the  parents  administer  a  laxative.  That  for  the  next  twenty- 
four  hours  the  patient  feels  considerably  worse  than  before  does  not 
shake  their  faith  in  the  value  of  the  drug  ;  the  main  purpose  has  been 
attained — the  "  bowels  move."  Properly  speaking,  that  movement  is 
an  abnormal  convulsion,  a  reaction  against  the  obtrusion  of  a  drastic 
poison,  which  has  *'  cured  "  the  stringency  of  the  bowels  as  a  shower- 


198  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

bath  of  vitriol  would  cure  the  drowsiness  of  a  tired  man.  An  imagi- 
nary evil  has  yielded  to  a  real  evil,  and,  what  is  worse,  becomes  itself 
soon  real  enough  to  confirm  the  opinion  of  the  drug-worshipers  that 
the  patient  must  be  "  put  under  a  course  of  corrective  tonics."  For 
very  soon  the  unnatural  irritation  is  followed  by  an  abnormal  lassitude, 
a  digestive  torpor,  attended  with  symptoms  of  distress  that  plainly  dis- 
tinguish it  from  the  original  remissness  of  the  bowels.  In  the  eyes  of 
the  drug-dupes,  however,  it  is  nothing  but  a  relapse  of  the  former  com- 
plaint, and  must  be  combated  with  more  effective  remedies.  "  Treacle 
and  brimstone,  thrice  a  day,"  was  the  verdict  of  the  mediaeval  /Kscn- 
lap.  "  The  timely  use  of  our  incomparable  invigorant  will  regulate 
the  action  of  the  bowels  and  impart  a  generous  and  speedy  impulse  to 
the  organic  functions  of  the  whole  body,"  says  the  inventor  of  the  new 
patent  "  liver-regulator  " — a  new  combination  of  "  valuable  herbs  " 
with  the  usual  basis  of  alcohol.  "A  wineglassful  every  morning." 
The  herbs  prove  their  value  by  enabling  the  vender  to  accommodate 
his  customers  on  Sunday  morning,  when  common  dram-shops  are  closed, 
and  with  an  equal  disregard  of  times  and  seasons  the  alcoholic  prin- 
ciple opens  the  bowels.  The  incomparable  stimulant  admits  no  such 
excuses  as  fatigue  or  warm  weather  ;  the  charm  works  ;  the  regular 
attacks  of  a  life-endangering  poison  have  to  be  as  regularly  repelled. 
Other  symptoms,  such  as  troubled  dreams,  fretfulness,  heart-burn  and 
irregular  pulse,  seem,  indeed,  to  indicate  the  approach  of  a  new  dis- 
ease, but  that  will  be  met  by  other  drugs,  and  in  the  mean  while  the 
liver-cure  is  continued.  After  the  lapse  of  a  few  months  the  patient 
gets  possibly  a  chance  to  escape  his  doom  ;  out-door  exercise,  the  ex- 
citement of  a  pleasant  journey,  a  new  residence,  a  change  of  diet,  en- 
courage the  hope  that  the  bowels  may  be  left  to  their  own  resources, 
and  the  "  tonic  "  is  provisionally  discontinued.  An  exceptionally  strong 
constitution  may  really  be  able  to  overcome  the  after-effects  of  the 
drug-disease  (for  from  beginning  to  end  it  has  been  nothing  but  that), 
but  in  a  great  plurality  of  cases  the  event  proves  that  the  stimulant 
has  fastened  upon  the  system  :  constipation,  in  an  aggravated  form, 
returns,  and  can  now  be  relieved  only  by  the  wonted  means — "  a  fact," 
as  the  orthodox  drug-doctor  would  not  fail  to  observe,  "  which  should 
convince  idealists  that  now  and  then  Nature  can  really  not  dispense 
with  a  little  assistance."  * 

*  Two  generations  ago  the  abuse  of  purgative  drugs  was  carried  to  a  degree  which 
undoubtedly  shortened  the  average  longevity  of  many  families.  Thousands  of  parents 
made  it  a  rule  (which  still  has  its  advocates)  to  dose  their  children  at  the  end  of  every 
month  ;  and  Wieland's  practical  philosopher  not  only  prescribes  a  laxative  for  every  fit 
of  ill  humor,  but  answers  the  sentimental  tirades  of  his  wife  by  sentencing  her  to  a  prompt 
enema : 

"  Brummt  mein  Engel  wie  ein  Bar, 

*  Lise,'  sprech  ich,  *  musst  purgiren,' 
Ruf  e  dann  den  Bader  her, 

Lasse  sie  recht  durch-klystiren." 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE,  199 

That  assistance  has  made  the  fortune  of  numerous  nostrum-mon- 
gers and  helped  our  made-dishes  to  wreck  the  health  of  many  millions. 
For,  without  the  interference  of  a  positive  poison,  dietetic  abuses  have 
to  be  carried  to  a  monstrous  excess  before  they  will  result  in  chronic 
constipation.  A  slight  stringency  of  the  bowels  is  often  simply  a  tran- 
sient lassitude  of  the  system,  and  may  be  safely  left  to  the  remedial  re- 
sources of  Nature.  After  the  third  day,  however,  the  disorder  demands 
a  change  of  regimen.  A  chief  objection  to  our  system  of  cookery  is 
the  hygienic  tendency  of  the  essence-mania^  the  concentration  of  nutri- 
tive elements.  Ours  is  an  age  of  extracts.  We  have  moral  extracts 
in  the  form  of  Bible-House  pamphlets  ;  language-extracts  in  the  form 
of  compendious  grammars  ;  exercise-extracts  under  the  name  of  gym- 
nastic curriculums  ;  air-extracts  in  the  shape  of  oxygen-bladders,  and 
a  vast  deal  of  such  food-concentrations  as  Liebig's  soup,  fruit- jellies, 
condensed  milk,  flavoring  extracts,  and  branless  flour.  But,  somehow 
or  other,  the  old  plan  seems,  after  all,  the  best.  In  the  homes  of  our 
forefathers  morals  were  taught  by  example,  and  with  very  respectable 
results.  Six  years  of  grammar-drill  in  a  dead  language  do  not  further 
a  student  as  much  as  six  months  of  conversation  in  a  living  tongue — 
the  concrete  beats  the  abstract.  Boat-racing,  wood-chopping,  and 
mountain -climbing,  are  healthier,  as  well  as  more  pleasant,  than  gym- 
nastic crank-work  ;  the  diverting  incidents  of  out-door  sports  which 
the  movement-cure  doctor  tries  to  eliminate  are  the  very  things  that 
give  interest  and  life  to  exercise.  And,  for  some  reasons  (not  easy  to 
define  without  the  help  of  such  analogies),  concentrated  nourishment 
does  not  agree  with  the  nature  of  the  human  organism.  The  lungs 
find  it  easier  to  derive  their  oxygen  from  woodland  air  than  from  a 
ready-made  extract,  and  the  stomach,  on  the  whole,  prefers  to  get  its 
nourishment  in  the  form  for  which  its  organism  was  originally  adapted. 
Want  of  htdk  makes  our  food  so  indigestible.  In  fruits  and  berries — 
probably  the  staple  diet  of  our  instinct-taught  ancestors — the  percent- 
age of  nutritive  elements  is  rather  small,  but  the  residue  should  not  be 
called  worthless,  since  it  serves  to  make  the  whole  more  digestible.  A 
large,  ripe  watermelon  contains  about  three  ounces  of  saccharine  ele- 
ments, which  in  that  combination  have  a  mildly  aperient  effect,  while 
in  the  form  of  glucose-candy  they  would  produce  constipation,  heart- 
burn, and  flatulence.  The  coarsest  bran-bread  is  the  most  digestible, 
and  to  the  palate  of  an  unprejudiced  child  also  far  more  attractive  than 
the  smooth  but  chalky  and  insipid  starch  preparations  called  baker's 
bread.  Graham-bread  and  milk,  whortleberries,  rice-pudding,  and 
stewed  prunes,  once  or  twice  a  week,  generally  keep  the  bowels  in  tol- 
erable order,  provided  that  the  general  mode  of  life  does  not  prevent 
the  influence  of  the  natural  peptic  stimulants.  But  even  in  a  case  of 
obstinate  costiveness  few  people  would  resort  to  drugs  after  trying 
the  effects  of  a  legumen-diet.  Beans  do  not  agree  with  some  persons 
(though  the  Pythagorean  interdict  has  no  hygienic  significance),  but 


200  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

one  of  the  three  legumens — beans,  peas,  and  lentils — is  pretty  sure 
to  suit  every  constitution,  and  as  bowel-regulators  their  value  can 
hardly  be  overrated.  Taken  like  medicine  at  regular  intervals  of  eight 
hours,  and  in  doses  of  about  a  pint  and  a  half,  the  third  or  fourth  meal 
of  pea-soup  (boiled  in  soft  water  and  flavored  with  butter  and  a  pinch 
of  chopped  onions)  will  prove  as  effective  as  a  moderate  medicinal 
aperient ;  but,  while  the  effect  even  of  a  mild  cathartic  is  followed  by 
an  astringent  reaction,  the  relief  obtained  by  an  aperient  regimen  is 
permanent,  unless  that  effect  is  persistently  counteracted  by  the  origi- 
nal cause  of  the  disorder.  Fruit,  fresh  or  stewed,  ripe  grapes,  or  tam- 
arind-jelly, and  frequent  draughts  of  pure  cold  water,  will  insure  the 
efficacy  of  the  remedy. 

Besides  an  astringent  diet,  the  chief  predisposing  causes  of  consti- 
pation are  :  warm,  weather,  overheated  rooms,  want  of  exercise,  seden- 
tary occupations,  tight  garments,  the  after-effects  of  drastic  drvgs,  of 
malarial  fevers,  and  sometimes  of  self  abuse.  Parturition  is  frequently 
followed  by  a  protracted  period  of  close  stools.  In  the  most  obstinate 
cases  of  constipation  clysters  are  preferable  to  cathartics,  for  the  reason 
that  the  former  reach  the  special  seat  of  the  disease,  viz.,  the  lower 
part  of  the  rectum,  while  the  latter  begin  their  work  by  convulsing  the 
stomach,  and,  by  irritating  its  sensitive  membrane,  disqualify  it  for  the 
proper  performance  of  its  function.  But  injections,  even  of  the  simplest 
kind,  should  be  used  only  as  the  last  resort,  after  all  the  following 
remedies  have  proved  ineffective  : 

Mastication. — Thoroughly  masticate  and  insalivate  each  morsel  of 
solid  food.  Eat  slowly  ;  do  not  soak  your  bread,  etc.,  to  facilitate  deg- 
lutition, but  let  the  saliva  perform  that  business.  The  stomach  of 
bilious  dyspeptics  often  rejects  a  stirabout  of  bread  and  milk,  but 
accepts  the  ingredients  in  a  separate  form. 

Passive  Exercise. — Kneading  the  abdomen,  or  riding  on  horseback 
or  in  a  jolting  cart,  often  affords  relief  by  dislodging  the  obdurated 
obstructions  of  the  lower  intestines. 

Cold  sponge-baths  excite  a  peristaltic  movement  of  the  colon,  and 
often  induce  a  direct  evacuation. 

Air-baths  have  an  analogous  effect,  and  in  summer  the  bed  should 
be  removed  to  the  airiest  room  in  the  house.  After  the  stools  have 
become  more  regular,  exhausting  fatigues  (in  warm  weather  especially) 
should  be  carefully  avoided.  The  advent  of  winter  greatly  lessens 
the  danger  of  a  relapse.  Frost  is  a  peptic  stimulant,  and  after  Octo- 
ber the  cold  ablutions  can  be  gradually  discontinued.  Fresh  air,  an 
occasional  sleigh-ride,  or  an  excursion  on  a  rumbling  freight-train,  will 
do  the  rest  ;  and  the  cure  is  complete  if,  during  the  next  warm  season, 
the  digestive  organs  perform  their  proper  functions  without  the  aid  of 
artificial  stimulants.  The  remedies  for  bilious  constipation  have  been 
mentioned  in  the  chapter  on  "  Dyspepsia,"  but  I  will  here  repeat  the 
chief  rule  for  the  cure  of  chronic  indigestion  :  "  Never  eat  till  you 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE.  201 

have  leisure  to  digest."  Avoid  after-dinner  work  ;  break  through  every 
rule  of  conventional  customs,  and  postpone  the  principal  meal  to  the  end 
of  the  day,  rather  than  let  the  marasmus  of  the  digestive  organs  reach 
a  degree  that  calls  for  a  change  of  climate  and  occupation,  as  the  only 
alternative  of  a  total  collapse.  Open  your  bedroom-windows,  take  a 
liberal  dose  of  fresh  spring-water  with  the  last  meal,  and  an  air-bath 
before  going  to  bed,  and  the  result  will  convince  you  that  night  is  not 
an  unpropitious  time  for  digestion. 

Unlike  constipation,  diarrhoea^  even  in  its  transient  phases,  is 
always  a  morbid  symptom,  and  a  proof  that  either  the  quality  or  the 
excessive  quantity  of  the  ingested  food  calls  for  abnormal  means  of 
evacuation.  For  the  incipient  stages  of  the  disorder  the  great  specific 
is  fasting.  Denutrition,  or  the  temporary  deprivation  of  food,  exer- 
cises an  astringent  influence,  as  part  of  its  general  conservative  effect. 
The  organism,  stinted  in  the  supply  of  its  vital  resources,  soon  begins 
to  curtail  its  current  expenditure.  The  movements  of  the  respiratory 
process  decrease  ;  the  temperature  of  the  body  sinks,  the  secretion  of 
bile  and  uric  acid  is  diminished,  and  before  long  the  retrenchments  of 
the  assimilative  process  react  on  the  functions  of  the  intestinal  organs  ; 
the  colon  contracts,  and  the  smaller  intestines  retain  all  but  the  most 
irritating  ingesta.* 

"When  that  remedy  fails,  the  presumption  is  that  either  some  viru- 
lent substance  resists  the  eliminative  efforts  of  Nature,  or  else  that,  in 
spite  of  the  diminished  sources  of  supply,  the  accumulated  alimentary 
material  still  exceeds  the  needs  of  the  organism.  In  the  latter  case, 
unless  a  continuation  of  the  fast  should  seem  preferable,  the  waste  can 
be  stopped  by  active  exercise.  After  a  hard  day's  work  a  man  can 
assimilate  a  quantum  of  food  that  would  afflict  an  idler  with  grievous 
crapulence.  The  Kamtchatka  savage  has  earned  the  right  to  digest  the 
flesh  of  the  brute  which  he  has  slain  in  a  rough-and-tumble  combat. 
The  stomach  of  the  negro  does  not  reject  the  fruit  which  he  has 
plucked  from  the  top  branches  of  a  tall  forest-tree.  Loose  bowels  be- 
come retentive  if  Epicurus  has  chopped  his  own  wood  and  fetched  his 
own  cooking-water.  But  the  best  of  all  astringent  exercises  is  a  pe- 
destrian excursion.  A  liberal  supply  of  green  fruit  has  a  laxative  tend- 
ency. A  campaign  in  an  orchard  country  costs  the  invaders  a  good 
deal  of  laudanum  ;  in  midsummer  some  forty  per  cent  of  the  rank  and 
file  are  generally  on  the  sick-list  with  diarrhcea.  But  the  first  forced 
march  stops  such  symptoms.  Laxatives  and  pedestrianism  are  what 
lecturers  on  materia  medica  call  "incompatibles."  By  a  combination 
of  foot-journeys  and  abstinence  even  a  malignant  case  of  chronic  diar- 

*  A  persistent  hunger-cure  will  eliminate  even  an  active  virus  by  a  gradual  molecular 
catalysis  and  displacement  of  the  inorganic  elements.  The  Arabs  cure  syphilis  by  quar- 
antines d  la  Tanner  ;  and  Dr.  C.  E.  Page  mentions  the  case  of  a  far-gone  consumptive 
who  starved  the  tubercles  out  of  his  system.  Aneurisms  (internal  tumors)  have  been 
cured  by  similar  means. 


202  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

rboea  can  soon  be  brought  under  control,  though  the  debility  of  the 
patient  should  limit  his  first  excursions  to  the  precincts  of  his  bedroom. 
Care  should,  however,  be  taken  not  to  abuse  the  partially  restored  vigor 
of  the  digestive  organs,  especially  during  the  period  of  deficient  appe- 
tite that  often  follows  a  colliquative  condition  of  the  bowels.  Pro- 
gressive doses  of  out-door  exercise  will  gradually  overcome  that  apathy, 
and,  when  the  stomach  volunteers  to  announce  the  need  of  nourishment, 
it  can  be  relied  upon  to  find  ways  and  means  to  utilize  it. 

But  the  problem  of  a  complete  cure  becomes  more  complicated  if 
the  bowels  have  been  tortured  with  astringent  drugs.  Diarrhoea  itself 
is  an  asthenic  condition,  indicating  a  deficiency  of  vital  strength,  yet 
nearly  every  health-exhausting  poison  of  the  vegetable  and  mineral 
kingdom  has  been  employed  to  paralyze  the  activity  and,  as  it  were, 
silence  the  protest  of  the  rebellious  organs.  Bismuth,  arsenic,  calomel, 
opium,  mercury,  nux  vomica,  zinc  salts,  acetate  of  lead,  and  nitrate  of 
silver,  are  among  the  gentle  "  aids  to  Nature  "  that  have  been  employed 
to  control  the  revolt  of  the  mutinous  bowels.  An  attempt  to  control 
a  fit  of  vomiting  by  choking  the  neck  of  the  patient  would  be  an  analo- 
gous mistake.  The  prescription  operates  as  long  as  the  vitality  of  the 
bowels  is  absolutely  paralyzed  by  the  virulence  of  the  drug,  but  the 
first  return  of  functional  energy  will  be  used  to  eject  the  poison.  That 
new  protest  is  silenced  by  the  same  argument ;  for  a  while  the  ex- 
haustion of  the  whole  system  is  mistaken  for  a  sign  of  submission,  till 
a  fresh  revolt  calls  for  a  repetition  of  the  coercive  measures.  In  the 
mean  time  the  organism  suffers  under  a  compound  system  of  starva- 
tion ;  the  humors  are  surcharged  with  virulent  matter,  the  whole 
digestive  apparatus  withdraws  its  aid  from  the  needs  of  the  vital 
economy,  and  the  flame  of  life  feeds  on  the  store  of  tissue  ;  the  patient 
wastes  more  rapidly  than  an  un-poisoned  person  would  on  an  air-and- 
water  diet.  In  garrets,  where  the  last  piece  of  furniture  had  been  sold 
to  defray  the  costs  of  a  direful  nostrum,  I  have  more  than  once  seen 
victims  of  astringent  poisons  in  a  state  of  misery  which  human  beings 
can  reach  by  no  other  road  :  worn  out,  corpse-colored,  emaciated 
wretches,  with  that  look  of  listless  despair  which  the  eyes  of  a  dying 
beast  sometimes  assume  on  the  brink  of  Nirvana.  The  first  condition 
of  recovery  is  the  peremptory  abolition  of  the  poison-outrage.  For 
the  first  three  days  prescribe  nothing  but  sweetened  rice-water,  and 
only  tablespoonful  doses  of  that  ;  give  the  stomach  a  sorely-needed 
chance  of  rest.  On  the  fourth  and  fifth  day  add  a  few  drops  of  millc, 
and  toward  the  end  of  the  week  inspissate  the  broth  to  the  consist- 
ency of  gruel.  There  are  persons  with  whom  milk  disagrees  in  all  its 
forms  ;  for  such  prepare  a  surrogate  of  whipped  eggs  with  sugar  and 
warm  water — a  tablespoonful  every  half-hour.  Do  not  hope  that  the 
stomach  of  a  far-gone  drug-martyr  will  at  once  tolerate  even  such 
feather-weight  burdens  ;  it  will  not  repel  them  with  the  spasmodic 
violence  that  characterized  its  reactions  against  a  virulent  nostrum. 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE,  203 

but  it  will  often  protest  its  disability  to  retain  the  whole  quantum.  A 
small  but  increasing  percentage  will  be  assimilated,  and,  if  the  cor- 
responding enlargement  of  the  rations  is  not  overdone,  the  patient,  at 
the  end  of  the  third  or  fourth  week,  may  be  rewarded  by  the  return  of 
something  like  positive  appetite,  i.  e.,  a  craving  for  more  solid  food. 
Try  a  slice  of  rice-pudding  and  fruit-jelly,  or  a  homoeopathic  dose  of 
blanc-mange.  Try  a  soft-boiled  e^g  or  a  baked  apple.  Eschew  cor- 
dials. Avoid  food-extracts,  even  strong  beef -tea,  which  for  a  person 
in  such  circumstances  is  a  stimulant  rather  than  a  nourishment.  In 
the  mean  time  watch  the  weather,  and  on  the  first  clear  day  screen  the 
lower  windows,  open  the  upper  sashes,  and  treat  the  patient  to  a  sun- 
hath.  Sunlight,  applied  for  half  an  Kour  to  the  bare  skin,  is  a  better 
tonic  than  cold  water,  which  invigorates  a  healthy  man,  but  exhausts 
an  asthenic  invalid.  In  the  form  of  teind  spongehaths^  however,  water 
should  be  applied  as  soon  as  the  patient  can  bear  the  fatigue  of  keeping 
on  his  legs  for  a  couple  of  minutes.  The  first  decided  gain  in  strength 
employ  in  the  preparatory  exercises  of  pedestrianism.  Carpet  the 
room,  clear  a  track  for  a  circular  walk,  provide  supports  at  proper 
intervals,  a  small  table  in  one  corner,  a  chair  or  a  curtain-strap  in 
the  other.  Interest  the  patient  in  his  progressive  achievements,  keep 
a  record-book,  procure  a  boxful  of  chips  and  tally  off  each  round. 
Three  miles  a  day  mark  the  time  when  the  sanitarium  can  be  trans- 
ferred to  the  out-door  world.  In  a  vineyard  country  devote  the  vint- 
age season  to  a  three  weeks'  grape-cure.  The  cure  consists  in  dining 
on  bucketfuls  of  ripe  grapes  and  transparent  slices  of  wheat  bread. 
Grape-breakfasts,  grape-luncheons,  and  grape-suppers,  ad  libitum^  but 
no  bread,  nor  anything  else  that  could  interfere  with  the  system-reno- 
vating effect  of  the  sweet  abstersive,  that  has  been  tried  with  signal 
success  in  the  treatment  of  bilious  dyspepsia,  gout,  and  cutaneous  dis- 
eases.* Extreme  caution  in  the  use  of  animal  food,  acids,  and  fer- 
mented beverages,  for  the  first  six  months  at  least,  is  as  necessary  as 
after  an  attack  of  dysentery^  which  should  be  similarly  treated,  except 
that  a  more  rapid  recovery  of  strength  will  permit  a  speedier  return 
to  out-door  and  active  exercise. 

Colic  can  generally  be  traced  to  the  presence  of  fermenting  fluids, 
and  is  the  penalty  of  excessive  indulgence  in  such  beverages  as  mush,  new 
beer,  fresh  cider,  together  with  sour  milk  and  watery  vegetables,  but 
may  in  rarer  cases  indicate  the  agency  of  more  dangerous  substances, 

*  The  grape-cures  of  Thionville,  Staremberg,  Meran,  Lintz,  and  the  Bergstrasse,  near 
Mannheim,  are  yearly  visited  by  thousands.  In  the  United  States  the  best  facilities  might 
be  found  at  Hammondsport,  Flushing,  and  lona  Island,  New  York ;  Salcra,  Massachu. 
setts ;  Hagerstown,  Maryland ;  Lebanon,  Columbia,  and  Eagleville,  Pennsylvania ;  Gol- 
conda,  Illinois  ;  Hermann,  Missouri ;  Cincinnati,  Delaware,  and  Kelly's  Island,  Ohio.  All 
Southern  California  is  now  studded  with  vineyards,  and  the  Trauhen-kuy  of  Meran  hardly 
excels  the  grapes  of  San  Gabriel  and  Annaheim.  Five  cents  a  pound  for  the  ripest 
bunches  is  the  average  price  on  Kelly's  Island  ;  in  California  from  two  to  three  cents  a 
pound  ;  in  larger  quantities  perhaps  even  less. 


204  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

drastic  mineral  acids,  putrefactive  and  zymotic  poisons,  noxious  gases, 
etc.  Rest  and  warm  bandages  are  the  best  remedies.  The  antidotes 
of  corrosive  poisons  will  be  named  in  a  separate  chapter.  The  pains  of 
gastric  sj^asms,  as  a  consequence  of  dietetic  sins,  may  be  alleviated  by 
manipulation  and  friction  with  a  moist  piece  of  flannel ;  in  extreme 
cases,  indicating  the  presence  of  virulent  acids,  by  means  of  a  stomach- 
pump.  Generally  a  semi-horizontal  position,  reclining  on  the  left  side, 
with  the  upper  part  of  the  body  slightly  raised,  together  with  local 
friction,  will  considerably  ease  the  distressed  organ,  though  intermit- 
tent griping  pangs  may  continue  till  the  alchemy  of  the  physiological 
workshop  has  neutralized  the  irritating  substance.  From  a  kindred 
affection  colic  can  be  distinguished  by  a  simple  test  :  if  pressure 
against  the  upper  part  of  the  groin  increases  the  pain,  the  complaint 
is  an  inflammation  of  the  peritonaeum,  but  otherwise  due  to  the  pres- 
ence cf  acid  fluids  or  expansive  gases.  Painter'' s  colic  may  be  recog- 
nized by  the  discoloration  of  the  gums  and  lips,  and  can  be  cured  only 
by  the  removal  of  the  cause,  A  napkin,  sprinkled  with  aromatic  vine- 
gar, and  tied  loosely  across  the  nostrils,  will,  however,  lessen  the  effect 
of  the  noxious  effluvia  ;  and  the  Italians  recommend  the  internal  use 
of  olive-oil  (cotton-seed  oil  would  probably  serve  the  same  purpose) 
and  wine.  For  a  few  days  after  a  severe  attack  of  colic,  pure  water 
should  be  the  only  drink. 

Flatulence  tends  to  obviate  the  proximate  cause  of  intestinal  cramps. 
As  a  concomitant  of  dyspepsia,  it  indicates  the  accumulation  of  undi- 
gested food  and  the  necessity  of  greater  abstemiousness.  Burnt  mag- 
nesia absorbs  gastric  acids,  but  at  the  same  time  impairs  the  functional 
vigor  of  the  stomach  too  often  to  be,  on  the  whole,  a  lesser  evil.  It 
is,  however,  one  of  the  very  few  chemical  remedies  which  act,  tem- 
porarily at  least,  by  a  direct  removal  of  the  proximate  cause.  Its  per- 
manent removal  can  be  effected  only  by  a  change  of  regimen. 

In  the  treatment  of  hcBmorrhoids,  too,  we  have  to  distinguish  be- 
tween palliatives  and  radical  remedies.  If  the  statistics  of  the  com- 
plaint could  be  tabulated,  I  believe  it  would  be  found  that  its  centers 
of  distribution  coincide  with  a  prevalence  of  sedentary  occupations, 
combined  with  the  use  of  narcotic  drinks,  especially  coffee.  Monkeys 
have  posterior  callosities,  and  their  habits  prove  that  an  occasional  sit- 
ting posture  is  normal  to  the  primates  of  the  animal  kingdom.  But,  in 
a  state  of  nature  at  least,  our  arboreal  relatives  are  too  restless  to  avail 
themselves  of  their  sitting  facilities  of tener  than  five  or  six  times  a  day 
— for  about  a  minute  at  a  time.  In  menageries  they  become  sedate 
enough  for  ten-minutes  sessions.  But  a  German  chancery-clerk  has  to 
sit  fifteen  hours  a  day,  awaiting  promotion  and  the  supper-hour,  for 
he  is  often  required  to  eat  his  dinner  in  situ.  If  his  dinner-basket  is 
sent  from  a  cheap  boarding-house,  it  is  sure  to  contain  a  selection  of 
highly  astringent  comestibles — tough  beef,  leathery  potato-chips,  all- 
spice, ginger-cakes,  and  pickles.      The  accompanying  flask  contains 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE.  205 

coffee.  If  the  man  of  sessions  stoops,  he  damages  his  lungs  ;  if  he 
leans  against  the  edge  of  the  table,  he  may  endanger  his  stomach  ;  but, 
as  sure  as  he  sits,  he  compresses  the  region  of  the  vena  portcje.  Ob- 
structions of  that  vein  are  favored  by  two  circumstances  :  it  has  to  pass 
a  double  system  of  capillaries,  and,  before  it  can  reach  the  liver,  it  has 
to  pump  its  heavy  blood  upward.  Sooner  or  later  the  incessant  press- 
ure results  in  varicose  enlargements,  actual  obstruction  occurs,  the 
vein-bags  become  engorged  and  at  last  inflamed,  and  their  rupture  dis- 
charges the  blood,  which  mingles  with  the  secretions  of  the  rectum,  and 
causes  that  incessant  pricking  and  burning  that  make  haemorrhoids 
(emerods,  piles)  as  troublesome  as  a  combination  of  itch  and  gout. 
An  astringent  diet  aggravates  the  evil  by  inspissating  the  blood  and 
retarding  the  process  of  circulation.  The  stricken  Philistines  ob- 
tained relief  by  sacrificing  golden  facsimiles  of  the  afflicted  parts, 
and  cauterizations  temporarily  free  the  obstructed  passages;  but  the 
days  of  miracles  are  past,  and,  as  long  as  the  cause  continues  to  operate, 
it  would  not  avail  the  patient  to  sacrifice  his  entire  stock  of  emerods. 
Inunctions  of  warm  tallow  will  palliate  the  itch.  Common  mutton- 
tallow  serves  that  purpose  as  well  as  any  patent  ointment,  for  itch  and 
its  cognate  complaints  are  not  amenable  to  the  influence  of  the  faith- 
cure.  The  radical  remedies  are  gymnastics  and  an  aperient  diet.  The 
gymnastic  specifics  are  the  exercises  that  promote  deep  and  full  respira- 
tion, and  at  the  same  time  react  on  the  abdominal  cavity,  as  spear- 
throwing,  swinging  by  the  arras,  and  dumb-bell  practice.  The  diet 
should  be  digestible,  and  as  fluid  as  possible  ;  while  exercise  stimulates 
the  circulation,  the  diluents  will  attenuate  the  blood,  and  thus  obviate 
the  proximate  cause  of  the  disorder.  If  the  patient  has  to  stick  to 
his  office,  he  should  procure  a  combination-desk  (which  any  carpenter 
can  construct  without  infringement  of  patents),  and  stand  and  sit  by 
turns. 

The  ancients  kept  slaves  who  had  to  work  all  day,  sitting  before  a 
primitive  grist-mill,  and  it  is  possible  that  haemorrhoids  are  really  a 
very  antique  complaint.  But  during  the  age  of  gymnastics  and  unfre- 
quent  meals  it  is  not  probable  that  people  suffered  much  from  maic- 
worms.  Parasites  are  marvelous  colonizers.  Wherever  the  ground  is 
prepared  for  their  reception,  the  seed  is  sure  to  make  its  appearance. 
There  are  about  sixty  different  kinds  of  mildew,  a  special  variety  for 
nearly  every  special  kind  of  fruit  or  vegetable  ;  and,  if  a  decaying 
berry  of  the  rarest  sort  is  exposed  to  the  open  air,  it  will  soon  be  cov- 
ered with  its  specific  kind  of  mold.  A  piece  of  putrid  flesh  will  attract 
blow-flies,  even  where  flies  of  that  sort  have  never  been  seen  before. 
The  germs  of  numberless  parasites  fill  the  air,  and  each  species,  after 
its  kind,  will  promptly  fasten  upon  every  sort  of  decaying  or  stagnant 
organic  matter,  even  in  the  interior  of  the  body.  But  in  the  living 
organism  of  the  human  system  such  stagnations  are  wholly  abnormal. 
In  the  economy  of  the  digestive  organs  peptic  disintegration  should 


2o6  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

precede  putrefactive  decay  ;  the  chyle  should  never  stagnate,  the 
stream  of  the  organic  functions  should  move  with  an  uninterrupted 
current.  There  are  rivers  that  become  so  low  in  summer  that  pools 
of  water  can  be  found  only  in  the  deeper  cavities  of  the  river-bed,  and 
such  pools  are  sure  to  swarm  with  "  wrigglers,"  or  incipient  gnats. 
But,  as  soon  as  the  current  of  the  rising  river  drains  those  pools,  the 
wrigglers  speedily  vanish. 

The  maw-worm  plague  is  caused  and  should  be  cured  on  the  same 
principle.  Most  people  eat  too  often.  Before  the  stomach  can  dis- 
pose of  the  first  meal,  it  receives  a  second  consignment,  and  soon  after 
a  third,  of  comestibles  elaborately  contrived  to  retard  digestion  ;  after- 
noon work  monopolizes  the  energies  of  the  system;  the  melange  in  the 
small  intestines  becomes  unmanageable,  stagnates,  and  at  last  ferments. 
Babies  are  gorged  with  milk  till  the  contents  of  the  little  vessel  liter- 
ally spill  at  the  muzzle  ;  they  are  swaddled  and  bandaged,  kept  in 
horizontal  confinement,  and  anxiously  prevented  from  every  motion 
that  might  ease  the  labor  of  the  sorely  overtaxed  bowels.  Fresh  air, 
the  next  best  peptic  stimulant,  is  likewise  carefully  excluded.  Nature 
fights  the  enemy  for  a  week  or  two,  but  at  last  succumbs  to  odds  : 
fermentation  sets  in  ;  parasites  fasten  upon  their  well-prepared  pabu- 
lum, and  soon  the  tortures  of  the  mummified  little  martyr  are  aggra- 
vated by  the  wriggling  of  hundreds  of  ascarides.  Nervous  children 
can  thus  be  worried  into  epileptic  fits,  and  even  delirium  and  brain- 
fever.  Locally  the  worm-plague  produces  constipation,  haemorrhages 
(often  resembling  the  symptoms  of  true  haemorrhoids),  and  burning 
stools. 

If  the  evil  has  reached  proportions  that  defy  dietetic  specifics,  the 
removal  of  the  cause  (as  in  prurigo,  scabies,  and  syphilis)  requires  the 
application  of  artificial  remedies.  Injections  of  warm  water  with  an 
infusion  of  quassia,  or  carbolic  acid,  will  expel  pin-worm  ;  oil  of 
chenopodium  (worm-seed)  in  minute  doses,  administered  with  a  tea- 
spoonful  of  castor-oil,  is  an  effective  prescription  for  the  expulsion  of 
the  "  round- worm." 

Among  the  remedies  against  tcenioe,  or  tape-worms,  the  following 
vegetable  specifics  are  not  less  effective  and  much  safer  than  the  calo^ 
mel  preparations  which  were  formerly  prescribed  for  that  purpose  : 
Pomegranate-bark  (  Granati  fructus  cortex)  ;  male  fern  (Filix  mas- 
cula)  ;  but  especially  pounded  pumpkin-seed.  Three  ounces  of  the 
fresh  seed,  mixed  with  a  pint  of  water  and  pounded  into  an  emulsion, 
taken  after  a  twenty-four  hours'  fast,  rarely  fail  to  evict  the  tenant 
within  three  hours. 

But  the  germs  of  the  parasites  remain  behind,  and  the  same  predis- 
posing conditions  may  at  any  time  effect  their  redevelopment.  Dietetic 
remedies  must  complete  the  cure.  Children  should  be  restricted  to  three 
meals  a  day.  Let  them  earn  their  recovery  by  exercise — running, 
tumbling,  dangling  at  the   end  of  a  grapple- swing.     Adults  should 


LAND-BIRDS  IN  MID-OCEAN.  207 

limit  themselves  to  a  lunch  and  a  good  dinner,  drink  a  liberal  quantum 
of  fresh,  cold  spring- water,  but  no  fermented  beverage,  and  strictly 
abstain  from  indigestible  food,  especially  cheese,  sour  rye-bread,  sauer- 
kraut, archaic  sausages,  pickles,  and  hard-boiled  eggs.  Light  bread, 
cream,  and  grapes  (or  baked  apples),  should  constitute  the  staple  of  the 
diet.  A  two-weeks  grape-cure  can  do  harm.  An  .occasional  fast-day 
will  insure  the  elimination  of  undigested  food-deposits.  Pin-worms 
that  have  escaped  the  day  of  wrath  may  now  and  then  betray  their 
presence,  but  they  have  ceased  to  multiply,  and,  after  the  current  of 
the  organic  circulation  has  once  been  fairly  re-established,  intestinal 
parasites  will  disappear  like  the  wrigglers  of  a  drained  river-pool. 


LAND-BIEDS  IK  MID-OCEAl^r. 

By  GEOEGE  W.  GRIM. 

THE  appearance  of  some  of  the  smaller  varieties  of  migratory  birds, 
such  as  sparrows,  swallows,  doves,  etc.,  several  hundred  miles  away 
from  the  nearest  land  is  by  no  means  an  unusual  occurrence  on  the 
ocean.  About  these  little  erratic  visitors  there  are  some  curious  and 
interesting  facts.  Their  appearance  is  almost  always  one  at  a  time, 
though  I  have  known  a  considerable  number,  representing,  perhaps,  as 
many  different  varieties,  to  accumulate  in  the  course  of  a  day.  It  is 
usually,  though  not  always,  in  stormy  or  unsettled  weather. 

The  first  curious  fact  about  these  birds  is,  that  they  never  appear 
to  be  tired  out ;  whereas  birds  are  often  met  with  near  the  land  with 
their  strength  quite  exhausted.  A  second  curious  fact  about  them  is 
their  preternatural  tameness  where  there  is  no  cat  or  dog  on  board, 
and  the  crew  show  no  disposition  to  molest  them,  as  exhibited  by  their 
apparently  seeking  rather  than  avoiding  the  presence  of  man. 

Another  curious  fact  about  them  is  the  recovery  of  all  their  native 
wildness  and  their  instinctive'  avoidance  of  man's  presence  on  ap- 
proaching the  land.  The  first  time  I  noticed  this  fact  was  with  a 
pair  of  olive-colored  ring-doves,  which,  from  their  remarkable  tame- 
ness and  familiarity,  I  was  led  to  believe  had  been  bred  in  a  domestic 
state  and  perhaps  on  shipboard.  I  kept  them  in  the  skylight  in  the 
cabin,  where  they  seemed  to  be  quite  contented  ;  but  on  approach- 
ing the  land  they  became  the  wildest  of  the  wild.  One  of  them  es- 
caped and  flew  away.  I  succeeded  in  taking  the  other  into  port,  where 
I  gave  it  its  liberty.  Now,  I  am  certain  that  these  birds  could  not 
have  been  apprised  of  the  approach  to  the  land  through  the  medium 
of  any  of  their  ordinary  senses.  This  curious  circumstance  led  me  to 
notice  more  particularly  the  conduct  of  other  varieties  of  these  little 


208  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

wanderers  upon  the  ocean  so  far  from  their  native  habitat,  and  I  find 
that  they  nearly  all  exhibit  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  the  same  curi- 
ous characteristics.  Here  the  observant  mariner  with  a  smattering  of 
science  may  find  something  to  cogitate  upon. 

Light,  heat,  sound,  etc.,  are  said  to  be  effects  produced  upon  the 
living .  organism  through  the  medium  of  appropriately  developed  or- 
gans by  as  many  different  modes  of  motion,  whereby  the  animal  is 
brought  into  conscious  connection  with  surrounding  objects,  the  effect 
diminishing  in  a  progressive  ratio  as  the  distance  of  the  object  in- 
creases. Of  these  special  organs  there  are  said  to  be  five  in  number 
which  are  essential  to  the  well-being  of  all  perfectly  developed  animals. 
But  may  there  not  be  other  analogous  modes  of  motion,  producing 
analogous  effects  upon  the  living  organism,  whereby  the  animal  is 
brought  into  conscious  connection  with  surrounding  objects,  and  by 
or  through  which  it  has  a  sense  of  the  locality  or  direction  of  such 
objects  as  are  essential  to  its  well-being  to  seek  or  avoid?  Admit- 
ting this,  suppose  a  flock  of  birds  have  started  on  one  of  their  migratory 
excursions,  guided  mainly  by  this  sense  of  direction,  in  pursuit  of  some 
distant  object.  Then  let  us  suppose  that  in  their  flight  they  pass 
obliquely,  but  unwittingly,  into  another  higher  stratum  or  current  of 
air  moving  with  great  velocity  in  some  other  direction,  but  toward  the 
ocean.  The  flock  would  necessarily  become  very  much  scattered,  and" 
in  the  confusion  a  portion  of  them  would  be  carried  unconsciously 
out  to  sea,  beyond  the  range  of  their  sense  of  direction — having  lost 
which,  they  fly  at  random  and  at  ease,  exerting  just  sufficient  effort  to 
sustain  themselves  in  the  air  ;  while  another  portion  of  the  flock,  keep- 
ing within  the  limit  of  their  sense  of  direction,  will  exhaust  all  their 
strength  vainly  endeavoring  to  reach  their  object  against  a  violent 
wind. 

So  intimately  associated  with  this  sense  of  direction  is  their  instinct 
of  self-preservation  in  avoiding  the  presence  of  man,  that  while  the 
one  is  in  abeyance,  the  other,  in  the  absence  of  anything  to  arouse  it, 
remains  dormant.  This,  I  believe,  is  the  true  meaning  of  the  preter- 
natural tameness  exhibited  by  the  birds  on  the  Galapagos  Islands  men- 
tioned by  Darwin. 

From  the  peculiar  properties  of  air  in  its  relation  to  heat,  the  at- 
mosphere has  a  tendency  to  form  itself  into  heterogeneous  strata,  more 
or  less  inclined  to  the  horizon  ;  each  stratum  having  a  horizontal  motion 
independent  of  the  others — a  fact  the  significance  of  which,  I  think, 
is  frequently  lost  sight  of  by  meteorologists,  more  especially  by  cyclo- 
nologists.  That  some  of  the  higher  strata  of  the  atmosphere  have  an 
independent  horizontal  motion,  the  velocity  of  which  is  often  incom- 
parably greater  than  anything  we  experience  in  the  lower  stratum,  is 
evident  not  only  from  the  appearance  in  mid-ocean  of  birds,  but  of 
insects  hundreds  of  miles  from  land,  and  apparently  as  lively  as  if 
they  were  in  their  own  native  haunts.     I  have  seen  grasshoppers  at 


THE  ILLUSION   OF   CHANCE,  209 

least  a  thousand  miles,*  and  dragon-flies  certainly  two  hundred  miles 
from  land.f  During  a  recent  voyage  from  New  Zealand  to  New 
South  Wales,  and  thence  to  Japan,  frequently,  for  several  days  in 
succession,  moths  and  butterflies  were  visible  in  the  air  nearly  every 
hour  in  the  day. 


THE  ILLUSION  OF  CHANCE. 

Br  WILLIAM  A.  EDDY. 

STUDY  of  the  movements  of  events  reveals  dynamical,  necessary 
sequences,  and  contemplation  of  the  laws  of  probability,  treated 
mathematically,  generally  involves  a  mental  attitude  at  variance  with 
theories  of  luck  and  premonition.  It  is  believed  that  a  rational  treat- 
ment of  the  question  will  help  to  dispel  superstitious  ideas  by  disclosing 
the  chain  of  continuity  in  all  known  actions.  First,  we  will  consider 
events  mathematically,  or  as  illustrating  the  laws  of  probability ;  and, 
second,  as  related  to  the  practical  question  of  success  in  life.  The 
subject  includes  indirectly  the  question  of  ethics.  Wrong  or  injurious 
action  seems  to  disappear  into  a  vast  labyrinth.  As  we  judge  super- 
ficially or  by  immediate  effects,  we  are  easily  misled  into  a  belief  that 
fraud  may  result  in  permanent  gain,  or  that  oppression  will  cure  some 
political  evils.  It  is  important,  for  instance,  that  we  have  right  ideas 
regarding  the  tendency  in  affairs  whereby  continued  injustice  or  abuse 
of  power  comes  to  retribution.  The  jarring  of  the  just  relations  of 
things  leads  to  complications  too  subtile  to  be  controlled,  as  the  tyrants 
of  history  found  by  terrible  experience,  and  the  fact  that  our  control 
is  partial,  as  noticed  definitely  further  on,  should  cause  fear  of  the 
improper  use  of  power.  These  truths  well  justify  an  examination  of 
the  subject. 

Before  considering  the  more  complicated  question  of  partial  con- 
trol in  its  relation  to  success,  we  will  first  glance  at  the  simple  or 
direct  relations  between  familiar  events,  as  seen  in  the  calculable  uni- 
formity in  the  average  results  of  great  numbers  of  so-called  games  of 
chance.  The  numerical  results  of  card-playing  and  dice-throwing,  as 
examined  by  Professor  Venn,  have  reafllirmed  what  is  generally  known 

*  "December  13,  1876,  latitude  17°  24'  north,  longitude  44"  12'  west.  While  taking 
the  sun  at  noon,  noticed  a  number  of  grasshoppers  about  the  vessel.  Made  several  un- 
successful attempts  to  capture  one  of  them.  The  nearest  point  of  land  is  the  Island  of 
Montserrat,  latitude  16°  48'  north,  longitude  62°  12'  west,  distant  1,023  miles."— (Extract 
from  a  private  log.) 

f  In  the  vicinity  of  the  river  La  Plata,  violent  westerly  gales,  called  pamperoSy  are  of 
frequent  occurrence.  One  of  the  "surest  precursors  of  these  gales  is  the  appearance  of 
numerous  dragon-flies  in  the  air.  I  have  seen  these  insects  collecting  about  the  ship  fully 
two  hundred  miles  from  land,  off  the  entrance  of  the  river,  while  the  wind  was  still  blow- 
ing a  gale  from  the  eastward. 
VOL.  xxiv. — 14 


210  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

— that  resulting  special  aggregates,  differing  widely  in  number,  show 
a  narrow  margin  of  difference  when  combined  into  an  average  of  many- 
such  aggregates.  "  Let  us  suppose,"  he  says,  "  that  we  toss  up  a  penny 
a  great  many  times  ;  the  results  of  the  successive  throws  may  be  said 
to  form  a  series.  The  separate  throws  of  this  series  seem  to  occur  in 
utter  disorder.  .  .  .  But  when  we  consider  the  result  of  a  long  succes- 
sion we  find  a  marked  distinction  ;  a  kind  of  order  begins  gradually 
to  emerge,  and  at  last  assumes  a  distinct  and  striking  aspect."  * 

It  is  claimed  that  at  one  time  about  two  hundred  persons  commit- 
ted suicide  annually  in  London,  but  it  is  possible  that  the  increase  of 
prosperity  or  the  extension  of  moral  influence  might  lessen  the  number. 
Human  actions,  when  compared  with  games  in  which  no  skill  is  ap- 
plied, thus  disclose  a  marked  difference  in  the  fact  that  the  average 
of  many  games  shows  a  very  small  margin  of  departure  from  calcu- 
lated uniformity,  while  during  long  periods  human  actions  arising 
from  like  causes  differ  widely,  owing  to  the  evolution  of  intelligence, 
which  gradually  establishes  extensive  differences.  Many  natural  phe- 
nomena go  through  long  periods  of  growth  and  decline.  But  this 
method  in  nature  may  be  far  more  diflScult  to  trace  than  that  in  a 
game  of  cards.  It  is  completely  beyond  our  power  to  arrange  the 
star  systems  in  even  a  theoretical  way  that  would  seem  in  the  slightest 
degree  complete.  In  phenomena  repeated  at  conceivable  intervals, 
however,  we  may  find  the  average  as  steadily  maintained  as  that  of 
great  numbers  of  games.  This  is  seen  in  the  slight  variations  in  the 
average  of  rainfall  during  a  decade.  If  we  extend  the  problem  be- 
yond the  range  of  our  short  lives,  we  again  find  that  apparently  fixed 
averages  slowly  change.  It  would,  therefore,  require  inconceivable 
lapses  of  time  to  discern  the  uniformity  of  average  in  these  gradual 
changes  during  many  centuries.  As  an  illustration  of  this,  there  are 
good  reasons  for  believing  that  the  temperatures  of  the  north  and 
south  temperate  zones  vary  so  greatly  in  ten  thousand  five  hundred 
years  that  large  portions  of  the  globe  now  under  cultivation  will  be 
covered  by  glaciers.  Mr.  H.  B.  Norton,  in  a  lecture  delivered  before 
the  Kansas  Academy  of  Science,f  makes  a  careful  mathematical  cal- 
culation based  on  the  precession  of  the  equinoxes.  He  thus  estimates 
that  the  greatest  variation  in  length  between  winters  of  the  northern 
and  southern  hemispheres  occurs  at  recurring  periods  of  twenty  thou- 
sand nine  hundred  and  thirty-seven  years.  These  great  lapses  of  time 
are,  he  claims,  accompanied  by  alternate  deep  submergence  of  the 
poles  in  accordance  with  the  gradual  change  of  the  earth's  axial  in- 
clination.    He  says  : 

"It  thus  appears  probable  that  there  have  been  many  glacial 
periods  in  each  hemisphere,  and  that  the  ocean,  like  a  mighty  pen- 
dulum, vibrates  from  pole  to  pole." 

*  "  The  Logic  of  Chance,"  by  John  Yenn,  M.  A.,  p.  6. 

t  Published  in  "The  Popular  Science  Monthly,"  October,  18Y9. 


THE  ILLUSION   OF   CHANCE,  211 

Herbert  Spencer  points  out  similar  truths  in  that  part  of  his 
philosophy  concerning  the  rhythm  of  motion  :  *  "  Every  planet,  dur- 
ing a  certain  long  period,  presents  more  of  its  northern  than  of  its 
southern  hemisphere  to  the  sun  at  the  time  of  its  nearest  approach  to 
him  ;  and  then,  again,  during  a  like  period,  presents  more  of  its 
southern  hemisphere  than  of  its  northern — a  recurring  coincidence 
which,  though  causing  in  some  planets  no  sensible  alterations  of 
climate,  involves  in  the  case  of  the  earth  an  epoch  of  twenty-one 
thousand  years,  during  which  each  hemisphere  goes  through  a  cycle 
of  temperate  seasons,  and  seasons  that  are  extreme  in  their  heat  and 
cold.  Nor  is  this  all.  There  is  even  a  variation  of  this  variation. 
For  the  summers  and  winters  of  the  whole  earth  become  more  or  less 
strongly  contrasted,  as  the  eccentricity  of  its  orbit  increases  and  de- 
creases. ...  So  that  in  the  quantity  of  light  and  heat  which  any 
portion  of  the  earth  receives  from  the  sun,  there  goes  on  a  quadruple 
rhythm,  that  of  day  and  night ;  that  of  summer  and  winter  ;  that  due 
to  the  changing  position  of  the  axis  at  perihelion  and  aphelion,  tak- 
ing twenty-one  thousand  years  to  complete  ;  and  that  involved  by 
the  variation  of  the  orbit's  eccentricity,  gone  through  in  millions  of 
years." 

These  phenomena  illustrate  the  regularity  of  averages  on  an  im- 
mense scale.  The  differences  in  temperature  between  unusually  hot 
or  cold  seasons  in  a  given  year  all  offset  one  another  when  reduced  to 
an  average  of  a  decade  or  of  a  century,  just  as  we  assume  that  the 
great  differences  between  glacial  and  tropical  temperatures  manifest 
approximate  uniformity  in  the  long  period  above  considered.  It  is 
thus  clear  that  circumstances  or  the  motions  of  events  lead  to  sus- 
tained average  results  in  spite  of  seeming  irregularities.  The  slowness 
with  which  some  great  changes  take  place  is  equivalent  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  permanent  conditions  as  far  as  the  short  duration  of  our 
individual  consciousness  is  concerned.  The  glacial  period,  whether 
due  to  the  precession  of  the  equinoxes  or  some  other  cause,  involves  a 
lapse  of  time  far  longer  than  is  covered  by  the  historical  record  of  the 
earliest  races,  along  down  the  line  of  mingled  civilization  and  barbar- 
ity to  the  present  time. 

In  deference  to  those  who  are  too  cautious  to  accept  any  doctrine 
of  averages  in  nature,  it  is  well  to  give  full  weight  to  an  opinion  in  a 
letter  from  Professor  C.  H.  Hitchcock,  regarding  the  glacial  period. 
He  thinks  that  every  agency  must  be  considered,  including  "  obliquity 
of  orbit,  precession  of  the  equinoxes,  axial  variation,  and  elevated 
planes  at  the  north."  He  adds,  "  If  you  can  prove  that  in  an  ice  age 
at  the  north  the  climate  about  the  south  pole  was  ameliorated,  then 
the  fact  that  it  is  somewhat  colder  there  now  may  be  of  service." 
Beside  the  variation  in  ocean-level,  we  may  consider  it  probable  that, 
when  the  earth  cooled  from  its  primeval  molten  state,  it  was  left  with 
*  "  First  Principles,"  pp.  256,  257. 


212  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

slight  excess  of  elevated  surface  at  points  either  north  or  south  of  the 
equator,  and  that  in  time  this  resulted  in  difference  of  temperature,  in 
ice  accumulation,  in  axial  variation  due  to  unequal  attraction.  Pro- 
fessor Hitchcock's  suggestion  of  many  causes  is  valuable  because  it 
calls  attention  to  the  possibility  or  probability  of  a  vast  and  connected 
ring  of  variations,  each  related  to  the  other,  so  that  ultimately  we  can 
only  understand  the  facts  as  illustrating  the  instability  of  the  homo- 
geneous as  taught  by  Herbert  Spencer.  But  the  oscillation  is  mani- 
fested in  so  many  other  ways  that,  even  when  it  fails  as  applied  to  a 
special  series  of  geological  facts,  we  are  still  justified  in  believing  it  as 
an  underlying  truth  not  demonstrated  in  this  case,  owing  to  our  want 
of  definite  knowledge  concerning  the  glacial  period. 

Having  thus  glanced  at  mathematical  considerations,  we  now  pass 
to  the  identity  pervading  widely  different  phenomena.  In  addition 
to  this  law  by  which  exceptional  events  are  found  to  accord  with  a 
certain  average,  we  further  find  identity  in  various  kinds  of  action. 
When  the  ice  on  the  river  is  rent  with  a  sound  like  the  booming  of 
cannon,  we  detect  some  resemblance  to  the  rumbling  of  an  earthquake. 
Hence  the  theory  may  be  that  the  subterranean  sound  involves  the 
cracking  of  rocky  strata.  The  motion  of  a  small  whirlpool,  of  a  tor- 
nado, of  the  solar  system,  and  hypothetically  of  great  extents  of 
nebulous  matter,  discloses  an  undercurrent  of  identity  indicating  that 
we  should  not  value  the  event  in  itself,  but  the  wide  play  of  phenomena 
so  represented.  "We  may  further  conclude  that  the  material  universe, 
as  far  as  known,  is  of  value  as  standing  for  something  beside  optical 
appearances  and  mechanism.  Aside  from  this  representative  value, 
concerning  sidereal  systems,  men  of  genius  may  discern  direct  practi- 
cal power  in  small  things,  as  in  the  following  instances  :  Watt  applies 
to  a  wider  use  the  lifting  power  of  steam,  as  seen  in  the  upward  mo- 
tion of  a  tea-kettle  cover,*  and  Edison  applies  the  lessened  friction 
betweeii  electrified  metal  and  rough  paper  to  the  general  puriDose  of 
reducing  the  friction  of  machinery — at  present  this  principle  is  used 
to  increase  the  sounding  power  of  the  telephone.  Many  things  appear 
trifling  because  we  fail  to  see  in  them  the  wonderful  analogies  await- 
ing disclosure  and  the  possibilities  of  development,  so  that  lack  of 
perception  or  combining  power  is  the  main  condition  of  our  helpless- 
ness in  the  presence  of  many  forms  of  material  action  or  phenomena. 

In  direct  opposition  to  the  idea  of  mastery  through  knowledge  and 
continuous  effort,  we  find  the  belief  in  luck,  the  central  idea  of  which 
is  that  a  bias  in  our  favor  may  pervade  events.  The  notion  of  natural 
order  in  events,  followed  regardless  of  persons,  substitutes  for  the  illu- 
sion of  luck  the  truth  of  a  mere  coincidence  between  what  we  like  and 
what  results.  Such  favorable  coincidences  when  not  read  aright  have 
wrecked  the  lives  of  some  men  who  might  otherwise  have  developed 
useful  powers.  A  careful  study  of  such  a  fortunate  turn  of  events 
*  The  story  has  been  discredited,  but  the  truth  is  applicable. 


THE  ILLUSION   OF   CHANCE.  213 

reveals  some  unpleasant  but  irresistible  facts — that  a  sustained  favor- 
able coincidence  is  very  rare  and  likely  to  be  of  doubtful  permanent 
value,  because  there  is  not  a  proper  development  of  personal  quality 
whereby  no  injury  will  result  from  prosperity.  The  fortunate  person 
tries  to  swim  in  a  sea  of  new  conditions  which  he  has  not  reached  by 
a  natural  process  of  growth.  The  phrase  "  always  lucky  "  is  open  to 
two  objections  not  easily  set  aside,  owing  to  the  profound  complexity 
of  events  :  that  the  person  may  have  skill,  tact,  agreeableness  ;  and  that 
there  may  be  error,  owing  to  the  special  or  restricted  view  of  the  per- 
son judging.  Belief  in  luck  is  directly  and  practically  objectionable, 
because  it  leads  to  submission  in  matters  requiring  action. 

Another  singular  but  essentially  superstitious  idea  at  times  gains 
credence.  A  connection  between  two  events  is  affirmed  strongly  in 
proportion  to  lack  of  evidence,  or  it  is  assumed  that  an  event  has 
necessary  relation  to  personal  welfare.  This  was  well  illustrated  by 
an  occurrence  in  the  central  part  of  Illinois  during  the  presidential 
contest  between  Lincoln  and  Douglas.  Two  flag-staffs,  about  two 
hundred  feet  high,  had  been  put  up  in  the  Court-House  Square  of  the 
town.  Just  before  the  election  the  staff  in  honor  of  Douglas  fell, 
owing  to  a  defect  in  the  timber.  It  was  at  once  thought  that  this 
foreshadowed  the  defeat  of  Douglas,  and  when  the  result  seemed  to 
verify  this  prophecy  the  superstitious  impression  became  stronger  than 
ever. 

Our  tendency  to  fill  the  unknown  with  imposing  possibilities  is  a 
natural  and  perhaps  justifiable  effect  of  the  profound  mysteries  of  life 
and  being  which  stimulate  our  curiosity  and  imagination,  but  there  is 
absurdity  in  postulating  connections  between  special  events  which  are 
much  better  explained  by  mear\s  of  the  usual  physical  factors  and  the 
reason.  With  some  persons  the  supposed  relation  between  death  and 
thirteen  at  table  seems  impressive,  because  it  is  assumed  that  there  is 
interference  owing  to  unknown  laws  of  action  or  association.  It  may 
seem  incredible  that  any  well-educated  person  should  hold  this  belief 
seriously,  yet  beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt  it  has  influenced  many 
who  were  able  in  action,  if  not  in  dealing  with  questions  of  causation. 
As  death  and  thirteen  at  table  are  both  quite  common,  it  follows  that 
the  concentration  of  attention  upon  this  or  any  usual  number  must 
result  in  the  observation  of  many  coincidences.  An  absence  of  the 
coincidence  is  easily  overlooked,  because  the  allowance  of  one  year  for 
the  death  to  occur  causes  the  prophecy  to  be  forgotten.  The  disclosure 
of  this  or  any  other  causal  connection  at  once  deprives  the  superstitious 
idea  of  its  assumed  value.  This  is  evident  in  a  like  instance  if  we 
maintain  that  spilling  salt  has  relation  to  calamity  because  it  indicates 
carelessness  and  nervousness.  Nature  never  overlooks  carelessness, 
and  nervousness  may  arise  from  consciousness  of  impending  trouble  ; 
hence  statistics  might  show  (if  we  could  eliminate  other  influences) 
that  persons  who  spill  salt  or  upset  things  are  more  liable  to  disaster 


214  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

than  others.  The  rejection  of  a  natural  cause  is  unfortunate,  because 
it  is  one  form  of  the  belief  that  an  imagined  relation  is  objective.  It 
is  assuming  that  an  event  will  necessarily  conform  to  a  prophecy  made 
entirely  without  reasonable  data.  George  Eliot  pointed  out  this  ab- 
sence of  reason  by  saying,  in  effect,  that  some  people  are  surprised  at 
the  presence  of  an  evil  which  they  have  done  everything  to  produce, 
and  at  the  absence  of  a  wished-f  or  result  which  they  have  done  nothing 
to  attain. 


FEMALE  EDUCATIOI^  FKOM  A  MEDICAL  POINT  OF 

VIEW.* 

By  T.  S.  CLOUSTON,  M.  D. 

THERE  are  a  good  many  reasons  why  physicians  should  have  opin- 
ions about  the  education  of  youth  rather  different  from  those  held 
by  most  of  the  public  and  of  the  professional  educators.  Their  whole 
art  is  founded  on  the  study  of  the  human  being — his  beginning,  his 
development,  his  course,  his  decay,  and  his  death.  All  his  structures 
and  all  his  functions  are  carefully  inquired  into.  A  doctor  must  now- 
adays be  a  physiologist,  and  a  physiologist  includes  the  mental  as  well 
as  the  bodily  functions  of  man  in  his  range  of  inquiry.  In  fact,  it  is 
one  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  physiological  mode  of  studying  human 
nature  that  man  is  looked  on  as  a  whole — body  and  mind  together — a 
unity,  in  which  they  can  not  be  studied  apart  from  each  other.  Then 
the  practical  aims  of  modern  medicine,  founded  on  this  enlarged  study 
of  man,  are  getting  to  be  more  and  more  concentrated  on  measures 
for  the  prevention  of  diseases,  and  not  merely  for  their  cure.  To  pre- 
vent disease  one  must  control  the  conditions  of  life.  Especially  in 
youth,  when  the  human  being  is  most  amenable  to  influences  for  good 
and  evil  that  affect  the  whole  future  life,  must  one  regulate  the  con- 
ditions of  life,  if  health  is  to  be  preserved.  The  doctor  finds  that 
health  means  far  more  than  a  good  digestion.  It  means  a  conscious 
sense  of  well-being  all  over,  contentment,  power  of  work,  capacity  to 
resist  evil  influences,  and,  to  some  extent,  good  morality.  It  means  a 
sound  mind  in  a  sound  body.  The  process  and  the  method  of  educa- 
tion undoubtedly  influence  health  strongly.  If  the  educator  has  dam- 
aged the  health,  the  doctor  is  expected  to  put  it  right.  An  important 
part  of  the  physician's  duty  is  to  study  the  sum-total  of  a  man's  heredi- 
tary tendencies,  and  his  bodily  weak  or  strong  points,  what  is  com- 
monly called  his  constitution.  He  finds  that  education  in  many  of  its 
modem  forms  may  be  either  a  most  helpful  or  a  most  dangerous  pro- 
cess to  many  constitutions.     In  fact,  the  modern  physician  is  rather 

*  Lecture  delivered  at  the  Philosophical  Institution  of  Edinburgh,  November,  1882. 


FEMALE  EDUCATION,  215 

disposed  to  set  up  as  the  skilled  engineer  of  the  human  machine,  and 
the  authoritative  exponent  of  its  proper  treatment  in  all  its  depart- 
ments, both  when  it  is  working  rightly  as  well  as  when  it  goes 
wrong. 

A  careful  study  of  the  qualities  and  capacities  of  one's  material  is 
the  very  first  thing  to  be  done  before  determining  the  wear  and  tear 
to  which  it  is  to  be  subjected,  or  arranging  the  work  it  is  to  do.  This 
is  a  comparatively  easy  matter,  when  an  ordinary  machine  is  to  be 
made,  however  complicated.  The  iron  and  the  steel  of  the  locomotive 
can  be  most  accurately  tested.  Yet  all  prudent  engineers  allow  an 
enormous  margin  for  casualties.  The  actual  strain  put  on  is  not  half 
of  what  the  machinery  could  really  bear.  Who  would  subject  the 
plates  of  a  boiler  to  a  pressure  just  up  to  their  bursting-point  ?  Na- 
ture in  her  mechanics  usually  makes  much  more  allowance  than  engi- 
neers do.  The  heart  of  an  animal  could  send  five  times  the  amount 
of  blood  that  it  has  to  propel  at  twice  the  rate  of  the  normal  blood- 
current.  The  arterial  pipes  that  contain  and  conduct  the  blood  to  the 
extremities  are  of  sufficient  thickness  and  strength  to  resist  five  times 
the  pressure  put  on  them  day  by  day.  The  stomach  in  a  healthy  man 
has  usually  the  power  of  digesting  twice  or  thrice  the  amount  of  food 
really  needed  for  nourishing  the  body.  Woe  betide  the  diners-out,  if 
it  stopped  short  just  at  the  point  when  enough  for  Nature's  wants  had 
been  digested  !  This  principle  of  having  a  reserve  of  spare  power 
beyond  the  ordinary  daily  needs,  only  to  be  called  into  operation  on 
rare  and  special  occasions,  is  Nature's  principle  throughout  the  whole 
region  of  life.  She  scatters  seeds  by  the  million  where  thousands  only 
can  grow. 

There  is  a  law  of  Nature,  too,  that  lies  at  the  very  root  of  the  prin- 
ciples I  am  going  to  advocate  to-night.  It  is  this,  that  every  living 
being  has  from  its  birth  a  limit  of  growth  and  development  in  all  direc- 
tions beyond  which  it  can  not  possibly  go  by  any  amount  of  forcing. 
Man  can  not  add  one  cubit  to  his  stature.  The  blacksmith's  arm  can 
not  grow  beyond  a  certain  limit.  The  cricketer's  quickness  can  not 
be  increased  beyond  this  inexorable  point.  The  thinker's  effort  can 
not  extend  further  than  this  fixed  limit  of  brain-power  in  each  man. 
This  limit  is  fixed  at  different  points  in  each  man  in  regard  to  his  vari- 
ous powers,  but  there  is  a  limit  beyond  which  you  can  not  go  in  any 
direction  in  each  faculty  and  organ. 

The  capacity  for  being  educated  or  developed  in  youth,  the  recep- 
tive capacity  of  each  brain,  is  definitely  fixed  as  to  each  brain  of  each 
young  man  and  woman. 

Then  the  important  laws  of  hereditary  transmission  of  weaknesses 
and  peculiarities  and  strong  points  must  be  studied  and  kept  in  mind, 
so  far  as  we  know  them,  by  the  educator  of  youth.  To  hear  some 
persons  talk,  you  would  imagine  that  every  youth  and  maid  had  a  con- 
stitution as  free  from  faults  and  weak  points,  and  as  little  liable  to  go 


2i6  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

wrong,  as  a  forty-shilling  watch.  Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that 
every  man  and  woman  is  like  their  progenitors  in  the  main.  It  takes 
generations  for  new  conditions  of  life  to  eradicate  hereditary  pecul- 
iarities, and  then  they  are  always  tending  to  come  back.  These  heredi- 
tary peculiarities  in  youth  are  mostly  not  seen  as  actualities  that  can 
be  pointed  out  and  proved  to  exist  by  any  outward  signs.  They  exist 
as  potentialities  only,  and  come  out  as  actual  measurable  and  ascertain- 
able facts  at  certain  ages,  or  under  certain  conditions.  A  young  man 
who  inherits  gout  strongly  may  for  the  first  five-and-twenty  years  of 
his  life  be  absolutely  free  from  any  trace  of  the  disease.  Yet  we  are 
warranted  in  inferring  that  something  is  there  which  must  be  taken 
into  account  in  the  diet  and  conditions  of  life,  if  we  wish  to  contract 
and  eradicate  the  tendency.  Many  nervous  diseases  and  conditions 
are  the  most  hereditary  of  all,  and  we  have  good  reason  to  think  that, 
in  those  subject  to  them,  the  conditions  of  life,  and  the  treatment  to 
which  the  brain  and  the  rest  of  the  nervous  system  are  subjected  dur- 
ing the  period  of  the  building  of  the  constitution — that  is,  during  ado- 
lescence from  thirteen  to  twenty-five — are  of  the  highest  importance 
in  hastening  and  accentuating,  or  retarding  and  lessening,  those  nerv- 
ous peculiarities.  The  problems  of  the  hereditary  transmission  of 
qualities  and  tendencies  to  disease  are  some  of  the  most  wonderful  in 
nature,  and  they  are  as  yet  by  no  means  clearly  elucidated.  Many  of 
them,  as  yet,  can  not  be  brought  under  any  law.  In  our  present  state 
of  physiological  knowledge,  it  is,  for  instance,  a  quite  inconceivable 
thing  what  takes  place  when  we  have  two  generations  of  perfectly 
healthy  persons  intervening  between  an  insane  great-grandmother  and 
an  insane  great-grandchild.  The  grandparent  and  the  parent  carried 
something  in  their  constitutions  which  was  never  appreciable  to  us  at 
all.  Yet  it  was  there  just  as  certainly  as  if  it  had  broken  out  as  a  dis- 
ease. It  is  one  of  the  future  problems  of  physiology  and  medicine  to 
deduce  the  exact  laws  of  heredity  in  living  beings,  and  to  counteract 
the  evil  hereditary  tendencies  through  conditions  of  life.  To  do  the 
latter  we  shall  undoubtedly  have  to  begin  early  in  life,  and  we  shall 
have  to  control  the  education  especially,  and  make  it  conformable  to 
Nature's  indications,  laws,  and  conditions. 

Another  law  of  living  beings  to  be  kept  in  mind  is  this  :  There  is 
a  certain  general  energy  in  the  organism  which  may  be  used  in  many 
directions,  and  may  take  different  forms,  such  as  for  growth,  nutrition, 
muscular  force,  thinking,  feeling,  or  acquiring  knowledge,  according 
as  it  is  called  out  or  needed.  But  its  total  amount  is  strictly  limited, 
and  if  it  is  used  to  do  one  thing,  then  it  is  not  available  for  another. 
If  you  use  the  force  of  your  steam-engine  for  generating  electricity, 
you  can  not  have  it  for  sawing  your  wood.  If  you  have  the  vital 
energy  doing  the  work  of  building  the  bones  and  muscles  and  brain 
during  the  year  that  a  girl  grows  two  inches  in  height,  and  gains  a 
stone  in  weight,  you  can  not  have  it  that  year  for  the  acquisition  of 


FEMALE  EDUCATION.  217 

knowledge  and  for  study.  If  by  undue  pressure  you  do  call  up  and 
use  for  education  the  energy  that  ought  to  go  toward  growth  and 
strengthening  the  body,  you  produce  a  small  and  unhealthy  specimen 
of  humanity,  just  like  those  plants  which  have  had  their  flowers  un- 
duly forced,  and  are  deficient  in  bulk  and  hardiness,  and  will  not  pro- 
duce seed.  Nature  disposes  of  her  energies  in  a  human  being  in  due 
proportion  to  the  w^ants  of  each  organ  and  faculty.  There  is  a  nat- 
ural and  harmonious  relation  which  each  bears  to  the  other.  This  re- 
lation is  different  in  different  persons,  and  at  different  periods  of  life. 
The  plowman  takes  up  most  of  his  energy  in  muscular  effort  and  in 
the  repair  of  waste  muscle,  and  he  has  little  left  for  thinking.  The 
student  uses  his  up  in  the  mental  effort  of  his  brain,  and  has  little  left 
for  heavy  muscular  work.  No  doubt  Nature  is  sometimes  prodigal  of 
energy,  and  provides  enough  for  the  high-pressure  working  of  both 
the  brain  and  the  muscles  in  some  cases.  But  this  is  not  the  rule,  and 
should  not  be  assumed  as  applicable  to  many  persons.  At  the  differ- 
ent periods  of  life  Nature  uses  up  her  available  energy  in  different 
ways.  She  allocates  it  in  babyhood  chiefly  to  body-growth,  in  early 
girlhood  partly  to  growth  and  partly  to  brain  development  ;  in  adoles- 
cence, the  period  of  which  I  am  to  speak  chiefly  to-night,  her  effort 
is  evidently  to  complete  the  building  up  of  the  structures  everywhere, 
to  bring  to  full  development  the  various  functions,  to  strengthen 
and  harmonize  the  whole  body  and  the  brain,  so  that  they  shall  be 
able  to  produce,  and  do  in  the  succeeding  years  of  full  maturity  all  that 
they  are  capable  of.  It  is  certainly  not  a  period  of  production,  but  of 
acquisition.  If  the  original  constitution  derived  from  ancestry  has 
been  good,  if  the  conditions  of  life  in  childhood  have  been  favorable, 
if  the  education  has  been  of  the  right  kind,  develoioingthe  whole  being 
in  all  her  faculties  equally  and  harmoniously  after  Nature's  plan,  and 
if  the  period  of  adolescence  has  crowned  and  completed  every  organ 
and  every  faculty,  no  faculty  being  unduly  called  on  to  the  impov- 
erishment of  the  others,  then  we  expect,  and  indeed  must  have,  a 
woman  in  health,  which  means  happiness,  with  the  full  capacity  for 
work,  for  production,  and  for  resisting  hurtful  influences,  and  for  liv- 
ing her  allotted  time.  But  this  can  only  result  from  a  harmonious  and 
healthy  development,  which  we  may  take  as  the  physician's  word  to 
denote  education  in  his  sense.  It  can  only  result  from  regarding  the 
woman  as  a  unit,  body  and  mind  inseparable  ;  it  can  only  result  from 
the  educator's  efforts  being  on  the  lines  of  Nature's  facts,  and  Nature's 
harmonies,  and  Nature's  laws. 

Another  fact  in  regard  to  the  vital  energies  and  forces  of  the  hu- 
man body  is  this  :  That  you  may  use  up  by  an  undue  push  and  press- 
ure at  one  time  of  life  the  power  that  ought  to  have  been  spread  out 
over  long  periods.  We  see  this  daily  in  men  who  have  had  trying  or 
or  excited  lives  and  occupations.  Some  of  them  wear  out  soon,  and 
grow  old  soon,  and  are  old  men  with  no  energy  or  vitality  left  at  fifty. 


2i8  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

What  you  put  into  one  period  of  life  you  want  at  another.  If  with 
ten  tons  of  coal  in  the  tender  you  keep  your  locomotive  running  at 
sixty  miles  an  hour  for  the  first  two  hours,  you  do  not  expect  it  to  do 
this  for  long.  Each  period  of  life  has  its  peculiar  forces  and  energies 
in  which  it  is  specially  rich.  In  adolescence  the  strong  points,  mental 
and  bodily,  are  very  marked.  I  shall  specially  allude  to  them  by-and- 
by.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  here  that  they  are  not  thinking  or  intense 
repression  of  all  the  general  energies  so  as  to  concentrate  them  in  men- 
tal work.  This  may  be  done,  but  the  question  is.  Is  it  well  to  do  it  ? 
Does  it  make  life  more  complete  and  happy  to  do  so,  looking  at  life  as 
a  whole  ?  A  physician,  like  a  philosopher,  must  look  on  life  from  the 
cradle  to  the  grave,  not  on  one  portion  of  it  only,  as  the  educational- 
ist is  perforce  obliged  to  do,  having  nothing  to  do  with  it  afterward. 
Like  many  architects  and  contractors  building  our  houses  for  us,  they 
turn  out  an  article  finished  up  to  the  standard  of  the  time,  and  then 
hand  it  over  to  you.  They  never  see  it  again.  Its  future  does  not 
concern  them  much.  I  have  often  proposed  that  your  architect  and 
contractor  should  be  bound  to  come  and  look  at  your  house  every  five 
years  for  the  first  twenty,  and  should  get  certain  deferred  payments 
at  these  periods  according  as  the  work  is  standing,  and  no  defects 
developing.  So  I  would  have  the  educator's  reputation  depend, 
not  on  what  he  has  turned  out  at  twenty-one,  but  on  the  result  at 
forty  or  fifty  or  sixty.  Education  is  a  preparation  for  the  work  of 
life,  not  a  thing  that  is  good  in  itself.  If  it  has  helped  life  to  be 
healthy,  happy,  successful,  and  long,  then  it  has  been  good  ;  if  in 
any  degree  it  has  caused  disease,  unhappiness,  non-success,  then  it  has 
been  bad. 

There  is  another  vital  fact  in  the  constitution  of  human  nature  that 
needs  to  be  taken  into  account — at  least  I  for  one  believe  it  to  be  a 
fact.  It  is  this,  that  one  generation  may,  by  living  at  high  pressure, 
or  under  specially  unfavorable  conditions,  exhaust  and  use  up  more 
than  its  share  of  energy.  That  is,  it  may  draw  a  bill  on  posterity,  and 
transmit  to  the  next  generation  not  enough  to  pay  it.  I  believe  many 
of  us  are  now  having  the  benefit  of  the  calm,  unexciting,  lazy  lives  of 
our  forefathers  of  the  last  generation.  They  stored  up  energy  for  us  ; 
now  we  are  using  it.  The  question  is.  Can  we  begin  at  adolescence, 
work  at  high  pressure,  keep  this  up  during  our  lives  (which  in  that  case 
will  be  on  an  average  rather  short),  and  yet  transmit  to  our  posterity 
enough  vital  energy  for  their  needs  ?  How  often  it  has  happened,  in 
the  history  of  the  world,  that  people  who  for  generations  have  exhib- 
ited no  special  energy,  blaze  out  in  tremendous  bursts  of  national 
greatness  for  a  time,  and  then  almost  die  out  !  The  Tartars  under 
Genghis  Khan,  the  Turks  when  they  overawed  Europe,  the  Arabs 
when  they  conquered  Spain,  are  examples.  We  must  take  care  that 
this  does  not  happen  to  us.  How  often  we  see  a  quiet  country  family, 
that  has  for  generations  led  quiet,  humdrum  lives,  suddenly  produce 


FEMALE  EDUCATION,  219 

one  or  two  great  men,  and  then  relapse  into  greater  obscurity  than  be- 
fore, or  become  degenerate  and  die  out  altogether  ! 

Another  fact  in  the  body  and  mind  history  of  human  beings  is  this, 
that  there  are  certain  physiological  eras  or  periods  in  life,  each  of 
which  has  a  certain  meaning.  The  chief  of  such  eras  are  childhood, 
puberty,  adolescence,  maturity,  the  climacteric,  and  senility.  We  have 
to  ascertain.  What  does  Nature  mean  by  these  eras  ?  What  does  it 
strive  to  attain  to  in  each  period  ?  What  are  the  ideal  conditions  of 
each  ?  No  one  of  these  periods  can  be  studied  from  a  bodily  point  of 
view  alone,  or  from  a  mental  point  of  view  alone.  They  must  be  re- 
garded from  the  point  of  view  of  the  whole  living  being,  with  all  its 
powers  and  faculties,  bodily  and  mental.  Not  only  so,  but  in  most 
cases  the  inherited  weaknesses  must  be  taken  into  account  too.  Those 
eras  of  life  can  not  be  fully  understood  looked  at  with  reference  to  the 
individual.  Their  meaning  is  only  seen  when  the  social  life,  the  an- 
cestral life,  and  the  life  of  the  future  race,  are  all  taken  into  account. 
And  this  is  what  makes  some  proper  attention  to  those  eras  so  very 
important  from  the  social  as  well  as  the  physician's  point  of  view.  If 
they  are  not  understood,  and  so  are  mismanaged,  not  only  the  individ- 
ual suffers,  but  society  and  the  race  of  the  future.  Particularly  the 
era  of  adolescence  is  important,  for  it  is  the  summer  ripening  time  in 
the  vital  history.  If  the  grain  is  poorly  matured,  it  is  not  good  for 
either  eating  or  sowing. 

Such  is  the  physician's,  or  perhaps  I  should  rather  say  the  physiolo- 
gist's, way  of  regarding  a  woman,  her  development,  and  her  education. 
It  is  because  we  do  not  think  the  average  parent  and  the  professional 
educator  in  the  technical  sense  always  take  this  wide  view,  but  that 
the  professional  enthusiasm  of  the  latter  takes  account  of,  and  tries  to 
cultivate,  one  set  of  faculties  only,  viz.,  the  mental ;  because  we  think 
the  public  mind  is  getting  to  regard  as  all-important  in  female  educa- 
tion what  we  think  is  not  so  important,  and  so  to  take  little  account  of 
what  we  regard  as  of  supreme  importance  to  the  individual  and  to  the 
race — viz.,  the  constitution  and  the  health — that  I  think  that  the  physi- 
ological view  of  female  education  should  be  brought  forward  and  pre- 
sented to  the  public  mind  more  frequently  than  is  the  case  ;  while  the 
bad  results  in  after-life  of  disregarding  Nature's  laws,  as  these  results 
come  under  the  notice  of  the  physician,  should  be  strongly  and  clearly 
brought  before  the  general  mass  of  parents  and  educators.  It  is  not  a 
matter  that  concerns  the  physician  and  his  immediate  patient  only.  It 
concerns  the  whole  of  the  people. 

I  shall  now  enter  more  into  detail  in  illustration  of  the  general 
principles  I  have  mentioned,  as  applied  to  that  period  of  the  life  of  a 
young  woman  when  the  chief  part  of  her  education  is  going  on.  I  am 
not  going  to  speak  much  of  the  period  of  childhood,  or  up  to  the  age 
of  thirteen  or  so.  Before  that  time  it  is  no  doubt  important  that  edu- 
cation should  be  conducted  on  physiological  principles,  with  due  regard 


220  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

to  the  growth  of  the  whole  organism,  and  therefore  without  too  many- 
hours  of  mental  work,  with  plenty  of  play  and  rest,  and  in  well-ven- 
tilated school-rooms.  During  the  period  of  childhood  few  girls  will 
overwork  themselves.  If  it  is  done,  it  is  by  outside  pressure,  and  any 
bad  effects  are  usually  temporary,  and  easily  got  over  by  a  little  rest, 
and  a  good  holiday  in  the  country.  " 

The  era  of  adolescence  is  one  of  the  greatest  importance  from  a 
bodily  and  mental  point  of  view  in  young  men  and  women,  but  espe- 
cially in  the  latter.  Bodily,  the  child  eats,  sleeps,  grows,  plays,  and 
does  what  she  is  told.  Life  has  no  seriousness.  Everything  in  the 
body  and  mind  is  inchoate  and  unformed.  Nothing  indicates  perma- 
nence. There  are  great  and  constant  muscular  energy,  noise,  sound 
sleep,  quick  digestion.  The  delights  of  life  consist  in  sweets  and 
games,  the  imagination  is  shallow,  the  affections  are  instinctive,  "  char- 
acter "  is  nascent  ;  there  is  no  morality  in  any  correct  sense,  and  no 
real  religious  sentiment.  There  is  little  liability  to  nervous  diseases  ex- 
cept those  affecting  the  muscular  system  ;  there  are  no  neuralgias,  no 
liability  to  mental  diseases,  and  most  other  diseases  are  sharp  and  soon 
over.  It  is  very  different  with  the  girl  when  adolescence  commences. 
Then  bodily  energies  of  a  new  kind  begin  to  arise,  vast  tracts  of  brain 
quite  unused  before  are  brought  into  active  exercise.  The  growth 
assumes  a  different  direction  and  type,  awkwardness  of  movement  be- 
comes possible,  and  on  the  other  hand  a  grace  never  before  attainable 
can  be  acquired.  The  bones  begin  to  cohere  and  solidify  at  their  ends, 
and  the  soft  cartilage  joinings  to  get  firmer.  The  tastes  for  food  and 
drink  often  change.  Bread  and  butter  and  sweets  no  longer  satisfy 
entirely.  Stronger  and  more  stimulating  foods  are  craved.  The  car- 
riage and  walk  change.  The  lines  of  beauty  begin  to  develop.  But 
the  mental  changes  are  even  more  striking.  All  that  is  specially  char- 
acteristic of  woman  begins  to  appear  ;  childish  things  are  put  away  ; 
dolls  no  longer  give  pleasure.  For  the  first  time  distinct  individual 
mental  peculiarities  show  themselves.  The  effective  portion  of  the 
mental  nature  begins  to  assume  altogether  new  forms,  and  to  acquire 
a  new  j)ower.  Literature  and  poetry  begin  to  be  understood  in  a  vague 
way,  and  the  latter  often  becomes  a  passion.  The  imagination  becomes 
strengthened,  and  is  directed  into  different  channels  from  before.  The 
sense  of  right  and  wrong  and  of  duty  becomes  then  more  active. 
Morality  in  a  real  sense  is  possible.  A  sense  of  the  seriousness  and 
responsibility  of  life  may  be  said  then  to  awaken  for  the  first  time. 
The  knowledge  of  good  and  evil  is  acquired.  The  religious  instinct 
arises  then  for  the  first  time  in  any  power.  Modesty  and  diffidence  in 
certain  circumstances  are  for  the  first  time  seen.  The  emotional  nature 
acquires  depth,  and  tenderness  appears.  The  real  events  and  possi- 
bilities of  the  future  are  reflected  in  vague  and  dream-like  emotions 
and  longings  that  have  much  bliss  in  them,  but  not  a  little  too  of 
seriousness  and  difficulty.     The  adolescent  feels  instinctively  that  she 


FEMALE  EDUCATION.  221 

has  now  entered  a  new  country,  the  face  of  which  she  does  not  know, 
but  which  may  be  full  of  good  and  happiness  to  her.  The  reasoning 
faculty  acquires  more  backbone,  but  is  as  yet  the  slave  of  the  instincts 
and  the  emotions.  A  conception  of  an  ideal  in  anything  is  then  at- 
tainable, and  the  ideal  is  very  apt  to  take  the  place  of  the  real.  The 
relations  and  feelings  toward  the  other  sex  utterly  change,  and  the 
chano-e  makes  its  subject  liable  to  tremendous  emotional  cataclysms, 
that  may  utterly  overmaster  the  rest  of  the  mental  life.  There  is  a 
subjective  egoism,  and  often  selfishness,  tending  toward  objective 
dualism.  There  is  resolute  action  from  instinct,  and  there  is  a  tend- 
ency to  set  at  defiance  calculation  and  reason.  All  those  changes  go 
hand  in  hand  with  bodily  changes  and  bodily  development.  There  is 
a  direct  action  and  interaction  between  body  and  mind,  all  through. 
Accompanying  all  these  there  are,  when  health  is  present,  a  constant 
ebullition  of  animal  spirits,  a  joyous  feeling,  a  pleasure  in  life  for  its 
own  sake,  and  there  is  a  craving  for  light  and  beauty  in  something. 
There  should  not  only  be  enough  energy  in  the  body  and  mind  to  do 
work,  but  there  should  be  some  to  spare  for  fun  and  frolic,  which  is 
just  Nature's  pleasant  way  of  expending  vital  force  that  is  not  needed 
at  the  time  for  anything  else. 

For  the  origination,  for  the  gradual  evolution  of  all  these  mental 
changes  into  perfect  womanhood,  there  are  needed  corresponding  bod- 
ily developments.  Without  these  we  should  have  none  of  those  mar- 
velous mental  and  emotional  phenomena  properly  evolved  and  de- 
veloped. If  the  health  is  weak,  the  nutrition  poor,  the  bodily  functions 
disordered  and  imperfect,  and  the  nervous  force  impaired,  we  are  liable 
to  have  the  whole  feminine  mental  development  arrested  or  distorted. 
If  undue  calls  are  made  on  the  nervous  force,  or  the  mental  power, 
or  the  bodily  energies,  the  perfection  of  nature  can  not  be  attained, 
and  womanhood  is  reached  without  the  characteristic  womanly  quali- 
ties of  mind  or  body.  The  fair  ideal  is  distorted.  The  girl  student 
who  has  concentrated  all  her  force  on  cramming  book  knowledge, 
neglecting  her  bodily  requirements  ;  the  girl  betrothed  who  has  been 
allowed  to  fall  in  love  before  her  emotional  nature  was  largely  enough 
developed  ;  and  the  girl  drudge  who  has  been  exhausted  with  physical 
labor — all  alike  are  apt  to  suifer  the  effects  of  an  inharmonious,  and 
therefore  an  unhealthy,  mental  and  bodily  constitution.  The  body 
and  the  mind  go  in  absolute  unison,  just  as  the  blush  on  the  maiden's 
cheek  comes  and  goes  with  emotion,  as  the  brightness  and  mobility  of 
her  features  go  with  mental  vivacity  and  happiness. 

All  those  mental  and  bodily  changes  are  not  sudden,  nor  fully 
completed  and  brought  to  perfection  at  once  ;  it  takes  on  an  average 
from  ten  to  twelve  years  before  they  are  fully  completed.  All  that 
time  they  are  going  on,  and  during  that  time  there  is  an  immense 
strain  on  the  constitution.  All  that  time  the  whole  organic  nature 
is  in  a  state  of  what  we  call  instability  :  that  is,  it  is  liable  to  be  upset 


222  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

m  its  working  by  slight  causes.  The  calls  on  the  inherent  vital  energy 
to  carry  on  and  to  bring  to  the  harmonious  perfection  of  full  woman- 
hood all  these  combined  bodily  and  mental  qualities  I  have  referred 
to,  during  these  ten  or  twelve  years,  is  very  great  indeed. 

We  physicians  maintain  that  this  period  is  one  of  momentous  im- 
portance, and  we  have  good  reason  to  know  this,  for  we  are  often 
called  on  to  treat  diseases  that  arise  then,  and,  having  originated  then, 
have  been  fully  matured  afterward.  The  risks  and  the  dangers  to 
body  and  mind  are  then  very  great  indeed.  We  count  it  a  fearful 
risk  to  run,  not  merely  that  actual  disease  should  be  brought  on,  but 
that  a  girl  capable  of  being  developed  into  a  healthy  and  happy 
woman,  with  a  rounded  feminine  constitution  after  Nature's  type — the 
only  type  that  secures  happiness  and  satisfaction  to  a  woman — should 
by  bad  management,  misdirected  education,  or  bad  conditions  of  life, 
grow  into  a  distorted,  unnatural,  and  therefore  unhappy  woman,  who 
can  not  get  out  of  the  life  that  she  has  only  to  live  once  all  that  it  is 
capable  of  yielding  her.  Like  all  the  other  physiological  eras  of  life, 
that  of  adolescence  only  comes  once.  If  the  developing  process,  which 
is  its  chief  characteristic,  is  not  completed,  then  it  is  missed  for  life. 
Whatever  is  done  then  is  final  ;  whatever  is  left  undone  is  also  final. 
If  a  woman  is  not  formed  at  twenty-five,  the  chances  are  she  will  never 
be  so  ;  if  she  is  not  healthy  then,  she  probably  will  not  be  so.  Who 
in  his  senses  can  deny  that  it  is  far  better  for  nineteen  w^omen  out 
of  twenty  to  be  healthy  than  to  be  intellectually  well  educated?  No 
acquirements  of  knowledge  can  possibly  make  up  for  health  in  after- 
life. There  is  an  organic  happiness  that  goes  only  with  good  health 
and  a  harmoniously  constituted  body  and  mind.  Without  that  or- 
ganic happiness  life  is  not  worth  having.  Cheerfulness  is  one  of  the 
best  outward  signs  of  this  perfect  health,  and  what  woman  has  not 
missed  her  vocation  in  the  world  who  is  not  cheerful  ?  A  general 
sense  of  well-being  is  the  best  conscious  proof  of  perfect  health.  It 
underlies  all  enduring  happiness.  It  means  good  and  harmonious  de- 
velopment of  mind  and  body,  properly  working  functions,  and  satis- 
fied organic  needs.  Any  method  of  education  that  impairs  this  must 
be  bad  and  one-sided. 

Here  it  may  be  necessary  to  correct  a  too  common  notion  that  the 
brain  only  subserves  mental  work.  To  hear  the  common  expression 
"  brain- work,"  one  would  imagine  that  muscular  exercise,  ordinary 
employments,  and  digestion,  could  go  on  without  the  brain's  working 
at  all.  No  idea  could  be  more  mistaken.  The  brain  is  a  most  com- 
plicated organ  in  structure  and  function,  that  regulates  the  working 
of  every  portion  of  the  body,  that  has  certain  portions  of  it  devoted 
to  motion  and  feeling,  and  passion,  and  digestion,  and  body-growth, 
and  nutrition,  etc.  It  is  the  one  organ  that  dominates  all  the  others, 
regulating  and  harmonizing  all  their  functions.  If  one  side  of  it  is 
injured  during  growth,  the  opposite  side  of  the  body  is  left  stunted 


FEMALE  EDUCATION,  223 

and  partially  paralyzed,  as  well  as  the  mental  power  weakened.  If 
undue  calls  are  made  on  one  part,  the  other  portions  suffer.  Now  this 
wondrous  and  as  yet  only  partially  known  organ  has  grown  most  of 
its  growth,  in  so  far  as  mere  bulk  is  concerned,  by  the  time  adolescence 
begins.  But  its  higher  qualities — its  force,  its  power  of  producing 
varied  energies — are  then  only  nascent.  They  develop  during  this 
period.  It  is  then  that  the  brain  needs  plenty  of  rest  in  sleep,  fresh 
air,  pure  blood,  good,  nourishing,  non-stimulating  food,  and  work  that 
develops  but  does  not  exhaust.  The  mental  portion  of  the  brain  is  no 
doubt  the  highest,  and  undue  calls  on  that  portion  exhaust  more  than 
any  other  part.  As  I  said,  only  a  certain  amount  of  energy  or  work 
is  possible  by  any  amount  of  stimulation.  The  brain  has  most  diver- 
sified functions,  but  it  has  also  a  solidarity  of  action.  No  part  is  sick 
without  all  the  other  parts  suffering.  No  function  is  overtaxed  with- 
out all  the  other  functions  being  weakened.  Overtaxing  of  the  men- 
tal function  is  specially  weakening.  In  mature  life,  after  the  body  is 
fully  developed,  such  an  overtaxing  can  be  repaired  by  rest.  The  in- 
jury is  merely  temporary.  If  a  man  overworks  his  brain  in  business 
or  study,  and  gives  himself  too  little  sleep,  and  gets  an  attack  of  indi- 
gestion, it  means  that  he  has  taken  up  the  brain-energy  that  ought  to 
have  gone  toward  digestion  in  mental  work.  But  he  stops  work,  goes 
to  the  country,  and  his  recuperated  brain  soon  acquires  force  enough 
to  stimulate  the  stomach  to  secrete  its  juices  and  do  its  work.  But  if 
in  adolescence,  before  the  bones  are  knit,  and  the  growth  completed, 
and  the  feminine  nature  far  advanced  toward  perfection,  if  the  brain 
that  is  in  the  process  of  doing  all  these  things  is  year  by  year  called 
on  to  exert  its  yet  imperfect  forces  chiefly  in  acquiring  book-knowledge 
by  long  hours  of  study,  and  in  consequence  the  growth  is  stopped,  the 
blood  is  thinned,  the  cheeks  are  pallid,  the  fat  destroyed,  the  wondrous 
forces  and  faculties  that  I  have  spoken  of  are  arrested  before  they 
attain  completion,  then,  when  the  period  of  growth  and  development 
ceases,  the  damage  is  irreparable.  There  is  no  time  or  place  of  or- 
ganic repentance  provided  by  Nature  for  the  sins  of  the  schoolmaster. 
Life  has  to  be  faced  with  an  imperfect  organism,  its  work  and  duties 
done  with  impaired  forces,  and  its  chances  of  accidents  met  without  a 
stock  of  reserve  power.  This  is  a  poor  lookout  for  the  individual  ; 
but  when  motherhood  comes,  and  sound  minds  in  sound  bodies  have 
to  be  transmitted  to  posterity,  how  is  it  to  be  then  with  the  future 
race?  This  aspect  of  the  question  of  female  education  during  the 
period  of  adolescence  is  of  absolutely  primary  importance  to  the  world. 
Yet  it  is  wholly  ignored  in  many  systems  of  education.  What  is  the 
use  of  culture,  if  it  is  all  to  end  with  the  present  generation  ?  What 
a  responsibility  to  transmit  to  future  generations  weak  bodies  and 
over-sensitive  brains,  liable  to  all  sorts  of  nervous  disease  !  Nothing 
can  be  more  certain  than  that  the  qualities,  good  and  bad,  acquired  in 
one  generation  are  sent  on  to  the  next.     The  world  may  be  all  the 


224  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

better  of  a  generation  of  healthy,  ignorant,  and  happy  mothers,  who 
can  produce  stalwart,  forceful  sons  and  daughters  (not  that  I  wish  this 
lecture  to  be  an  apology  for  health  and  ignorance),  but  the  world 
must  be  worse  for  a  system  of  stopping  full  and  harmonious  develop- 
ment in  the  mothers  of  the  next  generation.  My  plea  is,  that  as  Na- 
ture is  harmonious  in  mental  and  bodily  development,  we  should  follow 
on  her  lines,  and  not  set  up  an  educational  standard  for  ourselves  that 
is  one-sided,  because  it  takes  no  proper  account  of  the  constitution  of 
the  body  and  brain  at  all,  only  considering  one  brain-function — the 
mental. 

Along  with  these  developments  of  mind  and  emotion  during  ado- 
lescence there  are,  unfortunately,  too  apt  to  develop  hereditary  weak- 
nesses, especially  of  the  nervous  kind.  Physicians  then  meet  with 
hysteria,  neuralgia,  nervous  exhaustion,  insanity,  etc.,  for  the  first 
time.  As  normal  individualities  of  bodily  form  and  mental  character 
then  arise,  so  abnormal  developments  arise  too  where  they  are  in- 
herited or  brought  on  by  unfavorable  treatment.  This  law  is  found 
to  prevail  in  human  constitutions  :  if  you  give  Nature  a  good  chance 
by  specially  favorable  conditions,  and  by  counteractive  measures  early 
in  life,  she  tends  to  eradicate  evil  hereditary  tendencies,  and  to  return 
to  a  healthy  type,  if  the  evil  has  not  gone  too  far  in  the  ancestry  or  in 
the  individual.  Unfortunately,  there  are  very  few  families  indeed, 
nowadays,  free  from  tendencies  to  some  hereditary  disease  or  other. 
Our  modern  life  tends  to  develop  the  brain  and  nervous  system,  and 
undue  development  means  risk  of  disease  always.  What  the  profes- 
sion of  medicine  specially  desires  to  guard  our  population  now  against, 
is  our  becoming  a  nervous  race.  We  want  to  have  body  as  well  as 
mind  ;  otherwise  we  think  that  degeneration  of  the  race  is  inevitable. 
And,  therefore,  we  rather  would  err  on  the  safe  side,  and  keep  the 
mental  part  of  the  human  machine  back  a  little,  while  we  would  en- 
courage bulk,  and  fat,  and  bone,  and  muscular  strength.  We  think 
this  gives  a  greater  chance  of  health  and  happiness  to  the  individual, 
and  infinitely  more  chance  of  permanence  and  improvement  to  the 
race.  This  applies  to  the  female  sex,  we  think,  more  than  to  the  male. 
Man's  chief  work  is  more  related  to  the  present  (from  a  physiological 
point  of  view),  woman's  chief  work  to  the  future  of  the  world.  AVhy 
should  we  spoil  a  good  mother  by  making  an  ordinary  grammarian  ? 

It  will  be  said,  as  an  hereditary  fact,  that  most  great  men  have  had 
mothers  of  strong  minds.  I  believe  this  to  be  true,  but  it  is  not  a 
fact  that  many  great  men  have  had  what  would  now  be  called  "  highly- 
educated  "  mothers.  On  the  contrary,  very  few  such  men  have  had 
such  mothers.  There  were  usually  an  innate  force  and  a  good  devel- 
opment of  mind  and  body  in  the  mothers  of  such  men,  who  usually 
had  led  quiet,  uneventful,  unexciting  lives.  I  am  inclined  to  believe 
that  if  the  mothers  of  such  men  had  been  in  adolescence  worked  in 
learning  book-knowledge  for  eight  or  ten  hours  a  day  in  a  sitting  pos- 


FEMALE  EDUCATION.  iz^ 

ture  ;  if  they  had  been  stimulated  by  competition  all  that  time,  and 
had  ended  at  twenty-one  by  being  first-prize  women  (as  probably 
most  of  them  had  the  power  of  being) — ^if  this  had  befallen  them, 
then,  I  think,  their  sons  would  have  been  small  and  distorted  men, 
instead  of  being  the  lights  of  the  world. 

One  great  argument  for  the  "  higher  education  "  of  women  is  that 
it  makes  them  fitter  companions  for  highly-educated  men.  This  view 
should  be  looked  at  in  the  light  of  the  ideal  women  that  have  been 
created  in  literature  by  men  and  women  of  genius.  If  genius  has  the 
instinct  to  discover  the  highest  qualities,  and  to  portray  them  for  our 
instruction,  we  should  get  guidance  here.  Women  have  been  painted 
by  our  poets,  dramatists,  and  creative  writers  of  fiction,  by  the  thou- 
sand. Many  persons  would  accept  the  ideals  thus  sketched  for  them 
as  a  surer  guide  than  the  labored  deductions  of  the  scientists.  Men  of 
genius  ought  to  have  known  the  kind  of  women  whose  companionship 
they  liked,  and  whose  influence  on  them  was  best.  While  they  have 
had  to  create  every  kind  of  woman  in  peopling  the  ideal  worlds  they 
have  made  for  us,  it  is  certainly  very  remarkable  that  the  ideal  type 
of  the  very  highly  book-educated  woman  of  the  modern  educationalist 
is  scarcely  met  with  at  all.  In  "  The  Princess  "  of  our  poet-laureate 
the  fancy  can  not  be  said  to  be  a  serious  or  imitable  one.  Though  the 
sentiment  of  the  "sweet  girl-graduates  with  their  golden  hair"  is  this  : 

"  Oh  I  lift  your  natures  up, 
Embrace  our  aims  :  work  out  your  freedom,  girls ; 
Knowledge  is  now  no  more  a  fountain  sealed. 
Drink  deep  until  the  habits  of  the  slave, 
The  sins  of  emptiness,  gossip,  and  spite, 
And  slander  die.    Better  not  be  at  all 
Than  not  be  noble  " — 

yet  the  poet  paints  the  sweetness  so  as  altogether  to  overpower  the 
learnedness  in  the  picture,  and  the  Princess's  ideal  and  purpose  come  to 
naught.  And  Lady  Psyche's  dream  of  likeness  and  equality  is  as  far 
as  ever  from  being  realized  : 

"Everywhere 
Two  heads  in  council,  two  beside  the  hearth, 
Two  in  the  tangled  business  of  the  world. 
Two  in  the  liberal  offices  of  life, 
Two  plummets  dropped  for  one  to  sound  the  abyss 
Gf  science  and  the  secrets  of  the  mind. 
Musician,  painter,  sculptor,  critic  move; 
And  everywhere  the  broad  and  bounteous  earth 
Should  bear  a  double  growth  of  these  rare  souls. 
Poets  whose  thoughts  enrich  the  blood  of  the  world." 

Shakespeare's  women  are  certainly  not  of  the  learned  sort.  Their 
years  of  adolescence  were  not  taken  up  in  getting  book-knowledge 
exclusively.    Their  emotional  nature  was  not  dried  up  by  the  strain  of 

VOL.  XXIY. — 15 


226  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

intellectual  work  in  youth.  Their  constitutions  were  not  spoiled  by 
study.  They  had  fair  faces,  and  womanly  forms,  and  warm  affections, 
and  strong,  impulsive  passions,  and  mother-wit,  and  keen  discernment, 
and  most  vigorous  resolution,  but  nothing  that  we  would  call  learning 
— not  one  of  them.  Portia,  who  acted  the  most  learned  part  of  all 
Shakespeare's  women,  vehemently  describes  herself  as 

"  An  unlessoned  girl,  unschooled,  unpracticed." 

George  Eliot  has  created  for  us  a  whole  host  of  young  women,  all 
real,  all  true  to  nature.  Herself  a  woman,  and  a  genius  of  the  highest 
order  ;  penetrating,  learned,  accomplished,  subtile,  and  with  a  power 
of  discriminating  language  unequaled  in  our  generation  ;  a  wife  and 
mother  too — she  was  the  best-fitted  woman  of  the  age  unquestionably 
to  draw  for  us  a  picture  of  young  womanhood,  highly  educated  in 
knowledge,  up  to  the  educationalist's  ideal.  Where  do  you  find  such 
a  character  in  her  writings  ?  Dorothea  in  "  Middlemarch  "  had  ex- 
actly the  makings  of  the  successful  omnivorous  young  female  students 
of  the  present  day  ;  intellectual,  conscientious,  hyper-conscientious — 
as  such  young  women  so  often  are  to  their  cost — "  studious,  her  mind 
was  theoretic,  and  yearned  after  some  lofty  conceptions  of  the  world. 
.  .  .  She  was  enamored  of  intensity  and  greatness."  She  was  self-sac- 
rificing to  a  fault.  She  was  often  ardent,  and  not  in  the  least  self -ad- 
miring. Yet  Dorothea  is  not  highly  educated  in  the  modern  sense. 
Perhaps  a  modern  educationalist  would  say  that  that  was  the  reason 
poor  Dorothea  made  such  a  mess  of  it,  and  threw  herself  away  first 
on  a  selfish,  shallow  old  brute,  thinking  he  was  a  hero,  and  then  on 
the  least  interesting  fellow  in  the  book. 

One  of  the  finest  studies  of  adolescence  in  the  female  sex,  from  the 
mental  side,  is  Gwendolen  Harleth,  in  "  Daniel  Deronda."  The  pic- 
ture is  worthy  of  study  by  all  persons  who  take  an  interest  in  human 
nature.  Gwendolen  was  neither  good  nor  studious.  She  was  idle  in 
learning,  and  she  was  selfish.  She  had  a  vast  amount  of  subjective 
egoism,  tending  toward  objective  dualism,  resolute  action  from  in- 
stinct, a  setting  at  defiance  of  calculation  and  reason,  yet  acting  most 
reasonably  toward  the  end  in  view.  She  was  full  of  sentimentality, 
of  inchoate  religious  instinct,  of  a  desire  for  notice.  Yet  she  was  un- 
deniably a  fine  young  woman,  and  is  a  type  of  a  large  mass  of  the 
young  women  whom  our  modern  educationalists  would  like  to  set  to 
work  for  eight  hours  a  day,  from  the  age  of  thirteen  to  twenty,  ac- 
quiring book-learning.  I  confess  I  more  agree  with  Hannah  More's 
notion  of  education  for  such  a  girl :  "  I  call  education  not  that  which 
smothers  a  woman  with  accomplishments,  but  that  which  tends  to  con- 
solidate a  firm  and  regular  system  of  character,  that' which  tends  to 
form  a  friend,  a  companion,  and  a  wife.  I  call  education  not  that 
which  is  made  up  of  shreds  and  patches,  of  useless  arts,  but  that  which 
inculcates  principles,  polishes  taste,  regulates  temper,  cultivates  reason, 


FEMALE  EDUCATION.  227 

subdues  the  passions,  directs  the  feelings,  habituates  to  reflection,  and 
trains  to  self-denial — that  which  refers  all  actions,  feelings,  sentiments, 
tastes,  and  passions  to  the  love  and  fear  of  God."  If  to  this  we  add 
that  which  hardens  the  muscles,  adds  to  the  fat,  quickens  and  makes 
graceful  the  movements,  hardens  the  bones,  softens  the  skin,  enriches 
the  blood,  promotes  but  does  not  over-stimulate  the  bodily  functions, 
quickens  and  makes  accurate  the  observation,  increases  the  sense  of 
real  beauty  of  all  kinds,  promotes  the  cheerfulness,  and  develops  a 
sense  of  universal  well-being,  we  should  have,  in  my  opinion,  the  prin- 
ciples on  which  an  educational  system  should  be  founded. 

George  Eliot's  Romola  was  in  a  sense  a  learned  woman,  brought 
up  in  the  midst  of  books,  and  in  the  atmosphere  of  culture.  Yet  she 
took  to  love-making,  marriage,  self-denial,  charity,  and  religion,  and 
deserted  her  books  the  moment  her  duty  in  them  was  done.  She  had 
no  innate  love  of  book-learning  ;  most  of  what'shehad  acquired  seemed 
to  do  her  little  good  in  her  after-life.  It  was  no  guide  to  her  in  her 
difficulties,  it  was  no  solace  to  her  in  disappointments,  it  was  no  resource 
to  her  when  everything  else  had  failed.  It  had  not  taken  hold  of  her 
nature,  because  it  was  not  on  the  great  lines  on  which  her  nature  was 
constituted.  She  and  her  father  were  as  much  alike  as  a  man  and 
woman  can  be.  Yet  to  him  his  books  were  an  occupation  and  a 
delight  which  he  loved,  to  her  their  study  had  been  a  self-denial  all 
through. 

We  all  know  what  Thackeray's  women  were,  and  yet  he  stands 
very  high  as  a  faithful  student  and  expounder  of  human  nature,  as  it 
exists. 

When  we  look  at  the  sort  of  women  again  that  these  great  mas- 
ters of  the  study  of  human  character  made  their  heroes  fall  down  and 
worship,  we  certainly  do  not  find  that  the  schoolmaster  had  had  much 
to  do  with  the  creation  of  their  attractiveness.  Hamlet  and  Ophelia, 
Adam  Bede  and  Hetty,  Deronda  and  Gwendolen,  Lydgate  and  Rosa- 
mond, are  the  common  types  of  men  above  the  common  mold  taking 
to  women  of  the  unlearned  if  not  quite  uneducated  type.  The  thought- 
ful and  scientific  Lydgate  said  about  pretty,  shallow  Rosamond  :  "  She 
is  grace  itself  ;  she  is  perfectly  lovely  and  accomplished  ;  that  is  what 
a  woman  ought  to  be  :  she  ought  to  produce  the  effect  of  exquisite 
music";  while  he  said  about  the  stately,  thoughtful  Dorothea,  "The 
society  of  such  women  was  about  as  relaxing  as  going  from  your  work 
to  teach  the  second  form,  instead  of  reclining  in  a  paradise,  with  sweet 
laughs  for  bird-notes  and  blue  eyes  for  a  heaven." 

But  it  may  be  said  all  this  was  wrong,  the  result  of  yielding  to 
unaided,  unlearned  Nature's  lowest  affinities,  and  that  it  turned  out 
badly  for  those  men.  If  they  had  mated  suitably,  the  world  would 
have  been  better,  and  they  themselves  would  have  been  happier.  But 
the  physiologist  will  not  readily  believe  that  Nature's  mental  affinities 
can  be  wrong,  any  more  than  he  can  believe  that  the  appetite  is  not 


228  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

on  the  whole  the  best  guide  as  to  the  kind  and  amount  of  food  that  is 
good  for  us.  When  he  finds  in  nature  a  marked  masculine  and  femi- 
nine type  of  being,  of  body  and  of  mind,  marked  enough  from  birth, 
but  diverging  widely  from  the  beginning  of  the  physiological  era  of 
adolescence,  each  type  tending  toward  a  different  ideal,  and  attaining 
this  at  the  end  of  that  period  ;  and,  recognizing  these  facts  of  nature, 
he  finds  it  most  difficult  to  admit  that  the  same  type  of  education 
should  prevail  in  this  momentous  era,  or  that  the  same  standard  and 
ideal  of  a  completed  education  should  be  striven  after  for  the  two 
sexes.  And,  when  he  finds  that  the  great  geniuses  of  literature  have 
created  these  types  of  young  women  as  different  from  the  masculine 
type  as  the  Apollo  Belvedere  is  unlike  the  Yenus  de'  Medici,  he  can 
not  but  become  strongly  persuaded  that  his  deductions  from  physio- 
logical facts  are  true,  and  that  they  have  been  always  instinctively 
recognized  by  the  wisest  of  mankind.  If  it  can  be  shown  that  the 
present  tendency  to  over-educate  the  female  sex  in  book-learning  dur- 
ing adolescence,  and  the  mental  work,  confinement,  etc.,  that  this  im- 
plies tend  to  impair  perfect  health,  to  interfere  with  Nature's  lines  of 
feminine  development,  to  exhaust  energy  that  is  needed  for  other  pur- 
poses, and  to  diminish  the  chances  of  the  permanence  of  the  race,  then 
it  is  time  that  the  physiological  view  in  regard  to  education  were  put 
in  a  plain  way  to  the  professional  educator  and  to  the  parent. 


THE  CHEMISTEY  OF  COOKEEY. 

By  W.  MATTIEU  WILLIAMS. 

XVIIL 

I  FIND  that  Sir  Henry  Thompson,  in  a  lecture  delivered  at  the 
Fisheries  Exhibition,  and  now  reprinted,  has  invaded  my  subject, 
and  has  done  this  so  well  that  I  shall  retaliate  by  annexing  his  sug- 
gestion, which  is  that  fish  should  be  roasted.  He  says  that  this  mode 
of  cooking  fish  should  be  general,  since  it  is  applicable  to  all  varieties. 
I  fully  agree  with  him,  but  go  a  little  further  in  the  same  direction  by 
including,  not  only  roasting  in  a  Dutch  or  American  oven  before  the 
fire,  but  also  in  the  side-ovens  of  kitcheners  and  in  gas-ovens,  which, 
when  used  as  I  have  explained,  are  roasters,  i.  e.,  they  cook  by  radia- 
tion, without  any  of  the  drying  anticipated  by  Sir  Henry. 

The  practical  housewife  will  probably  say  that  this  is  not  new, 
seeing  that  people  who  know  what  is  good  have  long  been  in  the  habit 
of  enjoying  mackerel  and  haddocks  (especially  Dublin  Bay  haddocks) 
stuffed  and  baked,  and  cods*  heads  similarly  treated.  The  Jews  do 
something  of  the  kind  with  halibut's  head,  which  they  prize  as  the 


THE   CHEMISTRY   OF   COOKERY.  229 

greatest  of  all  piscine  delicacies.  The  John  Dory  is  commonly  stuffed 
and  cooked  in  an  oven  by  those  who  understand  his  merits. 

The  excellence  of  Sir  Henry  Thompson's  idea  consists  in  its  breadth 
as  applicable  to  allfish^  on  the  basis  of  that  fundamental  principle  of 
scientific  cookery  on  which  I  have  so  continually  and  variously  in- 
sisted, viz.,  the  retention  of  the  natural  juices  of  the  viands. 

He  recommends  the  placing  of  the  fish  entire,  if  of  moderate  size, 
in  a  tin  or  plated  copper  dish  adapted  to  the  form  and  size  of  the  fish, 
but  a  little  deeper  than  its  thickness,  so  as  to  retain  all  the  juices, 
which  by  exposure  to  the  heat  will  flow  out  ;  the  surface  to  be  lightly 
spread  with  butter  and  a  morsel  or  two  added,  and  the  dish  placed 
before  the  fire  in  a  Dutch  or  American  oven,  or  the  special  appa- 
ratus made  by  Burton,  of  Oxford  Street,  which  was  exhibited  at  the 
lecture. 

To  this  I  may  add  that,  if  a  closed  oven  be  used,  Rumf  ord's  device 
of  a  false  bottom,  shown  in  Fig.  3,  of  No.  11  of  this  series,  should  be 
adopted,  which  may  be  easily  done  by  simply  standing  the  above- 
described  fish-dish,  with  any  kind  of  support  to  raise  it  a  little,  in  a 
larger  tin  tray  or  baking-dish,  containing  some  water.  The  evapora- 
tion of  the  water  will  prevent  the  drying  up  of  the  fish  or  of  its  natural 
gravy  ;  and,  if  the  oven  ventilation  is  treated  with  the  contempt  I  have 
recommended,  the  fish,  if  thick,  will  be  better  cooked  and  more  juicy 
than  in  an  open-faced  oven  in  front  of  the  fire. 

This  reminds  me  of  a  method  of  cooking  fish  which,  in  the  course 
of  my  pedestrian  travels  in  Italy,  I  have  seen  practiced  in  the  rudest 
of  osterias,  where  my  fellow-guests  were  carbonari  (charcoal-burners) 
wagoners,  road-making  navvies,  etc.  Their  staple  magrOy  or  fast-day 
material,  is  split  and  dried  codfish  imported  from  Norway,  which  in 
appearance  resembles  the  hides  that  are  imported  to  the  Bermondsey 
tanneries.  A  piece  is  hacked  out  from  one  these,  soaked  for  a  while 
in  water,  and  carefully  rolled  in  a  piece  of  paper  saturated  with  olive- 
oil.  A  hole  is  then  made  in  the  white  embers  of  the  charcoal  fire,  the 
paper  parcel  of  fish  inserted  and  carefully  buried  in  ashes  of  se- 
lected temperature.  It  comes  out  wonderfully  well  cooked,  consider- 
ing the  nature  of  the  raw  material.  Luxurious  cookery  en  papillote  is 
conducted  on  the  same  principle,  and  especially  applied  to  red  mullets, 
the  paper  being  buttered  and  the  sauce  enveloped  with  the  fish.  In 
all  these  cases  the  retention  of  the  natural  juices  is  the  primary  object. 

I  should  say  that  Sir  Henry  Thompson  directs,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  that  the  roasted  fish  should  be  served  in  the  dish  wherein  it 
was  cooked.  He  suggests  that  "  portions  of  fish,  such  as  fillets,  may 
be  treated  as  well  as  entire  fish  ;  garnishes  of  all  kinds,  as  shell-fish, 
etc.,  may  be  added,  flavoring  also  with  fine  herbs  and  condiments  ac- 
cording to  taste."  "  Fillets  of  plaice  or  skate,  with  a  slice  or  two  of 
bacon — the  dish  to  be  filled  or  garnished  with  some  previously-boiled 
haricots  " — is  wisely  recommended  as  a  savory  meal  for  a  poor  man. 


230  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

and  one  that  is  highly  nutritious.  A  chemical  analysis  of  sixpenny - 
worth  of  such  a  combination  would  prove  its  nutritive  value  to  be  equal 
to  fully  eighteenpennyworth  of  beefsteak. 

Some  people  may  be  inclined  to  smile  at  what  I  am  about  to  say, 
viz.,  that  such  savory  dishes,  serving  to  vary  the  monotony. of  the 
poor  hard-working  man's  ordinary  fare,  afford  considerable  moral  as 
well  as  physical  advantage. 

An  instructive  experience  of  my  own  will  illustrate  this.  When 
wandering  alone  through  Norway  in  1856,  I  lost  the  track  in  crossing 
the  Kyolen  f jeld,  struggled  on  for  twenty-three  hours  without  food  or 
rest,  and  arrived  in  sorry  plight  at  Lom,  a  very  wild  region.  After  a 
few  hours'  rest  I  pushed  on  to  a  still  wilder  region  and  still  rougher 
quarters,  and  continued  thus  to  the  great  Jostedal  table-land,  an  un- 
broken glacier  of  five  hundred  square  miles  ;  then  descended  the  Jos- 
tedal itself  to  its  opening  on  the  Sogne  fjord — five  days  of  extreme 
hardship,  with  no  other  food  than  flatbrod  (very  coarse  oatcake),  and 
bilberries  gathered  on  the  way,  varied  on  one  occasion  with  the  luxury 
of  two  raw  turnips.  Then  I  reached  a  comparatively  luxurious  station 
(Ronnei),  where  ham  and  egs  and  claret  were  obtainable.  The  first 
glass  of  claret  produced  an  effect  that  alarmed  me — a  craving  for  more 
and  for  stronger  drink,  that  was  almost  irresistible.  I  finished  a  bot- 
tle of  St.  Julien,  and  nothing  but  a  violent  effort  of  will  prevented  me 
from  then  ordering  brandy. 

I  attribute  this  to  the  exhaustion  consequent  upon  the  excessive 
work  and  insufficient  unsavory  food  of  the  previous  five  days  ;  have 
made  many  subsequent  observations  on  the  victims  of  alcohol,  and 
have  no  doubt  that  overwork  and  scanty,  tasteless  food  are  the  primary 
source  of  the  craving  for  strong  drink  that  so  largely  prevails  with 
such  deplorable  results  among  the  class  that  is  the  most  exposed  to 
such  privation.  I  do  not  say  that  this  is  the  only  source  of  such 
depraved  appetite.  It  may  also  be  engendered  by  the  opposite  ex- 
treme of  excessive  luxurious  pandering  to  general  sensuality. 

The  practical  inference  suggested  by  this  experience  and  these 
observations  is,  that  speech-making,  pledge-signing,  and  blue-ribbon 
missions  can  only  effect  temporary  results,  unless  supplemented  by 
satisfying  the  natural  appetite  of  hungry  people  by  supplies  of  food 
that  is  not  only  nutritious,  but  savory  and  varied.  Such  food  need  be 
no  more  expensive  than  that  which  is  commonly  eaten  by  the  poorest 
of  Englishmen,  but  it  must  be  far  better  cooked. 

Comparing  the  domestic  economy  of  the  poorer  classes  of  our  coun- 
tiymen  with  that  of  the  corresponding  classes  in  France  and  Italy 
(with  both  of  which  I  am  well  acquainted),  I  find  that  the  raw  ma- 
terial of  the  dietary  of  the  French  and  Italians  is  inferior  to  that  of 
the  English,  but  a  far  better  result  is  obtained  by  better  cookery. 
The  Italian  peasantry  are  better  fed  than  the  French.  In  the  poor 
osterias  above  referred  to,  not  only  the  Friday  salt  fish,  but  all  the 


THE   CHEMISTRY   OF  COOKERY,  231 

other  viands,  were  incomparably  better  cooked  than  in  corresponding 
places  in  England,  and  the  variety  was  greater  than  is  common  in 
many  middle-class  houses.  The  ordinary  supper  of  the  "roughs" 
above  named  was  of  three  courses:  first  a  minestraj  i.  e.,  a  soup  of 
some  kind,  continually  varied,  or  a  savory  dish  of  macaroni  ;  then  a 
ragout  or  savory  stew  of  vegetables  and  meat,  followed  by  an  excel- 
lent salad  ;  the  beverage  a  flask  of  thin  but  genuine  wine.  When  I 
come  to  the  subject  of  cheese,  I  will  describe  their  mode  of  cooking 
and  using  it. 

My  first  walk  through  Italy  extended  from  the  Alps  to  Naples,  and 
from  Messina  to  Syracuse.  I  thus  spent  nearly  a  year  in  Italy,  during 
a  season  of  great  abundance,  and  never  saw  a  drunken  Italian.  A  few 
years  after  this  I  walked  through  a  part  of  Lombardy,  and  found  the 
little  osterias  as  bad  as  English  beer-shops  or  low  public-houses.  It 
was  a  period  of  scarcity  and  trouble  ;  "  the  three  plagues,"  as  they 
called  them — the  potato-disease,  the  silk-worm  fungus,  and  the  grape- 
disease — had  brought  about  general  privation.  There  was  no  wine  at 
all ;  potato-spirit  and  coarse  beer  had  taken  its  place.  Monotonous 
polenta,  a  sort  of  paste  or  porridge  made  from  Indian-corn  meal,  to 
which  they  give  the  contemptuous  name  of  miserahile,  was  then  the 
general  food,  and  much  drunkenness  was  the  natural  consequence. 

XIX. 

Referring  to  No.  17  of  this  series  (November  "  Monthly  "),  a  cor- 
respondent who  has  just  returned  from  Norway,  where  he  followed  the 
route  of  my  last  trip  there,  reminds  me  of  the  marvelous  congregation 
of  sea-birds  that  assembles  on  some  of  the  headlands  of  the  Arctic 
Ocean,  and  suggests  that  egg-oil  might  be  obtained  in  large  quantities 
there.  He  quotes  from  the  work  of  P.  L.  Simmonds  on  "  Waste  Prod- 
ucts "  the  following  :  "  In  the  Exhibition  of  1862  the  Russian  Com- 
mission showed  egg-oil  in  large  quantities  and  of  various  qualities,  the 
best  so  fine  as  to  far  excel  olive-oil  for  cooking  purposes  "  ;  but  it  was 
not  sufficiently  cheap  for  general  use. 

Among  the  places  indicated  by  Mr.  Grimwood  Taylor,  the  most 
remarkable  is  Sverholt  Klubben,  a  grand  headland  between  the  North 
Cape  and  Nord  Kyn,  rising  precipitously  from  the  sea  to  a  height  of 
above  one  thousand  feet.  The  face  of  the  rock  weathers  perpendicu- 
larly, forming  a  number  of  ledges  about  two  or  three  feet  above  each 
other,  and  extending  laterally  for  more  than  a  mile.  On  the  two 
occasions  when  I  passed  it,  the  whole  of  this  amphitheatre  was  occu- 
pied by  a  species  of  gull,  the  "  kittiwake,"  perched  on  the  ledges,  their 
white  breasts  showing  like  the  shirt-fronts  of  an  audience  of  a  million 
or  two  of  male  pygmies  in  evening  dress.  On  blowing  the  steam- 
whistle,  the  rock  appeared  to  advance,  and  presently  the  sky  was  dark- 
ened by  a  living  cloud,  and  every  other  sound  was  extinguished  by  a 
roar  of  wings  and  the  harsh,  wailing  screams  of  a  number  of  birds  that 


232  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

I  dare  not  estimate.  The  celebrated  bird  colony  on  the  Bass  Rock  is 
but  a  covey  compared  with  this. 

The  inhabitants  of  the  little  human  settlement  in  the  Bay  of  Sver- 
holt  derive  much  of  their  subsistence  from  the  eggs  of  these  birds  ; 
but  whether  they  could  gather  a  few  millions  for  oil- making,  without 
repeating  the  story  of  the  goose  and  the  golden  eggs,  is  questionable. 
The  eider-ducks  that  inhabit  some  of  the  low  mossy  islands  thereabout, 
are  guarded  by  strict  legislative  regulations  during  their  incubation 
period,  lest  they  should  emigrate,  and  the  down-harvest  be  sacrificed. 

I  now  come  to  the  subject  of  stewing,  more  especially  the  stewing 
of  flesh  food.  Some  of  my  readers  may  think  that  I  ought  to  have 
treated  this  in  connection  with  the  boiling  of  meat,  as  boiling  and 
stewing  are  commonly  regarded  as  mere  modifications  of  the  same  pro- 
cess. According  to  my  mode  of  regarding  the  subject,  i.  e.,  with  ref- 
erence to  the  object  to  be  attained,  these  are  opposite  processes. 

The  object  in  the  so-called  "  boiling  "  of,  say,  a  leg  of  mutton  is  to 
raise  the  temperature  of  the  meat  throughout  just  up  to  the  cooking 
temperature  (see  Nos.  3  and  4)  in  such  a  manner  that  it  shall  as  nearly 
as  possible  retain  all  its  juices  ;  the  hot  water  merely  operating  as  a 
vehicle  or  medium  for  conveying  the  heat. 

In  stewing  nearly  all  this  is  reversed.  The  juices  are  to  be  ex- 
tracted more  or  less  completely,  and  the  water  is  required  to  act  as  a 
solvent  as  well  as  a  heat-conveyer.  Instead  of  the  meat  itself  sur- 
rounding and  enveloping  the  juices  as  it  should  when  boiled,  roasted, 
grilled,  or  fried,  we  demand  in  a  stew  that  the  juices  shall  surround 
or  envelop  the  meat.  In  some  cases  the  separation  of  the  juices  is  the 
sole  object,  as  in  the  preparation  of  certain  soups  and  gravies,  of  which 
"  beef-tea "  may  be  taken  as  a  typical  example.  Extractum,  Carnis, 
or  "  Liebig's  Extract  of  Meat,"  is  beef -tea  (or  mutton-tea)  concentrated 
by  evaporation. 

The  juices  of  lean  meat  may  be  extracted  very  completely  without 
cooking  the  meat  at  all,  merely  by  mincing  it  and  then  placing  it  in 
cold  water.  Maceration  is  the  proper  name  for  this  treatment.  The 
philosophy  of  this  is  interesting,  and  so  little  understood  in  the  kitchen 
that  I  must  explain  its  rudiments. 

If  two  liquids  capable  of  mixing  together,  but  of  different  densities, 
be  placed  in  the  same  vessel,  the  denser  at  the  bottom,  they  will  mix 
together  in  defiance  of  gravitation,  the  heavy  liquid  rising  and  spread- 
ing itself  throughout  the  lighter,  and  the  lighter  descending  and  diffus- 
ing itself  through  the  heavier. 

Thus,  concentrated  sulphuric  acid  (oil  of  vitriol),  which  has  nearly 
double  the  density  of  water,  may  be  placed  under  water  by  pouring 
water  into  a  tall  glass  jar,  and  then  carefully  pouring  the  acid  down  a 
funnel  with  a  long  tube,  the  bottom  end  of  which  touches  the  bottom 
of  the  jar.  At  first  the  heavy  liquid  pushes  up  the  lighter,  and  its 
upper  surface  may  be  distinctly  seen  with  that  of  the  lighter  resting 


THE   CHEMISTRY  OF  COOKERY.  233 

upon  it.  This  is  better  shown  if  the  water  be  colored  by  a  blue  tinct- 
ure of  litmus,  which  is  reddened  by  the  acid.  A  red  stratum  indicates 
the  boundaries  of  the  two  liquids.  Gradually  the  reddening  proceeds 
upward  and  downward,  the  whole  of  the  water  changes  from  blue  to 
red,  and  the  acid  becomes  tinged. 

Graham  worked  for  many  years  upon  the  determination  of  the 
laws  of  this  diffusion  and  the  rates  at  which  different  liquids  diffused 
into  each  other.  His  method  was  to  fill  small  jars  of  uniform  size  and 
shape  (about  four  ounces  capacity)  with  the  saline  or  other  dense  so- 
lution, place  upon  the  ground  mouth  of  the  jar  a  plate-glass  cover, 
then  immerse  it,  when  filled,  in  a  cylindrical  glass  vessel  containing 
about  twenty  ounces  of  distilled  water.  The  cover  being  very  carefully 
removed,  diffusion  was  allowed  to  proceed  for  a  given  time,  and  then  by 
analysis  the  amount  of  transfer  into  the  distilled  water  was  determined. 

I  must  resist  the  temptation  to  expound  the  very  interesting  results 
of  these  researches,  merely  stating  that  they  prove  this  diffusion  to  be 
no  mere  accidental  mixing,  but  an  action  that  proceeds  with  a  regu- 
larity reducible  to  simple  mathematical  laws.  One  curious  fact  I  must 
mention,  viz.,  that,  on  comparing  the  solutions  of  a  number  of  differ- 
ent salts,  those  which  crystallize  in  the  same  forms  have  similar  rates 
of  diffusion.  The  law  that  bears  the  most  directly  upon  cookery  is 
that  "the  quantity  of  any  substance  diffused  from  a  solution  of  uni- 
form strength  increases  as  the  temperature  rises."  The  application 
of  this  will  be  seen  presently. 

It  may  be  supposed  that,  if  the  jar  used  in  Graham's  diffusion  ex- 
periments were  tied  over  with  a  mechanically  air-tight  and  water-tight 
membrane,  brine  or  other  saline  solution  thus  confined  in  the  jar  could 
not  diffuse  itself  into  the  pure  water  above  and  around  it ;  people 
who  are  satisfied  with  anything  that "  stands  to  reason  "  would  be  quite 
sure  that  a  bladder  which  resists  the  passage  of  water,  even  when  the 
water  is  pressed  up  to  the  bursting-point,  can  not  be  permeable  to  a 
most  gentle  and  spontaneous  flow  of  the  same  water.  The  true  phi- 
losopher, however,  never  trusts  to  any  reasoning,  not  even  mathemati- 
cal demonstration,  until  its  conclusions  are  verified  by  observations 
and  experiment.  In  this  case  all  rational  preconceptions  or  mathe- 
matical calculations  based  upon  the  amount  of  attractive  force  exerted 
between  the  particles  of  the  different  liquids  are  outraged  by  the  facts. 

If  a  stout,  well-tied  bladder  that  would  burst  rather  than  allow  a 
drop  of  water  to  be  squeezed  mechanically  through  it  be  partially 
filled  with  a  solution  of  common  washing-soda,  and  then  immersed  in 
distilled  water,  the  soda  will  make  its  way  out  of  the  bladder  by  pass- 
ing through  its  walls,  and  the  pure  water  will  go  in  at  the  same  time  ; 
for  if,  after  some  time  is  allowed,  the  outer  water  be  tested  by  dipping 
into  it  a  strip  of  red  litmus-paper,  it  will  be  turned  blue,  showing  the 
presence  of  the  alkali  therein,  and,  if  the  contents  of  the  bladder  be 
weighed  or  measured,  they  will  be  found  to  have  increased  by  the  in- 


234  ^^^  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

flow  of  fresh  water.  This  inflow  is  called  endosmosis,  and  the  outflow 
of  the  solution  is  called  exosmosis.  If  an  India-rubber  bottle  be  filled 
with  water  and  immersed  in  alcohol  or  ether,  the  endosmosis  of  the 
spirit  will  be  so  powerfully  exerted  as  to  distend  the  bottle  consid- 
erably. If  the  bottle  be  filled  with  alcohol  or  ether  and  surrounded 
by  water,  it  will  nearly  empty  itself. 

The  force  exerted  by  this  action  is  displayed  by  the  rising  of  the 
sap  from  the  rootlets  of  a  forest  giant  to  the  cells  of  its  topmost  leaves. 
Not  only  plants,  but  animals  also,  are  complex  osmotic  machines. 
There  is  scarcely  any  vital  function — if  any  at  all — in  which  this  os- 
mosis does  not  play  an  important  part.  I  have  no  doubt  that  the 
mental  effort  I  am  at  this  moment  exerting  is  largely  dependent  upon 
the  endosmosis  and  exosmosis  that  is  proceeding  through  the  delicate 
membranes  of  some  of  the  many  miles  of  blood-vessels  that  ramify 
throughout  the  gray  matter  of  my  brain.  But  I  must  wander  no  fur- 
ther beyond  the  kitchen,  having  already  said  enough  to  indicate  that 
exosmosis  is  fundamental  to  the  philosophy  of  beef-tea  extraction,  and 
reserve  further  particulars  for  my  next  paper. 

PosTSCEiPT, — I  feel  bound  to  step  aside  from  the  proper  subject  of 
these  papers  to  make  public  acknowledgment  of  an  act  of  honorable 
generosity,  especially  as  many  hard  things  have  been  said  concerning 
American  plagiarism  of  the  work  of  British  authors.  As  everybody 
knows,  we  have  no  legal  rights  in  America,  and  any  publisher  there 
may  appropriate  as  much  of  our  work  as  he  chooses.  American  leffis- 
lators  are  responsible  for  this.  Nevertheless,  I  received,  a  short  time 
since,  a  letter  from  Mr.  E.  L.  Youmans,  of  New  York,  inclosing  a 
check  for  £20,  as  an  honor arium^  in  consideration  of  the  fact  that  these 
papers  are  being  reprinted  in  "The  Popular  Science  Monthly."  Shortly 
before  this,  a  similar  remittance  was  sent  from  another  publishing  firm 
(Messrs.  Funk  <fc  Wagnalls),  who  have  reprinted  "  Science  in  Short 
Chapters."  These  facts  indicate  that  some  American  publishers  have 
larger  organs  of  conscientiousness  than  the  present  majority  of  Ameri- 
ican  legislators. 

I  am  told  that  another  American  publisher  has  issued  another  re- 
print of  "  Chemistry  of  Cookery  "  without  making  any  remittance  ; 
but,  as  Mr.  Proctor  would  say,  "  this  is  a  detail." — Knowledge. 


YINOIJS  SUPEESTITIONS. 

By  Dr.  TH.  BODIN. 


ALTHOUGH  the  world  no  longer  believes  in  the  gods,  demi-gods, 
and  heroes  with  which  the  ancients  and  our  pagan  ancestors  ani- 
mated nearly  every  object,  old-country  people  still  retain  a  consider- 
able relic  of  heathenism  in  the  shape  of  myths  of  a  host  of  spirits  of 


VINOUS  SUPERSTITIONS,  235 

nature  which  are  all  the  time  at  work  to  produce  prosperity  and  suc- 
cess or  destruction. 

In  Alsace,  the  eye  of  the  traveler  is  gladdened  by  the  view  of  the 
picturesque  vine-lands  which  stretch  in  almost  unbroken  succession 
along  the  slopes  of  the  Vosges  and  Jura  Mountains,  heavy  with  hand- 
some clusters  of  grapes.  We  can  hardly  wonder  that  the  country  peo- 
ple, feeling  a  similar  delight,  but  one  modified  according  to  their  dif- 
ferent habit  of  thought,  should  attribute  the  prosperity  of  their  vine- 
crops  to  higher  powers  ;  aud  it  is  easily  explainable  that  in  their 
childish  fancies  they,  half  in  earnest,  half  in  humor,  allow  these  genii 
of  old  to  continue  to  live  and  do  their  beneficent  work.  Especially 
characteristic  of  these  children  of  Bacchus,  to  which  a  variety  of  most 
pleasant  legends  are  attached,  are  prophecies  respecting  the  success  or 
failure  of  the  next  vintage,  predictions  that  make  themselves  known 
by  visible  or  audible  signs. 

Thus,  in  the  spring,  when  the  air  is  scented  with  the  fragrance  of 
the  blossoms,  and  everything  points  to  an  abundant  vintage,  the  people 
believe  they  can  hear  in  the  hill  at  Brunstatt  the  "  Wigigerle  "  fid- 
dling lustily  to  the  accompaniment  of  ringing  glasses  and  dancing. 
If,  however,  the  vintner's  prospects  for  the  year  are  dull,  the  smell  of 
the  blossoms  is  only  faint,  and  the  attentive  listener  can  only  occa- 
sionally hear  the  sound  of  the  strings,  while  the  hill  seems  empty  and 
desolate. 

A  pendant  to  the  jolly  "  Wigigerle  "  (wine-fiddler)  is  the  "  White 
Lady  of  Paulinus  Castle"  who  haunts  the  region  of  Weissenburg. 
She  is  believed  to  wander  at  night  through  the  vines,  and  occasionally 
to  make  her  appearance  in  the  day-time.  In  case  the  year  is  to  be  un- 
prosperous,  she  shows  herself  rarely,  closely  veiled,  bearing  a  bunch 
of  hidden  keys,  wearing  a  sad  face,  and  weeping  much  ;  but,  if  the 
vintage  is  to  be  rich,  she  greets  the  vine-dressers  cheerily,  and  rattles 
her  keys  gayly  as  she  passes  through  the  gardens. 

The  Alsatians  also  regard  as  an  infallible  wine-oracle  the  cellar  of 
Arnsberg  Castle,  which  belongs  to  the  family  of  the  Fesslers,  a  race  of 
sturdy  drinkers  who  became  extinct  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  is 
popularly  called  the  Devil's  Castle.  The  immense  stocks  of  wine  sup- 
posed to  lie  in  the  deep  and  spacious  caverns  have  not  been  touched 
for  centuries  ;  for  the  most  industrious  search  has  failed  to  discover  a 
door  or  any  way  by  which  an  entrance  to  them  can  be  forced.  In 
good  seasons,  a  sweet  odor  of  wine  arises  from  the  ground  at  the  time 
of  the  blooming  of  the  vines,  and  diffuses  itself  around. 

St.  Hunna,  formerly  one  of  the  richest  ladies  of  Alsace,  is  honored 
as  the  patron  of  the  poor,  thirsty  topers  of  the  town  of  Hunnasweihen, 
in  bad  years.  This  pious  woman,  who  was  a  friend  and  comforter  of 
the  poor  in  the  seventh  century,  sometimes  condescended  so  far  as  to 
wash  the  clothes  of  her  maids,  whence  she  got  the  name  of  the  saintly 
laundress.     A  copious  spring,  flowing  through  four  outlets,  has  been 


236  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

consecrated  to  her  memory,  and  is  known  far  and  wide  as  the  Hunna 
Spring.  It  occasionally  happens  in  years  when  wine  is  scarce,  so  the 
story  runs,  that,  when  the  people  go  to  the  spring  of  mornings  and 
evenings  to  water  their  horses  and  cattle,  wine  flows  out  of  all  the  out- 
lets ;  and  those  who  can  boast  that  they  have  enjoyed  this  wine  say 
that  it  is  better  than  any  other. 

A  St.  Morand  is  honored  as  the  patron  of  the  vintners  of  a  dis- 
trict near  Worms,  in  consequence  of  a  legend  that  the  commune  was 
once  blessed,  in  answer  to  his  prayers,  with  an  unusually  abundant 
harvest.  Two  portraits  of  him  may  be  seen  in  the  church  at  Stein- 
bach,  in  one  of  which  he  is  represented  as  holding  a  bunch  of  grapes 
and  pressing  out  the  juice  with  his  hand. 

The  property  is  attributed  to  several  springs  in  Alsace,  of  flowing 
only  when  the  harvests  are  to  be  abundant. 

According  to  the  superstition  in  another  region,  if  one  will  go  to  the 
Geisbrunn  of  Freiburg,  in  Breisgau,  at  midnight  on  New  Year's,  he 
will  find  a  little  man  there,  who  in  silence  will  give  some  very  signifi- 
cant tokens.  If  the  year  is  to  be  a  good  one,  he  will  bear  three  ears 
of  corn  in  one  hand  and  three  bunches  of  grapes  in  the  other,  and  will 
make  friendly  gestures.  If  the  year  is  going  to  be  bad,  he  will  have 
a  sour  face  and  empty  hands. 

The  vineyard  is  surrounded,  in  Germany  and  other  countries,  by 
numerous  poetic  superstitions.  The  Swabians  say  that  the  grapes  will 
receive  a  fine  flavor  if  the  vines  are  shaken  on  St.  John's  day.  The 
Bavarians  have  a  proverb  that,  if  one  would  have  good  wine,  he  must 
write  on  his  cask,  "  O  taste  and  see  that  the  Lord  is  good  "  (Psalm 
xxxiv,  8)  ;  and  the  South-Germans  have  a  proverb,  "If  one  would 
make  good  vinegar  from  wine,  he  must  throw  the  names  of  three 
witches  into  it." 

In  Switzerland,  the  country  people  freshen  up  their  stale  wine  by 
laying  dead  toads  on  the  bung-holes  of  the  casks.  The  ancient  Ger- 
mans were  mindful  of  their  gods  at  their  feasts,  when  they  strove  to 
distinguish  themselves  as  great  drinkers  ;  and  the  pious  custom  of 
drinking  to  the  health  of  their  divinities  was  binding  among  them. 
The  North-Germans  were  accustomed  at  certain  feasts  to  empty  a  cup 
to  Bragi,  and  by  that  act  to  assume  a  promise  to  emulate  the  bold 
deeds  of  that  god.  Such  promises  were  irrevocable.  Bargains  were 
therefore  bound  by  a  kind  of  drink-offering  in  order  to  obtain  the 
favor  of  the  gods.  At  the  heir's-feast  bumpers  were  drunk  to  the 
memory  of  the  departing  one  ;  and  on  other  occasions  glasses  were 
emptied  in  honor  of  those  who  were  absent.  These  customs,  from 
which  our  toasts  appear  to  be  derived,  were  not  abolished  in  Christian 
times  :  only  the  saints  succeeded  to  the  rights  of  the  gods.  St.  Mar- 
tin, it  is  said,  at  his  own  desire,  took  the  place  of  Donar  ;  St.  Gertrude 
received  the  honors  that  had  been  paid  to  Freya  ;  and  Njord  and  Frey 
appear  to  have  surrendered  their  functions  to  the  first  martyr  of  the 


VIKOUS  SUPERSTITIONS.  237 

Church,  St.  Stephen.  At  Freiburg  the  Johannites  were  accustomed  to 
hang  a  stone,  representing  one  of  those  thrown  at  Stephen,  to  a  silver 
chain.  Wine  was  poured  upon  the  stone  and  then  given  to  the  faith- 
ful to  drink.  Memorial  drinks  to  St.  Michael  and  St.  John  the  Evan- 
gelist were  also  very  common.  Departing  guests  and  travelers  were 
accustomed  to  drink  "  John's  blessing "  as  well  as  in  memory  of  St. 
Gertrude  ;  and  a  number  of  mythical  stories  are  associated  with  these 
draughts. 

St.  Gertrude  is  said  to  have  drunk  a  St.  John's  draught  with  a 
knight  who  had  entered  into  a  pact  with  the  devil,  and  thereby  to 
have  delivered  him.  Since  St.  Gertrude  was  the  patron  of  sailors,  and 
her  chapel  at  Bonn,  near  the  Rhine,  was  much  visited  by  seafaring 
people,  it  is  easy  to  explain  why  the  draughts  to  her  honor  were  drunk 
in  a  glass  shaped  like  a  ship.  It  is  still  customary  in  some  Roman 
Catholic  churches  to  bless  a  cup  of  wine  on  St.  John  the  Evangelist's 
day  (the  27th  of  December),  and  commend  to  the  people  the  memory 
of  the  beloved  disciple.  These  customs  are  not  observed  outside  of 
Germany.  In  Catholic  Germany  it  is  usual  to  celebrate  a  first  festival 
at  the  house  with  the  wine  (generally  red  wine)  which  has  been  blessed 
at  the  church,  and  to  give  to  the  whole  family  to  drink  out  of  the  same 
cup  ;  a  few  drops  are  even  poured  out  for  the  baby  in  the  cradle.  Part 
of  what  is  left  is  preserved,  and  part  is  poured  into  the  cask,  to  impart 
its  blessing  to  what  is  there  and  turn  all  evil  spells  from  it.  Specu- 
lative Swabian  hosts  often  consecrate  large  quantities  of  wine  for  the 
entertainment  of  their  guests  and  neighbors  ;  and  the  popular  fancy 
prevails  that,  if  such  of  this  wine  as  has  been  kept  over  the  whole 
year  is  drunk  on  the  annivesary  of  the  day  of  its  consecration,  it  will 
bring  recovery  to  the  sick,  and  protection  and  strength  to  those  who 
are  about  to  start  on  a  journey.  Engaged  couples  taste  this  wine  at 
their  betrothals,  when  it  is  offered  to  them  by  the  priest  after  having 
blessed  it.  If  one  drinks  it  on  the  day  it  is  consecrated,  he  is  secured 
for  the  whole  year  against  poisoning,  witchery,  and  lightning.  It  is 
an  old  Bavarian  custom  for  the  father  to  drink  a  "  John's  blessing " 
before  departing  on  a  journey,  and  then,  swinging  the  cup  backward 
over  his  head,  to  cast  a  few  drops  on  the  ground.  The  "  John's  bless- 
ing" on  St.  John  the  Baptist's  day,  June  24th,  which  the  South-Ger- 
man Protestants  observe  socially,  without  making  a  church  festival  of 
it,  is  doubtless  related  to  the  Catholic  custom. 

The  John's  blessings  have  been  referred  to  the  cup  drunk  by  the 
disciples,  or  perhaps  to  the  wedding  at  Cana  of  Galilee  ;  but  we  think 
we  have  shown  that  they  are  derived  from  the  old  heathen  thank- 
offerings,  and  the  sacramental  wine  has  probably  been  also  brought 
within  the  scope  of  the  usage  by  popular  fancy.  Many  healing  powers 
are  attached  to  this  wine  in  some  places,  and  it  is  sometimes  called  in 
as  the  last  and  surest  remedy  in  extreme  cases.  That  industrious  in- 
vestigator of  folk-lore,  M.  Toppen,  says  on  this  subject  in  his  work  on 


238  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

the  superstitions  of  the  Masures,  that  "  consecrated  communion- wine 
is  used  in  all  diseases  as  the  most  sovereign  and  last  resort.  The 
Masures  often  ask  their  pastors  for  it.  If  they  will  not  give  it  to 
them,  they  go  to  the  Catholic  priests,  who  grant  their  requests  without 
hesitation.  They  frequently  have  the  wine  blessed  at  the  Catholic  con- 
fessionals ;  and  some  of  them  think  that  communion-wine  from  Catho- 
lic churches  is  more  efficacious  than  that  from  evangelical  churches. 
Nevertheless,  Catholics  sometimes  go  to  evangelical  pastors  to  get 
their  communion-wine."  Herr  C.  G.  Hintz,  another  writer  on  folk- 
lore, mentions  it  as  a  time-honored  custom  in  old  Prussia  to  put  a 
bottle  of  wine  on  the  altar,  so  that  it  may  be  blessed  at  the  sacra- 
mental service. 

The  beliefs  on  this  subject  are  in  some  cases  contradictory  :  thus, 
while  the  Lauenburg  peasant  regards  the  communion-wine  as  a  sov- 
ereign cure,  and  calls  in  the  priest  when  he  finds  the  doctor  too  dear, 
or  that  his  remedies  fail,  the  people  of  Oldenburg  and  East  Prussia 
put  off  the  taking  of  the  sick-bed  communion  as  long  as  possible,  for 
fear  that  it  will  be  followed  by  a  speedy  death. — Translated  for  the 
Popular  Science  Monthly  from  Die  Natur, 


MALAKIA  AND   THE  PEOGEESS  OF  MEDICINE.* 

THE  attempt  to  estimate  the  successes  of  medicine  on  the  grand 
scale  is  met  at  the  outset  by  a  source  of  fallacy  which  can  not 
well  be  eliminated.  Medicine  has  certainly  a  share,  and  it  may  be  a 
very  large  share,  in  the  general  lengthening  of  life,  in  the  decrease  of 
pain  and  suffering,  and  in  the  increase  of  working-power  ;  but  other 
influences,  besides  the  thought  and  endeavor  of  the  medical  profession, 
have  helped  to  bring  about  those  results.  A  brief  consideration  of 
malarial  fever  (including  simple  ague  and  the  more  deadly  tropical 
forms),  of  the  causes  that  have  made  it  less  common  at  home,  and 
more  amenable  to  treatment  everywhere,  and  of  the  views  entertained 
about  it,  will  serve  to  show  how  various  are  the  forces  that  make  for 
improved  well-being,  and  how  checkered  the  medical  record  has  been. 
No  single  cause  of  premature  death,  of  life-long  misery,  and  of  loss 
of  working-power,  has  ever  equaled  malaria.  There  is  some  reason 
to  think  that  it  was  from  personal  experience  of  the  ague,  and  the 
hepatic  derangements  consequent  on  it,  that  Descartes  got  his  pro- 
found conviction  of  ill-health  being  the  greatest  of  all  hindrances 
to  the  wisdom  and  capability  of  the  individual.  There  can,  at  least, 
be  hardly  any  question  that  malaria  is,  and  always  has    been,  the 

*  Abstracted  from  an  article  entitled  "  The  Progress  of  Medicine,"  in  the  "  Quarterly 
Review"for  July,  1883. 


MALARIA  AND    THE  PROGRESS    OF  MEDICINE.  239 

largest  single  element  in  the  miseries  of  mankind.  Fortunately, 
malarial  fever  has  almost  disappeared  from  Great  Britain,  and  it  has 
hardly  existed  in  some  of  our  colonies,  particularly  the  Australasian  ; 
it  has  decreased  considerably  in  many  parts  of  Northern  Europe  and 
the  United  States.  Again,  there  is  a  drug,  cinchona-bark,  with  its 
products,  which  has  a  great  power  over  the  course  of  the  fever. 
The  cultivation  of  the  cinchona-tree  is  now  a  great  industry  both  in 
the  Eastern  and  Western  Hemispheres,  and  whatever  quinine  or  other 
products  of  the  bark  can  do  for  malarious  sickness  will  be,  at  no 
distant  time,  a  benefit  that  may  be  shared  by  all  but  the  very  poor- 
est and  the  races  least  accessible  to  civilization.  Lastly,  the  symp- 
toms, course,  and  complications  of  the  intermittent  and  remittent  fe- 
vers which  malaria  causes  are  known  with  all  the  precision  that  can 
be  wished.  What  share,  then,  has  medicine  had  in  dealing  with  this 
destroyer  of  human  happiness  in  the  past,  and  what  is  the  attitude 
of  medicine  toward  malaria  at  present  ? 

The  almost  total  extinction  of  malaria  at  home  and  its  decrease 
abroad  have  been  brought  about  in  the  ordinary  course  of  draining 
and  cultivating  the  soil,  and  by  a  wise  attention  to  the  planting  or 
conservation  of  trees.  There  is  a  characteristic  passage  at  the  end 
of  Kingsley's  novel  "  Hereward,"  in  which  he  commemorates  his  hero 
as  the  first  of  the  new  English  "who,  by  the  inspiration  of  God, 
began  to  drain  the  fens."  The  draining  of  the  fens  and  all  such 
achievements  throughout  the  world  have  brought  better  health  with 
them,  but  neither  the  doctors  nor  even  the  sanitarians  have  been  the 
primary  moving  forces.  Again,  the  medicinal  uses  of  cinchona-bark 
were  known  first  to  the  indigenous  inhabitants  of  the  Peruvian  Andes, 
where  the  trees  are  native  and  where  the  ague  is  common  ;  and  it  was 
the  Jesuits  who  introduced  it  widely  into  Europe  (1630)  and  the  East. 
The  story  of  the  reception  of  this  remedy  by  the  medical  profession 
has  its  unpleasant  side.  The  arch-stupidities  of  the  Paris  faculty, 
who  still  live  for  the  amusement  of  the  world  in  Moliere's  comedies, 
opposed  it  with  their  united  weight.  Court  physicians  in  other  Eu- 
ropean capitals  than  Paris  assailed  it  with  abuse,  and  no  one  wrote 
more  nonsense  about  it  than  Gideon  Harvey,  the  physician  of  Charles 
II.  The  new  remedy,  apart  from  its  merits,  fell  in  with  the  views  of 
the  Paracelsists,  and  disagreed  with  the  views  of  the  Galenists,  and 
was  recommended  or  condemned  accordingly.  Even  the  great  Stahl, 
nearly  a  century  after  cinchona  was  first  brought  to  Spain,  would 
have  none  of  it,  and,  in  his  servitude  to  his  theories,  he  even  went  so 
far  as  to  make  use  of  Gideon  Harvey's  ignorant  tirade  against  the 
drug  by  reprinting  it  in  German.  As  late  as  1729,  an  excellent  phy- 
sician of  Breslau,  Kanold,  whose  writings  on  epidemics  are  still  val- 
uable for  their  comprehensive  grasp,  declared  in  his  last  illness  (a 
"  pernicious  quartan  ")  that  he  would  sooner  die  than  make  use  of  a 
remedy  which  went  so  direct  against  his  principles  !     The  world,  of 


240  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

course,  gave  little  heed  to  these  inane  disputations  ;  the  value  of 
cinchona  was  beyond  the  power  of  the  faculty  either  to  discover  or  to 
obscure.  But,  on  behalf  of  the  faculty,  it  remains  to  add  that  cin- 
chona found  powerful  advocates  within  it  from  the  first  ;  and  it  will 
not  surprise  any  one  to  be  told  that  these  were  generally  the  men 
whom  medical  history,  on  other  grounds  as  well,  lias  extolled  or  at 
any  rate  saved  from  oblivion.  Such  were  Sydenham  and  Morton  in 
London,  Albertini  in  Bologna,  Peyer  in  Schaffhausen,  and  Werlhof 
in  Hanover.  The  therapeutic  position  of  cinchona  was  firmly  estab- 
lished by  Torti's  treatise  on  the  treatment  of  periodical  fevers,  pub- 
lished at  Modena  in  1709. 

The  next  step  in  the  relief  of  malarious  sickness  on  the  grand 
scale  was  the  extraction  of  the  alkaloid  quinine  from  the  cinchona- 
bark.  The  powdered  bark  was  not  only  very  unpalatable,  but  it  was 
cumbrous  to  carry  and  dispense,  and,  although  the  principle  of  the 
remedy  remained  the  same,  it  has  proved  of  infinitely  greater  service  in 
the  form  of  quinine,  and  in  the  form  of  the  cheap  alkaloidal  mixture 
known  in  Bengal  as  "quinetum."  The  first  extraction  of  an  alkaloid 
was  in  the  case  of  morphia,  from  opium,  in  1805  ;  the  discoverer  was 
an  apothecary  of  Hameln,  who  was  rewarded  rather  better  than  the 
celebrated  piper  of  that  town,  for  the  French  Academy  of  Sciences 
voted  him  two  thousand  francs.  Quinine  was  discovered  in  1820  by 
the  French  chemists  Pelletier  and  Caventou.  The  sciences  and  arts 
of  botany  and  practical  forestry,  of  chemistry  and  practical  pharmacy, 
are  now  all  concerned  in  the  production  of  this  most  invaluable  of 
remedies.  The  commerce  of  the  world  has  taken  cinchona  in  hand, 
and  there  are  now  plantations  of  the  trees  not  unworthy  to  be  named 
beside  those  of  coffee  and  tea.  The  value  of  the  crude  bark  imported 
into  England  alone  in  1882  was  nearly  two  millions  sterling.  The 
original  and  native  cinchona  region  on  the  damp  eastern  slopes  of  the 
Andes  in  Peru  is  still  a  source  of  wealth,  and  a  still  greater  source  of 
wealth  are  the  new  plantations  on  the  Andes  in  Bolivia.  The  Indian 
Government  has  successfully  cultivated  the  bark  on  a  large  scale  in 
the  Nilghiri  Hills  in  Madras,  and  more  recently  at  Darjiling  in  the 
Himalayas  ;  while  a  crowd  of  private  planters  have  followed  in  the 
same  enterprise  in  Coorg,  Travancore,  and  Ceylon.  The  Dutch  Gov- 
ernment, who  were  the  pioneers  of  cinchona  cultivation,  have  found  the 
climate  and  soil  of  Java  well  adapted  for  the  species  and  varieties  of 
trees  most  rich  in  quinine.  Jamaica  is  the  latest  field  to  which  this 
new  and  ever-increasing  industry  has  extended. 

How  does  quinine  control,  modify,  or  cut  short  an  attack  of  ague  ? 
This  is  a  question  with  which  the  commerce  of  the  world  can  not  grap- 
ple, but  only  the  medical  profession  ;  and  the  truth  requires  it  to  be 
said,  that  the  medical  profession  knows  little  of  the  modus  operandi 
of  quinine  in  ague.  Sydenham,  two  hundred  years  ago,  laid  down  the 
two  great  rules  for  the  administration  of  bark  :  to  give  it  after  the 


MALARIA  AND   THE  PROGRESS    OF  MEDICINE.  241 

first  paroxysm,  and  in  the  subsequent  intervals,  and  to  continue  its 
use  as  a  precaution  against  the  recurrence  of  the  fever.  Little  re- 
mained to  be  added  to  these  practical  indications  ;  they  were  empiri- 
cal, indeed — and  they  are  empirical  still.  The  profession  is  not  even 
sure  whether  quinine  acts  by  breaking  the  recurrent  habit  of  ague  (as 
an  anti-periodic),  or  otherwise.  There  are  also  the  most  conflicting 
statements  as  to  whether  the  taking  of  quinine  will  ward  off  the  at- 
tack of  ague  in  passing  through  a  malarious  locality  ;  there  are  a  good 
many  reasons  for  believing  that  quinine  has  no  preventive  or  anticipa- 
tory action  against  the  first  onset  of  a  remittent  or  intermittent  fever, 
but  the  professional  advice  will  probably  be  that  quinine  taken  as  a 
preventive  can  at  least  do  no  harm. 

But  it  is  when  we  leave  the  sphere  of  empirical  experience,  and 
enter  the  physiological  and  pathological  workshops  of  the  profession, 
that  we  realize  most  acutely  how  great  is  the  disproportion,  in  this 
matter  of  malaria,  between  the  opportunities  of  medicine  and  its 
achievements.  Take,  for  example,  the  following  sufficiently  eclectic 
statement  on  the  physiological  actions  of  quinine  : 

Quinia,  CaoHa4N202,  one  of  the  alkaloids  of  cinchona,  in  small  doses  ac- 
celerates the  heart's  action  in  the  warm-blooded  animal ;  in  moderate  doses  it 
slows  it ;  and  in  large  doses  it  may  arrest  it,  and  cause  convulsions  and  death. 
Eesearch  shows  that  its  action  is  essentially  upon  the  central  nervous  system. 
It  destroys  all  microscopic  animal  organisms,  apparently  killing  vibrios,  bacteria, 
and  amcebaa ;  but  it  seems  to  be  without  action  on  humble  organisms  belonging 
to  the  vegetable  kingdom.  It  arrests  the  movements  of  all  kinds  of  protoplasm, 
including  those  of  the  colorless  corpuscles  of  the  blood.  It  arrests  fermentive 
processes  which  depend  on  the  presence  of  animal  or  vegetable  organisms,  but 
it  does  not  interfere  with  the  action  of  digestive  fluids. — (Quain's  "  Dictionary 
of  Medicine,"  p.  35.) 

There  is  here  something  for  everybody  ;  and,  if  we  now  go  to  the 
pathological  workshop,  we  shall  discover  the  beautiful  adaptation  of 
these  varied  actions  of  quinine  to  the  various  opinions  that  are  enter- 
tained of  the  malarious  fevers  over  which  the  drug  has  so  powerful  an 
influence.  Is  malarial  fever  a  fermentive  process,  depending  on  the 
presence  of  animal  or  vegetable  organisms  ?  then  quinine  arrests  such 
processes.  Is  malarial  fever  caused  by  a  profound  disturbance  of  the 
nervous  mechanism  which  regulates  the  animal  heat  ?  then  the  action 
of  quinine  is  "  essentially  upon  the  central  nervous  system.'*  Nothing 
could  be  more  accommodating,  and  nothing  more  unsatisfactory. 

The  theoretical  notions'  about  malaria  form  an  instructive  page  of 
medical  history.  Until  about  1823  it  was  always  thought  to  be  as- 
sociated with  marshes  and  swamps,  but  in  that  year  Dr.  William 
Fergusson  brought  to  England  numerous  proofs  that  it  occurred 
abundantly  in  elevated  and  rocky  regions.  Such  evidences  have  gone 
on  accumulating,  and  it  is  now  well  known  that  malaria  has  no  neces- 
sary connection  with  the  marsh.     But  the  profession  is  still  profoundly 

VOL,  XXIV. — 16 


242  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

impressed  with  the  belief  that  malaria  is  an  actual  or  material  poison- 
ous substance.  To  Homer  it  was  the  arrows  of  Apollo  in  anger,  to 
the  mediaeval  folk-lore  it  was  the  mischief  of  elves  and  sprites  ;  and, 
if  scientific  medicine  does  not  now  permit  us  to  personify  the  malaria, 
it  teaches  us  at  least  to  materialize  it.  Although  the  fevers  which 
malaria  produces  are  quite  unlike  the  fevers  that  are  contagious  or 
communicable,  the  present  scientific  guides  of  the  profession  are  re- 
solved to  find  a  material  virus  or  poison  as  the  cause  of  them.  The 
malarial  poison  was  sought  for,  in  the  early  days  of  chemistry,  among 
the  various  gases  of  the  marsh,  but  the  chemical  search  proved  fruit- 
less. When  the  microscope  came  in,  the  miasm  was  diligently  looked 
for  in  the  soil  of  malarious  localities  and  in  the  vapors  overhanging 
them.  From  1849  to  the  present  year,  some  twenty  different  vege- 
table organisms  or  their  spores,  of  very  various  degrees  of  complexity, 
have  been  described  each  in  its  turn  as  the  malarious  miasm  and  as 
the  specific  cause  of  remittent  and  intermittent  fevers  ;  and  the  quest 
for  a  material  substance  assumed  to  be  the  cause  of  malarial  fever  is 
regarded  with  much  favor  in  the  best  scientific  circles.  Meanwhile  a 
body  of  opinion,  which  takes  due  account  of  all  the  manifold  asso- 
ciated circumstances  of  malaria  throughout  the  world,  has  been  form- 
ing, and  yearly  growing  in  volume,  that  there  is  no  malarious  miasm 
at  all ;  that  "  malaria,"  indeed,  is  a  profound  disorganization  of  the 
nervous  mechanism  that  presides  over  the  temperature  of  the  body ; 
and  that  this  upsetting  of  the  heat-regulating  center  is  likely  to  happen 
when  the  body  has  been  exposed  during  the  day  to  extreme  solar  heat 
and  to  fatigue,  and  exposed  at  sundown  and  in  the  night  to  the  tropi- 
cal or  sub-tropical  chill,  which  will  be  severe  in  proportion  to  the  rapid 
cooling  of  the  ground  and  the  amount  of  vapor  condensed  in  the  low- 
est stratum  of  the  air.  There  is  no  more  beautiful  mechanism  in 
nature  than  that  which  keeps  man's  internal  heat  always  about  98° 
day  and  night,  summer  and  winter,  in  the  Arctic  regions  or  in  the 
tropics  ;  but  even  that  most  wonderful  of  all  self-adapting  pieces  of 
mechanism,  if  it  be  taxed  too  much,  as  by  extremes  of  day  and  night 
temperature,  will  get  out  of  gear  ;  and  a  fever,  still  retaining  some- 
thing of  the  diurnal  periodicity,  will  be  the  result.  No  one  can  read 
the  powerful  criticism  *  of  Surgeon-Major  Oldham,  of  the  Indian  Medi- 
cal Service,  without  discovering  this  rational  explanation  of  malaria 
to  have  the  best  of  the  facts  and  the  best  of  the  logic  on  its  side. 

The  decision  of  this  point  of  theory  one  way  or  another  has  the 
most  momentous  issues,  not  so  much  for  the  treatment  of  malarious 
fever  as  for  its  prevention.  It  is,  in  short,  a  question,  on  the  one 
hand,  of  common  prudence  in  warm  countries,  more  often  moist  than 
arid,  and  more  often  level  than  mountainous,  against  exposure  of  the 
body  to  the  direct  action  of  the  sun's  rays  and  to  the  nightly  chill 

*  "What  is  Malaria?  and  why  is  it  most  intense  in  Hot  Climates?"  London,  ISTl, 
8vo,  pp.  186. 


THE  LOESS-DEPOSITS    OF  NORTHERN  CHINA.   243 

that  follows  ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  of  a  fatalist  doctrine  of  vegetable 
spores  or  organisms  of  the  lowest  grade  making  ceaseless  war  upon 
mankind.  The  world  has  a  way  of  finding  out  the  truth  by  its  ex- 
periences on  the  large  scale.  It  settled  the  inane  theoretical  objec- 
tions to  the  value  of  cinchona-bark,  and  it  will  probably  form  its  own 
opinion  on  the  relative  merits  of  the  vegetable-spore  theory  of  malaria 
and  the  theory  of  exposure  and  climatic  vicissitudes.  It  will  be  a 
regrettable  circumstance  if  in  this  matter  the  profession  has  to  follow 
public  opinion  instead  of  leading  it. 


THE  LOESS-DEPOSITS  OF  IS^OETHEEIsr  CHmA. 

By  FEEDEEICK  W.  WILLIAMS. 

SCIENTISTS  as  well  as  economists  and  statesmen  are  turning  with 
a  scrutiny,  renewed  as  each  year  advances,  toward  the  great  re- 
gion of  middle  Asia — a  territory  which,  if  it  supplies  society  with  im- 
migrants much  too  thrifty  for  the  tastes  of  our  broader-minded  Celtic 
brethren,  bids  fair  in  many  ways  to  furnish  materials  for  scientific 
research  that  can  be  compared  in  interest  to  no  other  portion  of  the 
world's  surface.  Without  delaying  to  mention  here  the  recent  travel- 
ers who  are  rapidly  lessening  the  bounds  of  that  tract,  still  confessed 
to  be  the  least  known  area  of  the  globe,  it  is  our  purpose  to  direct  at- 
tention to  a  geological  phenomenon  among  the  most  important  as  well 
as  peculiar  of  any  hitherto  brought  to  light  in  this  field  of  investiga- 
tion :  we  mean  the  loess-beds  covering  a  great  portion  of  Northern 
China. 

The  term  loess,  now  generally  accepted,  has  been  used  to  designate 
a  tertiary  deposit  appearing  in  the  Rhine  Yalley,  along  the  Danube, 
and  in  several  isolated  sections  of  Europe.  Its  formation  has  hereto- 
fore been  ascribed  to  glaciers,  but  its  enormous  extent  and  thickness 
in  China  demand  some  other  origin.  The  substance  is  a  brownish-col- 
ored earth,  extremely  porous,  and,  when  dry,  easily  powdered  between 
the  fingers,  when  it  becomes  an  impalpable  dust  that  may  be  rubbed 
into  the  pores  of  the  skin.  Its  particles  are  somewhat  angular  in  shape, 
the  lumps  varying  from  the  size  of  a  peanut  to  a  foot  in  length,  whose 
appearance  warrants  the  peculiarly  appropriate  Chinese  name  meaning 
"ginger-stones."  After  washing,  the  stuff  is  readily  disintegrated,  and 
spread  far  and  wide  by  rivers  during  their  times  of  flood.  Mr.  Kings- 
mill,  in  the  "  Journal  of  the  Geological  Society  "  (London),  states  that 
a  number  of  specimens,  which  crumbled  in  the  moist  air  of  a  Shanghai 
summer,  rearranged  themselves  afterward  in  the  bottom  of  a  drawer 
in  which  they  had  been  placed.  Every  atom  of  loess  is  perforated 
by  small  tubes,  usually  very  minute,  circulating  after  the  manner  of 


244  ^^^  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

root-fibers,  and  lined  with  a  thin  coating  of  carbonate  of  lime.  The 
direction  of  these  canals  being  always  from  above  downward,  cleavage 
in  the  loess  mass,  irrespective  of  size,  is  invariably  vertical,  while,  from 
the  same  cause,  water  in  falling  upon  a  deposit  of  this  material  never 
collects  in  the  form  of  puddles  or  lakes  on  its  surface,  but  sinks  at 
once  to  the  local  water-level. 

The  loess  territory  of  China  begins,  at  its  eastern  limit,  with  the 
foot-hills  of  the  great  alluvial  plain — roughly  speaking,  upon  the  line 
drawn  from  Peking  to  Kaifung  in  Honan.  From  this  rises  a  ten-ace 
of  from  ninety  to  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet  in  height,  consisting  en- 
tu-ely  of  loess  ;  and  westward  of  it,  in  a  nearly  north  and  south  line, 
stretches  the  Tai-hang  Shan,  or  dividing  range  between  the  alluvial 
land  and  the  hill-districts  of  Shan  si.  An  almost  uninterrupted  loess- 
covered  country  extends  west  of  this  line  to  Lake  Koko-nor  and  head- 
waters of  the  Yellow  River.  On  the  north  the  formation  can  be  traced 
from  the  vicinity  of  Kalgan,  along  the  water-shed  of  the  Mongolian 
steppes,  and  into  the  desert  beyond  the  Ala  Shan  range.  Toward  the 
south  its  limits  are  less  sharply  defined  ;  though  covering  all  the  coun- 
try of  the  Wei  basin  (in  Shensi),  none  is  found  in  Sz'chuen,  due  south 
of  this  valley,  but  it  appears  in  parts  of  Honan  and  Eastern  Shantung. 
Excepting  occasional  spurs  and  isolated  spots,  loess  may  be  considered 
as  ending  everywhere  on  the  north  side  of  the  Yangtse  Valley,  and,  to 
convey  a  general  notion,  as  covering  the  parallelogram  between  longi- 
tudes 99°  and  115°  east,  and  latitudes  33°  and  41°  north.  The  district 
within  China  Proper  represents  a  territory  half  as  large  again  as  that 
of  the  German  Empire,  while  outside  of  the  provinces  there  is  reason 
to  believe  that  loess  spreads  far  to  the  east  and  north,  possibly  in  vary- 
ing thicknesses  quite  across  the  desert.  Baron  von  Richthofen  ob- 
served this  deposit  in  Shansi  to  a  height  of  7,200  feet  above  the  sea, 
and  supposes  that  it  may  occur  at  higher  levels. 

One  of  the  most  striking  as  well  as  important  phenomena  of  this 
formation  is  the  perpendicular  splitting  of  its  mass — already  referred 
to — into  sudden  and  multitudinous  clefts  that  cut  up  the  country  in 
every  direction,  and  render  observation  as  well  as  travel  often  exceed- 
ingly difiicult.  The  cliffs,  caused  by  erosion,  vary  from  cracks  meas- 
ured by  inches  to  canons  half  a  mile  wide  and  hundreds  of  feet  deep  ; 
they  branch  out  in  every  direction,  ramifying  through  the  country  after 
the  manner  of  tree-roots  in  the  soil — from  each  root  a  rootlet,  and  from 
these  other  small  fibers — until  the  system  of  passages  develops  into  a 
labyrinth  of  far-reaching  and  intermingling  lanes.  Were  the  loess 
throughout  of  the  uniform  structure  seen  in  single  clefts,  such  a  region 
would  indeed  be  absolutely  impassable,  the  vertical  banks  becoming 
precipices  of  often  more  than  a  thousand  feet.  The  fact,  however,  that 
loess  exhibits  in  every  locality  a  terrace  formation,  renders  its  surface 
not  only  habitable,  but  highly  convenient  for  agricultural  purposes  ; 
it  has  given  rise,  moreover,  to  the  theory  advanced  by  Kingsmill  and 


THE  LOESS-DEPOSITS    OF  NORTHERN   CHINA.   245 

some  others,  of  its  stratification,  and  from  this  a  proof  of  its  origin  as 
a  marine  deposit. 

But,  since  attention  was  first  directed  to  this  formation  by  Mr. 
Pumpelly,  in  1864,  its  structure  has  been  more  carefully  examined  by 
other  geologists,  whose  hypotheses  are  pretty  generally  discarded  for 
that  of  Baron  von  Richthofen.  This  gentleman,  who  may  be  consid- 
ered facile  princeps  among  foreign  geologists  who  have  visited  China, 
argues  that  these  apparent  layers  of  loess  are  due  to  external  condi- 
tions, as  of  rocks  and  debris  sliding  from  surrounding  hill-sides  upon 
the  loess-dust  as  it  sifted  into  the  basin  or  valley,  thus  interrupting  the 
homogeneity  of  the  gradually  rising  deposit.  In  the  sides  of  gorges 
near  the  mountains  are  seen  layers  of  coarse  debris  which,  in  going 
toward  the  valley-bottom,  become  finer,  while  the  layers  themselves 
are  thinner  and  separated  by  an  increasing  vertical  distance  ;  along 
these  rubble-beds  are  numerous  calcareous  concretions  which  stand 
upright.  These  are,  then,  the  terrace-forming  layers  which,  by  their 
resistance  to  the  action  of  water,  cause  the  broken  chasms  and  step- 
like contour  of  the  loess  regions.  Each  bank  does,  indeed,  cleave  ver- 
tically, sometimes — since  the  erosion  works  from  below — leaving  an 
overhanging  bank  ;  but,  meeting  with  this  horizontal  layer  of  marl- 
stones,  the  abrasion  is  interrupted,  and  a  ledge  is  made.  Falling  clods 
upon  such  spaces  are  gradually  spread  over  their  surfaces  by  natural 
action,  converting  them  into  rich  fields.  When  seen  from  a  height  in 
good  seasons,  these  systems  of  terraces  present  an  endless  succession 
of  green  fields  and  growing  crops  ;  viewed  from  the  deep  cut  of  some 
stream  or  road-bed,  the  traveler  sees  nothing  but  yellow  walls  of  loam 
and  dusty  tiers  of  loess-ridges.  As  may  be  readily  imagined,  a  coun- 
try of  this  nature  exhibits  many  landscapes  of  unrivaled  picturesque- 
ness,  especially  when  lofty  crags,  which  some  variation  in  the  water- 
course has  left  as  giant  guardsmen  of  fertile  river-valleys,  stand  out 
in  bold  relief  against  the  green  background  of  neighboring  hills  and  a 
fruitful  alluvial  bottom,  or  when  an  opening  of  some  ascending  pass 
allows  the  eye  to  range  over  leagues  of  sharp-cut  ridges  and  teeming 
crops,  the  work  of  the  careful  cultivator. 

The  extreme  ease  with  which  loess  is  cut  away  tends  at  times  to  se- 
riously embarrass  trafiSc.  Dust  made  by  the  cart-wheels  on  a  highway 
is  taken  up  by  strong  winds  during  the  dry  season  and  blown  over  the 
surrounding  lands,  much  after  the  manner  in  which  it  was  originally 
deposited  here.  This  action,  continued  over  centuries,  and  assisted  by 
occasional  deluges  of  rain,  which  find  a  ready  channel  in  the  road-bed, 
has  hollowed  the  country  routes  into  depressions  of  often  fifty  or  a 
hundred  feet,  where  the  passenger  may  ride  for  miles  without  obtain- 
ing a  glimpse  of  field  or  landscape.  Lieutenant  Kreitner,  of  the 
Szechenyi  exploring  expedition  (whose  pleasant  article  on  Thibet  ap- 
peared in  "  The  Popular  Science  Monthly "  for  August,  1882)  illus- 
trates, by  a  personal  experience  when  in  Shansi,  the  difficulty  and  dan- 


246  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

ger  of  departing  from  the  highway  when  in  one  of  these  dee])  cuts  ; 
after  scrambling  for  miles  along  the  broken  loess  above  the  road,  he 
only  regained  it  when  a  further  passage  was  cut  off  by  a  precipice  on 
the  one  side,  while  a  jump  of  some  thirty  feet  into  the  beaten  track 
was  his  only  alternative  upon  the  other. 

Difficult  as  may  be  such  a  territory  for  roads  and  the  purposes  of 
trade,  its  advantages  to  a  farmer  are  manifold.  Wherever  this  deposit 
extends,  there  the  husbandman  has  an  assured  harvest  two  and  even 
three  times  in  a  year.  It  is  easily  worked,  exceedingly  fertile,  and 
submits  to  constant  tillage,  with  no  other  manure  than  a  sprinkling  of 
its  own  loam  dug  from  the  nearest  bank.  But  loess  performs  still  anoth- 
er service  to  its  inhabitants.  Caves  made  at  the  bases  of  its  straight 
clefts  afford  homes  to  millions  of  people  in  the  northern  provinces. 
Choosing  an  escarpment  where  the  consistency  of  the  earth  is  great- 
est, the  natives  cut  for  themselves  rooms  and  houses,  whose  partition- 
walls,  cement,  beds,  and  furniture  are  made  in  toto  from  the  same  loess. 
Whole  villages  cluster  together  in  a  series  of  adjoining  or  superim- 
posed chambers,  some  of  which  pierce  the  soil  to  a  depth  of  often 
more  than  two  hundred  feet.  In  costlier  dwellings  the  terrace  or  suc- 
cession of  terraces  thus  perforated  are  faced  with  brick,  as  well  as  the 
arching  of  rooms  within.  The  advantages  of  such  habitations  consist 
as  well  in  imperviousness  to  changes  of  temperature  without  as  in 
their  durability  when  constructed  in  properly  selected  places — many 
loess  dwellings  outlasting  six  or  seven  generations.  The  capabilities 
of  defense  in  a  country  such  as  this,  where  an  invading  army  must 
inevitably  become  lost  in  the  tangle  of  interlacing  ways,  and  where 
the  defenders  may  always  remain  concealed,  are  very  suggestive. 

There  remains,  lastly,  a  peculiar  property  of  loess  which  is  perhaps 
more  important  than  all  other  features  when  measured  by  its  man- 
serving  efficiency.  This  is  the  manner  in  which  it  brings  forth  crops 
without  the  aid  of  manure.  From  a  period  more  than  two  thousand 
years  before  Christ,  to  the  present  day,  the  province  of  Shansi  has 
borne  the  name  of  "Granary  of  the  Empire,"  while  its  fertile  soil, 
hwang-tUf  or  "  yellow  earth,"  is  the  origin  of  the  imperial  color.  Spite 
of  this  productiveness,  which,  in  the  fourteenth  century,  caused  Friar 
Odoric  to  admiringly  call  it  "the  second  country  in  the  world,"  its 
present  capacity  for  raising  crops  seems  to  be  as  great  as  ever.  In 
the  nature  of  this  substance  lies  the  reason  for  this  apparently  inex- 
haustible fecundity.  Its  remarkably  porous  structure  must,  indeed, 
cause  it  to  absorb  the  gases  necessary  to  plant-life  to  a  much  greater 
degree  than  other  soils,  but  the  stable  production  of  those  mineral 
substances  needful  to  the  yearly  succession  of  crops  is  in  the  ground 
itself.  The  salts  contained  more  or  less  in  solution  at  the  water-level 
of  the  region  are  freed  by  the  capillary  action  of  the  loess  when  rain- 
water sinks  through  the  spongy  mass  from  above.  Surface  moisture, 
following  the  downward  direction  of  the  tiny  loess-tubes,  establishes  a 


THE  LOESS-DEPOSITS    OF  NORTHERN  CHINA.   247 

connection  with  the  waters  compressed  below,  when,  owing  to  the  law 
of  diffusion,  the  ingredients,  being  released,  mix  with  the  moisture  of 
the  little  canals,  and  are  there  taken  from  the  lowest  to  the  topmost 
levels,  permeating  the  ground  and  furnishing  nourishment  to  the 
plant-roots  at  the  surface.  It  is  on  account  of  this  curious  action  of 
loess  that  a  copious  rainfall  is  more  necessary  in  Northern  China  than 
elsewhere,  for  with  a  dearth  of  rain  the  capillary  communication  from 
above,  below,  and  vice  versa^  is  interrupted,  and  vegetation  loses  both 
its  moisture  and  manure.  Drought  and  famine  are  consequently 
synonymous  terms  here. 

As  to  the  origin  of  loess,  Baron  von  Richthofen's  theory  is  sub- 
stantially as  follows  :  The  uniform  composition  of  this  material  over 
extended  areas,  coupled  with  the  absence  of  stratification  and  of  ma- 
rine or  fresh-water  organic  remains,  renders  impossible  the  hypothesis 
that  it  is  a  water-deposit.  On  the  other  hand,  it  contains  vast  quan- 
tities of  land-shells  and  the  vestiges  of  animals  (mammalia)  at  every 
level — both  in  remarkably  perfect  condition.  Concluding,  also,  that 
from  the  conformation  of  the  neighboring  mountain-chains  and  their 
peculiar  weathering,  the  glacial  theory  is  inadmissible,  he  advances  the 
supposition  that  loess  is  a  subaerial  deposit,  and  that  its  fields  are  the 
drained  analogues  of  the  steppe-basins  of  Central  Asia.  They  date 
from  a  geological  era  of  great  dryness,  before  the  existence  of  the 
Yellow  and  other  rivers  of  the  northern  provinces.  As  the  rocks  and 
hills  of  the  highlands  disintegrated,  the  sand  was  removed,  not  by 
water-courses  seaward,  but  by  the  high  winds  ranging  over  a  treeless 
desert  landward,  until  the  dust  settled  in  the  grass-covered  districts  of 
what  is  at  present  China  Proper.  New  vegetation  was  at  once  nour- 
ished, while  its  roots  were  raised  by  the  constantly  arriving  deposit ; 
the  decay  of  old  roots  produced  the  lime-lined  canals  which  impart  to 
this  material  its  peculiar  characteristics.  Any  one  who  has  observed 
the  terrible  dust-storms  of  Northern  China,  when  the  air  is  filled  with  an 
impalpable  yellow  powder,  which  leaves  its  coating  upon  everything, 
and  often  extends  in  a  fog-like  cloud  hundreds  of  miles  to  sea,  will 
understand  the  power  of  this  action  during  many  thousand  centuries. 
This  deposition  received  the  shells  and  bones  of  innumerable  animals, 
while  the  dissolved  solutions  contained  in  its  bulk  staid  therein,  or  sat- 
urated the  water  of  small  lakes.  By  the  sinking  of  mountain-chains 
in  the  south,  rain-clouds  emptied  themselves  over  this  region  with 
much  greater  frequency,  and  gradually  the  system  became  drained, 
the  erosion  working  backward  from  the  coast,  slowly  cutting  into  one 
basin  after  another.  With  the  sinking  of  its  salts  to  lower  levels,  un- 
exampled richness  was  added  to  the  wonderful  topography  of  this  sin- 
gular formation. 

Mr.  Pumpelly,  while  accepting  this  ingenious  theory  in  place  of 
his  own  (that  of  a  fresh-water  lake  deposit),  adds  that  the  supply  of 
loess  might  have  been  materially  increased  by  the  vast  mers-de-glace 


248  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

of  High  Asia  and  the  Tien  Shan,  whose  streams  have  for  ages  trans- 
ported the  products  of  glacial  attrition  into  Central  Asia  and  North- 
western China.  Again,  he  insists  that  Richthofen  has  not  given  im- 
portance enough  to  the  parting  planes,  wrongly  considered  by  his 
predecessors  in  the  study  of  Chinese  geology  as  planes  of  stratifi- 
cation. "  These,"  he  says,  "  account  for  the  marginal  layers  of  debris 
brought  down  from  the  mountains.  And  the  continuous  and  more 
abundant  growth  of  grasses  at  one  plane  would  produce  a  modifica- 
tion of  the  soil  structurally  and  chemically,  which  superincumbent 
accumulations  could  never  efface.  It  should  seem  probable  that  we 
have  herein,  also,  the  explanation  of  the  calcareous  concretions  which 
abound  along  these  planes  ;  for  the  greater  amount  of  carbonic  acid 
generated  by  the  slow  decay  of  this  vegetation  would,  by  forming  a 
bicarbonate,  give  to  the  lime  the  mobility  necessary  to  produce  the 
concretions." 

It  is  hardly  within  the  scope  of  this  article  to  do  more  than  present 
in  brief  outline  an  exposition  of  the  loess-theory  that  has  made  its 
orginator  already  celebrated  throughout  Germany.  Nor  can  we  follow 
Baron  von  Richthofen  further  into  the  extension  of  his  postulate,  where- 
in one  is  scarcely  surprised  at  finding  a  plausible  and  attractive  appli- 
cation of  this  idea  of  loess-formation  to  the  entire  Europe-Asiatic  Con- 
tinent, to  the  pampas  of  the  South  and  prairies  of  the  North  American 
world.  While  the  three  or  four  northwestern  provinces  of  China 
exhibit  undoubtedly  the  strangest  and  most  picturesque  features  of 
this  formation,  its  influence  upon  the  climate  of  Central  Asia,  the 
reactionary  effect  of  this  upon  the  surface  configuration  of  the  steppe- 
lands,  and  thus  on  the  historical  and  ethnographical  development  of 
the  cradle  of  the  human  race,  are  but  some  of  the  legitimate  generali- 
zations— if  not  necessary  results — coming  from  this  interesting  phase 
of  nature. 


THE  NATURAL  SETTING  OF  CRYSTALS. 

Br  J.  B.  CnOATE. 

THE  study  of  natural  history  has  of  late  years  been  largely  directed 
to  the  observation  of  laws  according  to  which  the  development 
of  the  individual  species  and  genus  takes  place.  Although  the  vital 
principle  which  determines  the  growth  and  the  nature  of  the  animal 
or  plant  eludes  the  search  of  shrewd  and  practiced  observers,  yet  the 
modes  in  which  that  principle  manifests  itself  are  in  many  cases  pretty 
well  understood.  In  numberless  instances  we  have  been  shown  the 
purpose  with  which  Nature  works  on  unceasingly  toward  certain  defi- 
nite anticipated  ends.  It  is  this  fixed  intent  of  Nature,  rationally  and 
hopefully  pursued,  which  reveals  the  thought  of  the  universe.     The 


SURFACE   CHARACTERS    OF  THE  PLANET  MARS,  249 

processes  of  growth  and  of  change  are  evident  enough  to  be  familiar, 
but  it  is  the  reason  for  these  phenomena  which  so  often  makes  them 
miracles  of  wonder  to  the  observer.  Care,  intelligence  and  skill  will 
everywhere  be  seen,  but  there  is  a  marked  distinction  between  the 
grow^th  that  goes  on  under  the  supervision  of  an  intelligence  wholly 
external  to  the  form  which  is  brought  into  being,  as  in  the  case  of  a 
crystal,  and  that  development  which  is  made  according  to  instinctive 
or  conscious  tendencies  implanted  in  the  germ. 

Tree,  shrub  and  grass  show  evidence  of  effort  on  the  part  of  the 
individual  directed  to  quite  obvious  ends.  The  form  assumed  is  in 
every  instance  such  as  to  enable  the  plant  to  resist  the  violence  to 
which  it  may  be  exposed.  All  the  energies  controlled  by  vital  force 
are  directed  to  supplying  wants  felt  or  anticipated.  The  tree  in  its 
growth  develops  strength  w^here  strength  is  needed,  just  as  man  by 
exercise  increases  his  muscular  power.  In  the  formation  of  crystals 
another  law  predominates.  It  matters  not  whether  these  are  safely 
hidden  away  in  the  caverns  of  the  earth,  or  are  exposed  to  risk  of 
destruction  upon  its  surface.  They  usually  occur  attached  to  one  an- 
other, or  to  the  faces  of  the  rock.  In  the  latter  case,  such  as  have 
unequal  axes  will  be  found  so  placed  as  to  have  their  longest  axes  at 
right  angles  to  the  surface  to  which  they  are  attached,  or,  if  the  sur- 
face be  curved,  this  axis  will  be  at  right  angles  to  the  plane  tangent  to 
the  curve  at  that  point.  This  arrangement  will  be  seen  most  plainly 
upon  examination  of  a  geode  lined  with  quartz-crystals.  It  provides 
for  the  setting  of  the  largest  number  of  crystals  upon  a  given  surface, 
but  puts  them  in  the  position  of  the  least  stable  equilibrium  quite  un- 
like the  sturdy  posture  assumed  by  a  tree  deeply  rooted  to  the  soil, 
and  having  its  fibers  most  strongly  interlaced  in  the  region  of  its  base. 
This  setting  of  crystals  displays  them  to  the  best  advantage,  but  it 
leaves  them  more  exposed  to  abrasion  than  would  any  other  position, 
and  more  likely  to  be  removed  from  their  place.  No  provision  has 
been  made  to  guard  against  external  violence,  and  in  this  may  be 
found  a  striking  point  of  distinction  between  an  animate  and  an  inani- 
mate entity. 


SURFACE  CHARACTERS   OF  THE  PLANET  MARS.* 

SCHIAPARELLI  continued  his  observations  of  the  topography  of 
the  planet  Mars  during  its  last  opposition,  i.  e.,  from  October  26, 
1881,  to  the  end  of  February,  1882,  and  his  results  were  communicated 
in  a  preliminary  report  early  in  March  to  the  Accademia  dei  Lincei,  of 
Rome.  X 

Owing  to  the  prevailing  weather,  his  observations  were  restricted 
*  Translated  for  '*  The  Popular  Science  Monthly"  by  Marcus  Benjamin,  Ph.  B.,  F.  C.  S. 


250  TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

to  fifty  days — from  the  end  of  December  to  the  beginning  of  Febru- 
ary. Among  these,  sixteen  evenings  were  remarkably  favorable,  so 
much  so  that  the  greatest  magnifying  powers  could  be  used. 

It  was  therefore  possible,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  ap- 
parent diameter  of  Mars  was  not  over  16"  (against  19"  in  1877),  to 
obtain  results  which  surpass  all  previous  endeavors.  Beginning  with 
the  white  polar  spots,  Schiaparelli  first  mentions  that  the  northern 
polar  spot  was  always  more  or  less  visible.  During  the  months  of 
November  and  December  it  appeared  separated  into  several  branches 
or  masses,  as  was  also  the  case  in  1879.  In  the  latter  half  of  January 
these  branches  began  to  amalgamate  and  form  a  regular,  continuous, 
and  uniform  calotte^  the  diameter  of  which  reached  about  50°  at  the 
beginning  of  February,  and  then  decreased  in  a  distinctly  noticeable 
manner  ;  while,  on  the  contrary,  the  southern  polar  spot  remained 
invisible  during  the  entire  period  of  the  observations,  even  in  January 
and  February,  when  the  south  pole  entered  the  field  of  view  2°.  From 
this,  in  connection  with  the  experience  gained  in  1879  relative  to  the 
visibility  of  the  spot,  he  concludes  that  eight  months  after  the  southern 
solstice  it  had  not  yet  attained  a  diameter  of  20° — a  diameter  which, 
according  to  the  observations  during  the  previous  opposition,  it  gen- 
erally attained  to  a  few  weeks  before  this  solstice. 

During  the  course  of  the  observations,  various  white  or  whitish 
spots  made  their  appearance  at  the  southern  edge  of  the  planet,  greatly 
resembling  the  polar  spot,  but  after  exact  examination  and  measure- 
ment proved  to  be  one  or  the  other  of  the  well-known  southern  islands 
of  the  planet,  which  appeared  white  around  their  edges  in  considera- 
tion of  a  property  peculiar  to  these  localities. 

The  dark  portion  (ocean  ?)  which  surrounds  these  islands  did  not 
seem  to  possess  this  property  ;  and,  in  order  to  explain  how  the  polar 
spot,  during  the  southern  winter  on  Mars,  can  occupy  a  part  of  this 
locality,  it  becomes  necessary  to  make  the  assumption  that  at  such 
times  this  part  undergoes  such  changes  that  it  is  enabled  to  appear  of 
a  bright  white  color. 

Similar  white  or  whitish  spots  were  observed  at  intervals  at  other 
points  of  the  yellow  surface  of  the  planet  ;  some  of  the  better  deter- 
mined points,  which  had  already  been  noticed  in  1877  and  1879,  were 
also  visible  on  this  occasion,  while  others  remained  invisible.  A  num- 
ber of  white  spots  were  observed,  which,  however,  were  only  tempo- 
rary, particularly  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  northern  polar  calotte. 
Emanating  from  this  position,  there  often  would  be  noticed  white  in- 
clined stripes  passing  toward  the  equator  of  the  planet ;  the  arrange- 
ment of  these  seemed  to  be  dependent  upon  the  rotation  of  Mars — 
other  positions  near  the  edge  of  the  planet  likewise  presented  a  whitish 
appearance. 

A  general  dimming  of  the  white  spots  which  hid  the  configura- 
tion of  the  planet  was  observed  on  the  18th  of  January,  between 


SURFACE  CHARACTERS    OF  THE  PLANET  MARS,  251 

the  meridians  of  40°  and  120°.  It  extended  only  over  the  yellow 
portions,  which  are  supposed  to  be  continents,  and  often  covered  the 
canals,  but  completely  avoided  the  darker  portions,  which  represent 
the  oceans  and  larger  lakes.  It  was  not  a  contiguous  covering,  but 
consisting  of  white  or  whitish  spots,  which  were  irregularly  distrib- 
uted. 

The  atmosphere  of  Mars  appears  to  have  been  more  transparent 
than  during  1877.  Not  only  the  luminous  and  the  opaque  zone  of  the 
rim  were  smaller,  but  in  some  parts  of  the  planet  the  contrast  between 
the  light  and  shade  was  more  distinctly  visible  with  an  inclined  illu- 
mination, and  so  it  was  possible  to  more  readily  distinguish  objects 
at  the  edge  of  the  planet  than  at  the  center. 

During  November  the  north  pole  advanced  some  7°  to  8°  within 
the  circle  of  the  visible  hemisphere  ;  but  the  hope  of  being  enabled  to 
examine  the  surface  in  the  vicinity  of  this  pole  was  unrealized  on 
account  of  the  unfavorable  weather.  For  this  reason  the  limit  of  the 
chart  of  1881-82  does  exceed  60°  north  latitude,  and,  hence,  does  not 
extend  much  beyond  the  portions  explored  in  1879  ;  but  the  parts 
lying  between  30°  and  60°  northern  latitude  could  be  more  closely 
examined.  On  this  occasion  also  the  lower  end  of  the  chart  is  limited 
by  a  series  of  dark  stripes  which  appear  to  be  connected  with  the 
northern  ocean.  The  peculiar  character  of  the  surface  of  Mars  can 
not,  however,  be  well  explained  until  after  the  next  opposition.  It 
was  impossible  to  explore  the  southern  ocean  with  exactness  beyond 
50°  south,  although  all  of  the  islands  which  had  previously  been  recog- 
nized were  observed  as  white  spots  similar  to  the  polar  snow.  All  of 
the  smaller  seas  which  branch  off  from  the  equator  were  very  distinct 
in  their  configuration.  The  continents  and  the  interior  lakes  between 
the  bright  equatorial  zone  and  the  south  ocean  could  be  drawn  with 
the  greatest  accuracy.  A  few  changes  in  the  appearance  of  particular 
portions  as  compared  with  their  shape  in  1879  were  noticed,  and  as 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  square  kilometres  of  surface,  which  were 
formerly  light,  had  in  the  mean  while  become  dark,  so  on  the  other 
hand  many  of  the  sections  which  previously  were  dark  now  became 
luminous.  These  changes  prove  that  the  darkening  principle  which 
produces  them  is  due  to  something  which  is  movable  and  extends  over 
the  surface  of  the  planet  (for  instance,  water  or  some  other  liquid), 
or  perhaps  something  capable  of  being  transmitted  from  place  to 
place  (such  as  vegetation). 

Not  one  of  the  old  dark  lines  which  have  been  called  "canals" 
was  missing,  and  causes  which  in  all  probability  were  due  to  the  sun 
produced  numerous  phenomena,  which  in  former  oppositions  were 
only  suspected.  That  brilliant,  light-red  color  mixed  with  white, 
which  in  1877  occupied  the  whole  of  the  equatorial  zone  and  a  large 
part  of  it  in  1879,  was  found  in  1882  to  be  entirely  absent.  Undefined 
shadows  began  to  form  in  this  luminous  veil  surrounded  by  stains  of 


252 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


an  orange-yellow  color  ;  these  shadows  become  darker  by  degrees, 
concentrate  themselves  and  absorb  bodies  by  changing  into  groups  of 
more  or  less  black  lines  ;  at  the  same  time  the  orange  color  extends, 
and  finally,  with  but  little  exception,  covers  the  whole  of  the  so-called 
continental  zone. 

The  large  areas  of  the  so-called  "  Alcionia  "  ocean  and  gulf,  which 
in  1879  appeared  to  belong  to  the  "  ocean,"  resolved  themselves  into 
complicated  bunches  of  definite  lines.  Finally,  one  could  see  what  we 
have  every  reason  to  believe  is  the  true  aspect  of  the  planet.  Besides 
this,  we  noticed  the  peculiar  and  unexpected  phenomena  of  the  douh- 
ling  of  the  canals,  which  will  probably  tend  to  considerably  alter  the 
present  views  of  the  physical  characters  of  the  planet.  This  doubling 
is  clearly  not  an  optical  effect,  dependent  upon  the  increased  optic 
power,  as  is  the  case  in  the  double  stars  ;  nor,  is  it  produced  by  the 
longitudinal  division  of  a  canal.  It  takes  place  under  the  following 
circumstances  :  To  the  right  or  left  of  an  existing  line,  without  any 
change  in  its  direction  or  position,  another  parallel  line  is  produced 
which  differs  from  the  first  in  appearance  and  direction  only  in  excep- 
tional cases.  Between  the  lines  so  produced,  the  distance  varied 
from  12°  to  6°  (350  to  700  kilometres).  Among  certain  of  the  lines 
doubling  could  only  be  suspected,  but  not  observable  at  the  small  dis- 
tance (5°)  separating  them.  Sometimes  a  line  was  darker  or  broader 
at  two  or  more  points,  and  the  accompanying  line  would  also  show 
this  peculiar  feature.  The  length  of  each  pair  may  differ  considerably, 
and  vary  from  15°  to  80°.  Some  were  of  a  reddish-brown  color,  some- 
what darker  than  the  ground  from  which  they  could  be  distinguished  ; 
others,  generally  the  finer  ones,  were  very  dark.  The  broader  ones 
formed  true  bands,  the  sides  of  which  were  perfectly  parallel.  They 
followed  (as  far  as  could  be  judged  without  exact  measurements)  the 
direction  of  the  large  circles  of  the  planet,  and  only  in  a  few  cases 
were  they  bent  off  toward  the  side.  No  irregularities  could  be  ob- 
served among  them  with  the  magnifying  (417)  power  used.  Certain 
of  them  show  such  great  regularity  that  they  might  be  designated  as 
a  series  of  parallel  lines  drawn  by  the  aid  of  a  ruler.  In  some  cases, 
several  pairs  would  combine,  one  behind  the  other,  and  form  a  double 
polygonal  line  ;  with  very  definitely  marked  angles  such  a  series  would 
occupy  a  great  extent.  This  phenomenon  of  doubling  appears  to  be 
connected  with  certain  epochs — and  it  takes  place  almost  simultane- 
ously over  the  entire  surface  of  the  planet,  covered  by  the  bright  por- 
tions (continents  ?).  Not  a  trace  of  these  was  observed  in  1877  dur- 
ing the  weeks  which  followed  the  southern  solstice  of  the  planet.  A 
single  isolated  instance  was  noticed  in  1879  on  the  26th  of  December. 
The  appearance  of  this  doubling  was  the  more  surprising,  as  a  careful 
examination  on  December  23d  and  24th  gave  no  cause  for  suspecting 
any  such  change.  During  the  last  opposition,  a  reappearance  of  this 
phenomenon  was  impatiently  looked  for,  but  it  did  not  show  itself  for 


SURFACE   CHARACTERS    OF  THE  PLANET  MARS.  253 

two  months,  and  then  later  than  was  expected  ;  at  first  indistinct  and 
dim,  but  becoming  more  distinct  on  the  following  day.  This  was  one 
month  after  the  autumnal  equinox  of  Mars.  The  doubling  continued 
to  be  visible  until  after  the  end  of  February.  On  the  11th  of  January 
another  doubling  had  already  made  its  appearance,  but  was  not  further 
noticed  because  the  canals  which  doubled  were  very  irregular.  Great, 
therefore,  was  our  surprise  to  find  that,  on  the  19th  of  January,  a  canal 
which  passed  through  the  center  showed  two  straight  parallel  lines, 
which,  on  repeated  examination,  were  found  to  be  true  phenomena. 
From  this  date  the  number  of  canals  appearing  doubled  increased ; 
even  on  the  24th  of  February  when  the  apparent  diameter  of  Mars  had 
been  reduced  to  less  than  10°,  the  doubling  of  the  canals  could  be  dis- 
tinguished. In  an  aggregate  (exclusive  of  a  few  cases  which  could 
not  be  configured  on  account  of  the  insufficient  power  of  the  telescope 
to  define  such  delicate  cases),  some  twenty  cases  of  doubling  were 
noticed,  seventeen  of  which  occurred  in  the  course  of  one  month,  i.  e., 
from  January  19th  to  February  19th — the  mean  of  the  time  corre- 
sponding to  about  the  end  of  the  second  month  after  the  autumnal 
equinox  of  the  planet.  In  addition  to  these  there  were  probably  oth- 
ers which  made  their  appearance  ;  but,  unfortunately,  the  unfavorable 
weather  and  the  increasing  distance  of  the  planet  prevented  a  success- 
ful following  up  of  the  further  development  of  these  highly  important 
phenomena.  In  a  few  cases  it  was  possible  to  determine  some  pre- 
monitory signs  of  the  doubling. 

On  January  13th  a  very  light  and  indefinite  shadow  began  to 
spread  itself  parallel  to  the  canal  known  as  "Ganges"  ;  on  the  18th 
and  19th  these  portions  were  covered  with  white  spots,  on  the  20th 
the  Ganges  appeared  to  be  composed  of  two  lines,  but  the  phenomenon 
was  still  doubtful  ;  on  the  21st  the  doubling  was  distinct  and  remained 
so  until  February  23d.    Similar  observations  were  made  on  other  lines. 

Everything  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  we  have  here  a  periodical 
phenomenon,  which  is  probably  connected  with  the  seasons  of  Mars. 
If  this  be  the  case,  we  may  hope  to  extend  these  observations  during 
the  next  opposition,  when  we  shall  be  able  to  see  the  seasons  of  the 
planet  advanced  about  eighty  days.  This  opposition  will  take  place 
January  1,  1884.  The  position  of  Mars  on  this  date  will  be  identical 
with  that  on  the  13th  of  February,  1882,  and  the  apparent  diameter 
will  be  about  12*9%  that  is,  pretty  near  the  mean  diameter  which  the 
planet  had  during  the  finding  of  the  above  -  described  doublings. 
Therefore  there  is  reason  to  hope  that  these  phenomena  may  again  be 
determined  and  confirmed  by  other  observers.  The  desire  to  obtain 
such  information  has  been  the  main  object  of  the  foregoing  communi- 
cation. 


254  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

THE  NEW  PROFESSION. 

By  HENEY  GEEEE. 

IT  is  but  a  few  years  since  the  practical  student  of  electrical  science 
was  limited  to  the  single  branch  of  telegraphy.  His  choice  lay 
between  becoming  a  telegraph  operator  and  a  manufacturer  of  tele- 
graph instruments.  The  telegraph  operators  form  a  numerous  and  in- 
telligent body  of  men  ;  sharp  competition  exists  among  them,  and  for 
a  long  time  they  had  scarcely  any  chance  of  improving  their  position, 
because  until  recently  no  other  branch  of  electrical  engineering  was 
open  to  them.  But,  during  the  last  dozen  years,  great  progress  has 
been  made  in  various  and  new  applications  of  electricity.  Skilled 
electrical  engineers  are  few  ;  and  any  one,  who  has  acquired  a  practical 
knowledge  of  several  branches  of  electricity,  will  find  no  difficulty  in 
keeping  himself  profitably  employed. 

Until  lately,  the  young  electrician's  great  desire  was  to  qualify  him- 
self for  submarine  telegraphy.  The  work  of  testing  and  localizing 
faults  in  cables  is  of  a  more  scientific  and  interesting  character  than 
work  in  other  departments  of  telegraph  engineering.  The  manufacture 
of  cables  is  also  a  subject  for  particular  study,  and  a  fair  knowledge 
of  mechanical  engineering  may  be  gained  by  practice  in  it.  Two  of 
the  many  different  departments  of  electrical  engineering,  telephony 
and  electric  lighting,  are  becoming  especially  important,  and  yet  there 
is  great  difficulty  in  finding  competent  electricians  to  accomplish  the 
work. 

During  a  recent  sojourn  in  Europe,  I  learned  that  not  only  young 
men,  but  educated  women  also,  were  studying  electrical  engineering,  and 
that  large  fortunes  have  been  made  in  it.  The  enormous  extension  of 
the  telegraphic  system,  and  the  wonderful  advances  made  in  electricity, 
electric  lighting,  telephony,  electrical  cables,  and  railways,  and  in  the 
transmission  of  power,  offer  great  advantages  to  persons  seeking  profit- 
able employment.  Telegraph  engineering  or  electrical  engineering  is 
a  new  profession.  More  than  this,  it  is  one  which  is  not  yet  over- 
crowded, and  it  is,  therefore,  undoubtedly  an  occupation  which  many 
of  our  college  graduates  will  adopt. 

The  ultimate  value  of  the  advances  which  have  recently  been  made 
in  electrical  science  can  not  now  be  estimated.  The  great  electrician. 
Professor  Clerk  Maxwell,  was  asked  shortly  before  his  death,  by  a  dis- 
tinguished scientist,  "  What  is  the  greatest  scientific  discovery  of  the 
last  quarter  of  a  century  ?  "  His  reply  was,  "  The  discovery  that  the 
Gramme  machine  is  reversible."  The  ordinary  electrician  would  have 
called  the  telephone,  the  Faure  accumulator,  or  the  Edison  electric 
light,  the  greatest  discovery,  but  Professor  Maxwell's  deep  and  philo- 


THE  NEW  PROFESSION,  255 

sophic  mind  perceived  that  in  tlie  fact  lie  named,  which  to  so  many  of 
us  might  seem  little  more  than  a  curious  experiment,  lay  the  principle 
which,  if  rightly  developed,  would  make  practicable  the  transmission 
of  power. 

If,  now,  we  could  call  back  this  great  electrical  engineer,  and  ask 
him  what  recent  discovery  came  next  in  importance  to  this,  what  would 
he  reply  ?  His  answer  would  be  the  discovery  that  "  a  voltaic  battery 
is  reversible."  The  Gramme  machine  has  given  us  means  of  trans- 
mitting power  of  electricity.  The  later  discovery  enables  us  to  store 
up  electrical  energy  as  distinguished  from  electricity. 

Electrical  engineering,  which  embraces  a  knowledge  of  cables,  teleg- 
raphy, electric  lighting,  electrical  measurement,  transmission  of  power, 
storage-batteries,  and  how  to  localize  faults  in  cables,  land  lines,  and 
telephone  lines,  has  thus  become  a  subject  of  the  first  practical  im- 
portance. 

A  prominent  department  of  the  electrical  engineer's  work  is  the 
localizing  of  faults  in  ocean-cables,  which  may  be  of  five  different 
kinds  :  1.  Where  the  copper  conductor  makes  a  "  perfect  earth."  2. 
"Where  the  copper  conductor  is  broken,  and  yet  the  insulation  remains 
unbroken.  3.  Where  an  "  imperfect  earth  "  is  made.  4.  Faults  aris- 
ing from  a  hole  in  the  gutta-percha  sheath,  making  a  connection  be- 
tween the  conductor  and  the  sea.  5.  From  the  establishment  of  a 
connection  between  the  iron  sheathing  and  the  copper  core,  by  a  nail 
or  wire  driven  in. 

The  first  kind  of  fault  is  easily  located,  because  we  know  the  re- 
sistance of  the  cable  when  it  is  in  perfect  working  order.  If,  for 
instance,  it  has  10,000  ohmSy  or  units  of  resistance,  a  fault  making  a 
perfect  earth  midway  in  the  cable  would  give  us  5,000  ohms  resist- 
ance. Or,  we  know  how  many  ohms  of  resistance  there  are  to  a  mile 
of  cable  when  it  is  in  perfect  working  order,  and,  by  the  use  of  deli- 
cate instruments  and  by  mathematical  calculations,  we  can  easily  lo- 
cate the  fault. 

The  location  of  the  second  class  of  faults,  i.  e.,  a  complete  break- 
age of  the  conductor,  naturally  followed  by  a  total  cessation  of  all 
communications  between  the  two  ends  of  the  cable,  may  be  detected 
in  several  ways.  The  charge  which  the  cable  will  contain  is  first 
measured  ;  and,  when  the  charge  per  mile  is  known,  the  amount  actu- 
ally observed  will  directly  give  the  location  of  the  faults;  and  the  exact- 
ness with  which  the  position  of  the  break  can  be  determined  is  limited 
only  by  the  accuracy  with  which  the  relative  charges  can  be  compared. 
Suppose,  for  instance,  the  discharge  from  a  mile  of  the  cable  with 
a  given  battery,  and  reflecting  galvanometer,  is  represented  by  a  de- 
flection of  ten  divisions,  and  the  discharge  from  a  cable  containing  a 
broken  copper  conductor  is  one  hundred  divisions,  we  know  the  fault 
is  about  ten  miles  from  the  shore. 

A  fault  of  the  fourth  kind  is  located  very  readily.     There  is  a 


256  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

great  fall  in  the  insulation  resistance,  and  a  slight  fall  in  the  apparent 
resistance  of  the  copper  conductor,  between  the  two  stations  ;  but 
messages  can  be  still  transmitted,  as  a  part  only  of  the  whole  cur- 
rent, inversely  proportional  to  the  resistance  of  the  fault,  escapes  into 
the  ocean.  If  one  office  insulates  the  cable,  and  the  other  measures 
the  resistance,  the  fault  acts  like  a  fault  that  is  caused  by  the  fracture 
of  both  the  copper  wire  and  the  gutta-percha,  but  little  of  the  copper 
core  being  exposed. 

The  fifth  kind  of  fault  corresponds  almost  exactly  in  behavior 
to  a  fault  caused  by  fracture  of  the  copper  conductor  and  gutta- 
percha, in  which  a  considerable  portion  of  the  length  of  copper  wire 
remains  exposed  to  the  water.  The  resistance  will  vary  still  less  ; 
and  there  will  be  a  total  absence  of  the  feeble  currents  which  result 
when  the  copper  and  iron  of  a  cable  are  broken  and  separated  by  salt 
water. 

Submarine  or  ocean  telegraphy  holds  a  very  prominent  place  in 
electrical  engineering,  and  the  instruments  used  in  it  are  interesting. 
In  instructing  pupils  a  very  curious  apparatus  is  used.  It  is  the  arti- 
ficial or  dummy  cable,  consisting  of  a  number  of  "  resistance-coils," 
and  condensers  so  arranged  as  to  reproduce  all  the  phenomena  and 
all  the  practical  difficulties  that  are  presented  by  a  real  ocean-cable. 
With  a  good  instructor,  this  piece  of  apparatus  is  of  very  great  ser- 
vice, inasmuch  as  all  kinds  of  imperfections  can  be  readily  and  cor- 
rectly imitated  in  any  part  of  the  circuit. 

Still  greater  interest,  perhaps,  attaches  to  the  apparatus  for  show- 
ing the  retardation  that  a  current  experiences  in  traversing  a  long 
cable.  This  apparatus  consists  of  a  series  of  "resistance-coils,"  "rheo- 
stats," and  condensers,  having  small  receiving  instruments  at  a  dozen 
different  points  in  the  circuit,  representing  as  many  different  offices  on 
the  line.  The  receiving  instruments  are  similar  to  the  mirror  portion 
of  Sir  William  Thomson's  mirror  galvanometer.  In  this  a  ray  of  light 
falls  upon  a  very  small  mirror  attached  to  a  small  magnet ;  and  this 
rotates  around  a  vertical  axis  when  acted  upon  by  a  current  that  cir- 
culates in  a  coil  of  wire.  These  magnets,  with  the  mirrors  attached^ 
moving  one  after  the  other,  indicate  the  time  taken  in  charging  the 
whole  length  of  the  circuit. 

I.  The  Storage  op  Electricity. — Another  principal  branch  of 
electrical  engineering,  promising  much  in  the  near  future,  is  the  great 
French  discovery  of  the  storage  of  electrical  energy.  It  is  among  the 
most  important  inventions  of  the  last  thirty  years.  The  electrical 
storage  of  energy  must  not  be  confounded  with  the  storage  of  elec- 
tricity. An  electrical  storage-battery  is  an  apparatus  for  transform- 
ing electricity  ;  in  it  electrical  energy  is  no  longer  produced  directly, 
but  changes  its  properties.  A  given  source  furnishes  a  certain  vol- 
ume or  quantity  of  electricity,  at  a  certain  pressure  or  tension.  In 
certain  instances,  it  may  be  important  to  increase  one  of  these  prop- 


TEE  NEW  PROFESSION.  257 

erties  at  the  expense  of  another,  as  in  mechanics  it  is  often  re- 
quired to  transform  speed  into  force  or  force  into  speed  by  means 
of  fly-wheels  or  driving-wheels.  The  apparatus  which  produces  this 
charge  is  called  the  electrical  transformer.  These  machines  can  be 
divided  into  two  large  classes  :  1.  As  regards  tension  ;  and,  2.  As  re- 
gards quantity.  The  storage-batteries  of  Thomson,  Plante,  d'Arson- 
val,  and  Varley,  belong  to  the  quantity  class.  All  these  batteries  have 
a  common  use.  They  store  electrical  energy  and  give  it  out  trans- 
formed. Secondary  couples  are  electrical  accumulators,  as  well  as 
transformers. 

II.  The  Electric  Light. — It  is  clear  that  this  wonderful  applica- 
tion of  electricity  is  thus  far  only  in  its  infancy,  and  that  it  must  either 
supplement  or  supplant  gas-lighting  in  the  near  future.  In  it  educated 
persons  of  either  sex  may,  after  a  thorough  course  of  training,  easily 
find  very  remunerative  employment  in  a  fast-developing  branch  of  the 
new  profession.  With  all  the  older  professions  overcrowded,  an  elec- 
trical engineer's  prospects  are,  to-day,  undoubtedly  bright,  especially 
if  he  has  some  knowledge  of  mechanics,  though  this  is  not  absolutely 
necessary.  Very  great  impetus  has,  also,  been  given  to  electrical  in- 
dustries by  the  invention  of  the  telephone,  electrical  storage-batteries, 
fire-alarm  telegraphs,  district  telegraphs,  and  the  introduction  of  the 
electric  light  into  the  domain  of  our  domestic  economy.  In  all  these 
branches  there  are  more  places  than  qualified  persons  to  fill  them. 

III.  Training  for  the  New  Profession. — The  person  who  is 
educated  simply  as  a  mechanical  engineer,  or  simply  as  a  telegraph 
engineer,  can  not  at  once  make  himself  useful  in  the  wider  range  of 
the  new  profession  which  has  created  itself.  The  requisites  for  an 
electrical  engineer  are,  theoretical  and  practical  knowledge  of  phys- 
ics, including  mechanics  and  mathematics.  The  first  questions  to  be 
asked  a  parent,  who  desires  his  son  to  be  an  electrician,  are  :  "  Has  your 
son  been  studying  physics  at  the  ordinary  school  ?  Has  he  ever  made 
any  experiments  himself,  or  does  he  see  experiments  made  by  the  lec- 
turer ?  "  Let  this  son  commence  his  technical  education  at  once,  for 
he  can  learn  more  of  real  science  in  the  interval  of  rest,  during  his 
technical  education,  than  he  will  ever  acquire  if  he  devotes  himself 
to  books.  By  a  technical  college  we  mean  one  in  which  a  general 
education  in  the  application  of  science  to  industries  is  given  to  all  the 
students,  and  a  special  education  in  the  applications  of  science  to  in- 
dividual students. 

Electrical  engineering  has  thus  a  deeper  interest  for  the  parents 
of  America  than  they  know.  A  knowledge  of  mechanical  drawing  and 
designing  is  essential ;  and  new  designs  of  instruments  should  be  put 
before  the  students  for  use  and  study,  as  it  is  important  to  cultivate 
in  them  the  powers  of  original  thought  and  combination.  Kext  to 
machine  designing  and  drawing,  in  the  education  of  an  electrical  engi- 
neer, is  a  practical  knowledge  of  electricity.     And  by  this  I  mean  far 

VOL.  XXIV. — 17 


258  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

more  than  an  ordinary  acquaintance  with  the  effects  of  glass  electri- 
cal machines,  sealing-wax  experiments,  etc.,  etc.  The  knowledge  must 
be  experimental,  and  it  must  be  quantitative,  not  merely  qualitative. 
No  person  ever  learned  electricity  from  a  book.  If  one  wants  to  know 
why  a  particular  dynamo  is  more  efficient  than  another,  he  must  enter 
on  a  course  of  professional  education,  like  that  of  studying  medicine 
or  reading  law.  Night  after  night,  in  England,  many  young  men 
come  thirty  miles  to  learn  how  the  efficiency  of  an  electric  lamp,  stor- 
age-battery, or  a  dynamo-machine,  is  actually  measured — how  to  ob- 
tain experimentally  the  characteristic  curves  of  dynamo-machines  of 
different  speeds,  calibrating  galvanometers,  testing  magnets,  etc. 

It  would  not  have  been  extremely  difficult  to  give  lectures  on 
electrical  engineering  twenty  years  ago,  but  the  development  of  the 
science  now  is  so  great  that  it  would  be  an  exceedingly  laborious 
matter  to  prepare  a  course  on  the  subject  without  efficient  apparatus. 
Of  the  importance  of  such  lectures  there  can  be  no  doubt,  and  the  time 
will  come  when  the  principles,  at  least,  of  electrical  engineering  will  be 
taught  in  our  schools.  The  new  developments  of  the  science  and  art 
can  hardly  be  exaggerated  ;  and  while  at  one  time  scientific  men  were 
of  the  opinion  that  the  popular  mind  erred  in  supposing  that  elec- 
tricity would  supersede  steam  as  a  motive  power,  engines  are  now  em- 
ployed to  produce  power,  while  electricity  affords  us  the  very  best 
means  yet  discovered  of  distributing  that  power. 

Electricity  does  not  yet  take  the  place  of  steam,  but  it  takes  the 
place  of  cogs,  wheels,  belting,  etc. 

A  word  as  to  the  time  necessary  to  become  an  electrical  engineer. 
It  is  claimed  by  some  that  six  months'  study  suffices  to  make  a  good 
electrician ;  but  experience  teaches  us  that  a  year  and  a  half  of  as- 
siduous work  would  not  be  by  any  means  too  much. 

In  conclusion,  I  may  say  that  this  is  a  profession  suitable  for 
women  of  a  scientific,  studious,  or  inventive  turn  of  mind.  It  is  not 
a  profession  requiring  physical  force,  but  rather  keen  abilities,  good 
mathematical  and  scientific  training,  and  the  special  education  of  the 
telegraph  engineer. 

I  can  not  suggest  a  brighter  prospect  for  young  men,  or  for  intel- 
ligent and  energetic  young  women,  who  wish  to  learn  a  profession, 
than  this  art,  which  year  by  year  is  steadily  assuming  more  and  more 
importance. 


CONCENTRIC  RINGS    OF  TREES,  259 

CONCEISTTKIC  EIJSTGS  OF  TEEES. 

By  a.  L.  child,  M.  D. 

IN  the  December  number  (1882)  of  the  "Monthly,"  you  published 
an  article  prepared  by  me,  on  the  "Annual  Growth  of  Trees," 
which  has  been  somewhat  largely  commented  upon,  in  the  periodicals 
and  press  of  the  day,  as  also  by  the  "  American  Congress  of  Forest- 
ry "  at  St.  Paul.  I  am  glad  to  note  this  interest  in  the  subject,  as  it 
will  cause  more  accurate  observation  of  the  facts  in  the  case.  As 
many  of  my  critics  have  apparently  read  only  extracts  from  the  arti- 
cle, and  have  accordingly  drawn  very  incorrect  inferences  as  to  my 
views,  I  wish  to  restate  some  of  the  more  important  points,  and  the 
evidence  sustaioing  them. 

In  June  of  1871  I  planted  a  quantity  of  seed  as  it  ripened  and  fell 
from  some  red-maple  trees.  In  1873  I  transplanted  some  of  the  trees 
from  these  seeds,  placing  them  on  my  city  lots  in  Plattsmouth,  Ne- 
braska. In  August,  1882,  finding  them  too  much  crowded,  I  cut  some 
out,  and,  the  concentric  rings  being  very  plain  and  distinct,  I  counted 
them.  From  the  day  of  planting  the  seed  to  the  day  of  cutting  the 
trees  was  two  months  over  eleven  years. 

On  one,  more  distinctly  marked  (although  there  was  but  little 
difference  between  them),  I  counted  on  one  side  of  the  heart  forty 
rings.  Other  sides  were  not  so  distinct ;  but  in  no  part  were  there 
fewer  than  thirty-five.  There  was  no  guess-work  about  the  age  of 
this  tree.  A  daily  record  of  meteorological  events  for  the  Smithso- 
nian Institution  and  Signal-Office  for  over  twenty  years,  and  a  life-long 
habit  of  daily  record  of  all  important  events,  had  led  to  much  care 
and  caution  in  such  matters.  Hence,  from  my  own  record,  I  knew  the 
tree  had  but  tw^elve  years  of  growth  ;  and  yet,  as  counted  by  myself 
and  many  others,  it  had  forty  clear  concentric  rings. 

Here  permit  me  to  quote  a  few  lines  from  the  original  article, 
which,  so  far  as  I  have  seen,  have  been  entirely  ignored  or  overlooked 
by  all  commentators  :  "  I  could  select  twelve  more  distinct  ones  (rings) 
between  which  fainter  and  narrower,  or  sub-rings,  appeared.  Nine  of 
these  apparently  annual  rings  on  one  section  were  peculiarly  distinct ; 
much  more  than  the  sub-rings.  But,  of  the  remaining,  it  was  difficult 
to  decide  which  were  annual  and  which  were  not."  When  first  cut, 
and  while  the  wood  was  green  and  the  cells  filled  with  sap,  these 
rings  were  very  clear  and  plain  ;  but,  as  the  water  evaporated  and  the 
wood  contracted,  they  showed  less  plainly.  I  have  a  section  of  it  now 
before  me,  and  I  can  not  make  out  clearly  over  twenty-four,  where, 
when  green,  forty  were  clearly  visible.  This  section  was  not  at  first 
so  distinctly  marked  as  a  section  forwarded  to  Professor  Cleveland 


26o  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Abbe,  of  the  Signal-Office,  at  his  request ;  although  that,  when  for- 
warded, showed  the  rings  much  less  conspicuously  than  when  fresh 
and  green. 

Mr.  P.  C.  Smith,  in  the  August  (1883)  "Monthly,"  supporting  the 
commonly  received  reliability  of  the  rings,  as  an  index  to  the  age  of 
the  tree,  refers  to  certain  disputed  corners  and  lines  marked  by  hacks 
on  trees,  and  the  agreement  of  the  number  of  the  subsequent  riogs 
with  the  record  of  the  surveyor.  This  indicates  an  uncertainty  in  the 
matter  which  is  hardly  receivable  as  scientific  proof.  If  the  record  was 
reliable,  why  question  the  hack  ?  If  only  for  confirmatory  evidence, 
how  identify  the  one  hack  among  the  many  which  on  old  lines  invari- 
ably accumulate  in  the  vicinity  of  disputed  lines  by  many  resurveys  ? 
Is  it  not  a  mere  assumption  that  the  rings  do  indicate  a  like  num- 
ber of  years  ;  and  that,  as  the  record  agreed  with  these  rings,  there- 
fore, that  hack  was  the  one  f  Mr.  Smith  says,  "  It  will  be  very  dif- 
ficult to  convince  an  old  surveyor,  or  an  old  lawyer,  who  has  tried 
many  of  these  land  cases,  that  each  concentric  ring  on  an  oak-tree,  at 
least,  does  not  indicate  a  year's  growth  only  of  such  tree."  Well,  I 
am  an  old  surveyor,  having  followed  the  business  more  or  less  for  up- 
ward of  fifty  years,  and  the  evidence  before  me  admits  of  but  the  one 
possible  conclusion  ;  and,  had  Mr.  Smith  or  any  other  intelligent  man 
the  same  evidence,  I  am  sure  there  could  be  no  disagreement  between 
us  on  the  subject. 

The  Hon.  James  J.  Wilson,  of  Bethel,  Vermont,  an  "  old  lawyer  " 
and  late  Senator  in  the  State  Legislature,  writes  me,  under  date  of 
August  15th,  that  at  a  trial  in  the  District  Court  at  Woodstock,  Ver- 
mont, on  a  disputed  line  based  upon  a  cut  on  a  hemlock-tree,  a  sec- 
tion of  the  tree  embracing  the  cut  was  produced  in  court,  and  the 
rings  outside  the  cut  counted  up  from  forty  to  fifty,  while  those  on 
the  opposite  side  were  only  nine  or  ten  !  The  verdict  of  the  court  was, 
that  "  the  rings  were  not  a  sure  indication  of  the  age  of  the  tree." 

Hon.  Robert  W.  Furness,  late  Governor  of  Nebraska,  so  well 
known  as  a  practical  forester,  has  kindly  furnished  me  with  several 
sections  of  trees  of  known  age,  from  which  I  select  the  following  :  A 
pig-hickory  eleven  years  old,  with  sixteen  distinct  rings  ;  a  green-ash 
eight  years  old,  with  eleven  very  plain  rings  ;  a  Kentucky  coffee-tree 
ten  years  old,  with  fourteen  very  distinct  rings,  and,  in  addition  to 
these,  twenty-one  sub-rings  ;  a  burr-oak  ten  years  old,  with  twenty- 
four  equally  distinct  rings  ;  a  black- walnut  five  years  old,  with  twelve 
rings.  Governor  Furness  adds  that  he  has  a  chestnut  of  four  years, 
with  seven  rings  ;  a  peach  of  eight  years,  with  six  rings  ;  and  a  chest- 
nut-oak of  twenty-four  years,  with  eighteen  rings.  He  attended  the 
recent  meeting  of  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Science,  at  Minneapolis,  Minnesota,  and  presented  this  question  and 
his  specimens  to  the  section  on  forestry.  He  reports  that  Professor 
Budd,  of  the  Iowa  Agricultural  College,  presented  also  a  specimen 


CONCENTRIC  RINGS    OF  TREES.  261 

spruce  from  Puget's  Sound,  of  known  age,  or  nearly  fifteen  years  old. 
The  section  was  twelve  inches  in  length,  and  on  one  end  had  eighteen 
rings  and  on  the  other  end  had  only  twelve.  Commissioner  Loring 
expresses  the  opinion  that  "  this  settled  the  question,  that  rings  at  all 
times  could  not  be  relied  upon  as  an  index  of  the  age  of  trees." 

Hon.  J.  T.  Allan,  of  Omaha,  superintendent  of  tree-planting  for 
the  Union  Pacific  Railroad  Company,  in  a  recent  letter  says  :  "  Any 
intelligent  man,  who  has  given  any  attention  to  this  matter  of  yearly 
tree-growth,  knows  that  the  rings  are  no  index  of  a  tree's  age.  H.  P. 
Child,  superintendent  of  the  Kansas  City  stock-yards,  shows  me  a 
section  of  pine  eight  years  old,  with  nineteen  rings,  and  a  soft  maple 
of  nearly  fourteen  years,  with  sixteen  very  distinct  rings,  in  addition 
to  which  there  are  forty-seven  less  distinct  sub-rings." 

In  conclusion,  that  the  more  distinct  concentric  rings  of  a  tree  ap- 
proximate, or  in  some  cases  exactly  agree,  in  number  with  the  years  of 
the  tree,  no  one,  I  presume,  will  deny  ;  but  that  in  most  and  probably 
nearly  all  trees,  intermediate  rings  or  stib-rings,  generally  less  conspicu- 
ous, yet  often  more  distinct  than  the  annual  rings,  exist,  is  equally  cer- 
tain :  and  I  think  the  foregoing  evidence  is  sufficient  to  induce  those 
who  prefer  truth  to  error  to  examine  the  facts  of  the  case. 

These  sub-rings  or  additional  rings  are  easily  accounted  for  by  sud- 
den and  more  or  less  frequent  changes  of  weather  and  requisite  condi- 
tions of  growth — each  check  tending  to  solidify  the  newly-deposited 
cambium,  or  forming  layer ;  and,  as  long  intervals  occur  of  extreme 
drought  or  cold,  or  other  unfavorable  cause,  the  condensation  produces 
a  more  pronounced  and  distinct  ring  than  the  annual  one.  Query  : 
Has  a  tree  grown  in  a  conservatory,  or  place  of  unchanged  conditions 
of  heat  and  moisture,  any  concentric  rings  ? 


262 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


CORRESPONDENCE 


HUMAN  FOOT-PEINTS  IN  BTEATIFIED 
KOCK. 
Messrs.  Editors: 

NEAR  the  mouth  of  the  Little  Cheyenne 
River,  in  Dakota  Territory,  there  is 
a  rock  on  which  arc  some  curious  indenta- 
tions. The  rock  lies  on  the  north  slope  of 
a  bowlder-covered  hill,  and  is  itself  an  er- 
ratic. It  is  about  twelve  feet  long  by  seven 
or  eight  feet  wide,  and  rises  above  the  sur- 
face of  the  ground  about  eighteen  inches. 
Its  edges  are  angular,  its  surface  flat,  and 
it  shows  but  little,  if  any,  effect  of  ice-ac- 
tion. It  appears  to  be  magnesian  limestone, 
and  its  size  and  whiteness  make  it  a  con- 
spicuous object. 

On  the  surface,  near  the  southeast  cor- 
ner of  it,  is  a  perfect  foot-print  as  though 
made  by  the  left,  moccasined  foot  of  a 
woman,  or  boy  of,  say,  fourteen  years.  The 
toes  are  toward  the  north.  The  indentation 
is  about  half  an  inch  deep.  About  four 
and  a  half  feet  in  front  of  it  and  in  line 
with  it,  near  the  middle  of  the  rock,  is  a 
deeper  indentation  made  with  the  right  foot, 
the  heel  being  deeper  than  the  rest  of  the 
foot.  And  again,  about  five  and  a  half  feet 
in  front  of  this,  and  in  line  with  both  the 
others,  is  a  third  foot-print,  this  time  with 
the  left  foot. 

The  three  foot-prints  are  of  the  same 
size,  and  are  such  as  would  apparently  be 
made  by  a  person  running  rapidly.  The 
foot-print  of  the  right  foot  is  an  inch  deep 
at  the  heel,  and  three  quarters  of  an  inch  at 
the  ball.  The  third  foot-print  is  about  three 
quarters  of  an  inch  in  depth.  In  all  three 
the  arch  of  the  instep  is  well  defined,  and 
the  toes  faintly  indicated.  The  rock  is  hard, 
and  not  of  uniform  texture,  having  vein-like 
markings  about  a  quarter  of  an  inch  wide 
running  through  it,  which,  weathering  hard- 
er than  the  body  of  the  rock,  present  slight- 
ly raised  surfaces.  I'his  difference  in  the 
weathering  of  the  rock  is  the  same  in  the  bot- 
tom of  the  foot-prints  as  on  the  stirface  of  the 
rock. 

From  Mr.  Lc  Beau,  a  '*  squaw-man,"  who 
has  lived  in  that  region  for  twenty-six  years, 
I  learned  that  it  is  known  to  the  Indians  as 
a  "  medicine  "-rock,  and  that  they  worship 
it.  lie  says  that  none  of  the  present  In- 
dians know  anything  of  the  origin  of  the 
foot-prints.  A  town  has  been  recently 
started  within  half  a  mile  of  it,  called 
Waneta,  and  white  children  playing  about 
it  have  found  numerous  beads  and  other 
trinkets,  probably  placed  there  as  offerings. 

I  had  heard  of  the  rock  several  weeks 


previous  to  my  visit,  and  expected  to  find 
either  the  work  of  nature  with  only  a  fan- 
cied resemblance,  or  the  rude  sculpturing  of 
the  Indians.  The  uniformity  in  size  and 
direction  discredits  the  former  view,  as  the 
difference  between  the  foot-prints  seems  to 
make  the  latter  doubtful ;  and  the  possibility 
of  the  foot-prints  having  been  made  when 
the  material  of  which  the  rock  is  composed 
was  in  a  soft  state  presents  itself  as  the 
best  solution  of  the  problem. 

I  trust  that  this  communication  may 
lead  to  its  investigation  by  those  competent 
to  decide  the  matter. 

Very  truly  yours, 

Herbert  P.  Hcbbell. 
"WiNOXA,  Min>t:80ta,  September  10,  1883. 


ASTHMA  AND  ITS  TEEATMENT. 
Messrs.  Editors  : 

Your  "  ilonthly "  for  September  con- 
tains an  article  by  Felix  L.  Osm  aid,  M.  D., 
on  "Asthma."  For  many  years  I  was  a 
martyr  to  that  distressing  complaint,  and 
know  its  character  and  symptoms  from  per- 
I  sonal  experience.  Naturally,  I  have  also 
gathered,  from  others  who  were  similarly 
afflicted,  results  of  their  experience,  to  say 
nothing  of  what  I  have  read  in  medical 
works  on  the  subject.  My  own  experience, 
and  that  of  all  whom  I  have  known,  is  so 
different  from  \\hat  Dr.  Oswald  writes,  that 
I  am  impelled,  for  the  sake  of  many  who 
may  receive  great  injury,  and  perhaps  even 
lose  their  lives  by  following  his  extreme 
doctrine,  to  write  to  you  in  criticism  of  what 
he  has  written. 

There  are  many  errors  of  statement  in 
his  article.  He  says  "the  most  frequent 
proximate  cause  is  violent  mental  emotion — 
fear,  anxiety,  and  especially  suppressed  an- 
ger." I  do  not  dispute  that  any  one  of  these 
may  cause  asthma,  but  among  the  proximate 
causes  that  are  far  more  frequent  are  an 
ordinary  cold,  a  damp  pillow,  an  ill-venti- 
lated, stuffy  room  or  beith,  a  severe  attack 
of  indigestion.  Indeed,  as  an  asthmatic  at- 
tack generally  comes  on  in  the  early  morn- 
ing, the  patient  waking  in  a  semi-nightmare 
to  find  the  attack  already  begim,  it  is  after 
a  period  of  rest  rather  than  passion  or  men- 
tal excitement  that  it  supervenes, 

"  Asthma,"  he  says,  "  is  a  warm-xccather 
disease."  Perhaps  it  may  be  with  some. 
There  is  a  great  variety  in  asthmatic  cases. 
Some  are  better  in  cities,  some  in  the  coun- 
try. There  are  no  two  cases  alike  in  all 
their  features.     So  far  from  asthma  being  a 


CORRESP  ONDENCE. 


265 


warm-weather  disease,  and  '■^  June  being /»ar 
excellence  the  asthma-month  of  the  year," 
my  experience  goes  to  show  that  the  worst 
months  are  those  in  which  the  vegetation  is 
decaying — September,  October,  and  Novem- 
ber. 

Now,  as  to  the  remedy  which  our  author 
recommends — cold  water.  I  would  like  to 
apply  his  own  language  on  a  previous  page 
of  his  article  to  this,  where  he  says :  *'  Horse- 
back-riding is  an  approved  cure  for  epilep- 
sy, but  during  the  progress  of  the  fit  the 
application  of  the  specific  might  lead  to 
strange  consequences.  Yacht-sailing  in  a 
storm  would  be  a  bad  way  of  curing  sea- 
sickness, though  it  dimiuishcs  the  danger  of 
future  attacks." 

So  it  is  with  cold  water  as  a  cure  for 
asthma.  "A  plunge-bath  iato  a  pond  or 
tub  of  water  "  would  indeed  be  a  terrible 
remedy  for  a  person  afflicted  with  a  severe 
asthmatic  spasm.  No  person  of  adult  years 
in  such  a  condition  would  think  of  such  a 
remedy,  for  its  consequences  might  be  fatal. 
The  shock  of  such  treatment  would  infallibly 
increase  the  spasm  and  greatly  intensify  the 
sufferin,:;.  The  patient  instinctively  feels 
this,  and  knows  that  he  can  endure  only  the 
most  soothing  and  gentle  treatment.  There- 
fore there  is  no  danger  to  any  adult  asth- 
matic in  reading  such  advice.  But  parents 
or  unskilled  medical  men  might  be  misled 
by  this  authoritative  statement  as  to  the  cold- 
water  remedy,  and  might  subject  children 
to  it  with  a  refinement  of  brutality  which 
they  happily  would  be  ignorant  of,  but  which 
Dr.  Oswald  certainly  ought  to  know  better 
than  to  recommend. 

Imagine  the  poor  sufferer,  propped  in  a 
chair,  livid  and  gasping  for  each  imperfect 
breath,  unable  to  speak,  fearful  of  the 
slightest  motion,  a  terrible  strain  pressing 
on  heart,  brain,  and  nerves,  and  think  of  a 
plunge  cold  bath  in  such  a  case.  Yet  our 
Doctor  says  "  it  is  the  most  reliable  rem- 
edy." Certainly  he,  for  one,  has  not  been 
an  asthmatic. 

If  this  criticism  has  only  the  effect  of 
making  parents  or  physicians  hesitate  before 
adopting  such  cruel  remedies  with  children 
(there  is  no  fear  of  adults  permitting  it), 
my  main  purpose  in  writing  it  will  be  ful- 
filled. 

Our  author  also  condemns  the  use  of 
the  ordinary  alleviations  in  asthmatic  at- 
tacks. There  is  some  truth,  doubtless,  in 
what  he  says  on  this  subject.  Still,  they 
are  of  the  greatest  value.  A  traveler,  for 
instance,  who  is  free  from  asthma  at  home, 
stops  at  a  close  country  inn,  and  contracts 
an  attack  of  asthma.  Then  the  remedies 
which  are  usually  prescribed — perhaps  stra- 
monium, perhaps  coffee,  or  perhaps  niter- 
paper  fumes — relieve  rapidly,  and  enable  the 
traveler  to  proceed,  whereas  without  them 
the  spasm  might  last  for  days.    These  reme- 


dies act  as  helps,  and  the  system  has  a  sur- 
plus of  strength  sufficient  to  repair  the 
slight  damage  caused  by  them.  They  help 
in  the  time  of  need.  They  act  as  brandy 
does  to  a  frozen  mountaineer ;  and,  if  a  mis- 
taken medical  philosophy  is  going  to  deprive 
the  suffering  asthmatic  of  these  invaluable 
aids  and  reliefs,  it  ought  to  be  combated 
and  exposed.  As  well  say  that  surgical 
operations  should  be  conducted  without  chlo- 
roform or  ether,  because  the  effect  of  those 
anaesthetics  is  harmful,  as  to  say  that  the 
blessed  relief  which  nature's  herbs  provide 
should  not  be  used  in  case  of  an  asthmatic 
emergency. 

Whatever  may  be  Dr.  Oswald's  merits  as 
a  physician,  his  paper  on  asthma,  judged 
from  the  standpoint  of  a  campaigner  in  that 
complaint,  is  not  sufficiently  correct  or  judi- 
cious to  be  a  safe  guide  for  the  physician 
or  the  sufferer.  W.  B.  Crosby. 

New  Yoek,  September  15, 1883. 

Messrs.  Editors  : 

From  the  symptoms  described  by  Mr. 
W.  B.  Crosby,  I  suspect  that  his  affliction 
is  not  chronic  asthma,  but  the  dyspnoea  which 
sometimes  accompanies  a  latent  tubercular 
diathesis,  and  which,  in  its  spasmodic  form, 
is  generally  aggravated  by  catarrh.  Asthma, 
like  hay-fever,  is  chiefly  a  warm-weather  dis- 
ease ;  still,  if  Mr.  Crosby's  trouble  is  not 
confined  to  the  end  of  the  year,  I  believe  I 
can  reconcile  his  experience  with  my  ob- 
servation on  the  secondary  causes  of  the 
disorder,  viz.,  that  the  symptoms  often  as- 
cribed to  the  effect  of  a  vegetable  pollen 
"  are  probably  a  consequence  of  the  relax- 
ing influence  of  the  first  warm  weather,  for 
in  midwinter  a  single  warm  day,  following 
upon  a  protracted  frost,  may  produce  symp- 
toms exactly  resembling  those  of  a  hay- 
catarrh"  ("Popular  Science  Monthly,"  p. 
606).  Your  correspondent  suspects  a  mor- 
bific agency  in  the  decay  of  the  autumnal 
vegetation,  and,  in  America  at  least,  the  Oc- 
tober frosts,  when  the  falling  leaves  expose 
a  vast  area  of  woodland-soil,  are  almost 
yearly  followed  by  a  return  of  warm  weath- 
er. I  make  no  doubt  but  annual  asthmas 
are  often  supplemented  by  Indian-summer 
attacks.  What  Mr.  Crosby  says  about  the 
causal  connection  of  asthma  and  indiges- 
tion was  mentioned  in  other  words  on  p. 
610  ("Popular  Science  Monthly"):  "There 
is  a  curious  correlation  between  asthma  and 
close  stools  ;  they  come  and  go  together." 

Mr.  Crosby  is  probably  not  less  correct 
in  his  statement  that  his  asthmatic  spasms 
"generally  come  on  in  the  early  mornings, 
the  patient  waking  in  a  semi-nightmare  to 
find  the  attack  already  begun,"  and  his 
description  does  not  materially  differ  from 
mine,  that,  "  after  rolling  and  tossing  about 
till  relieved  by  that  form  of  sleep  which  the 
Germans  call  '  Ein-dammern  ' — the  patient 


264 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


is  almost  sure  to  start  up  with  a  feeling  of 
strangulation"  ("Popular  Science  Monthly," 
p.  611).  But  even  in  such  cases  the  proxi- 
mate cause  can  generally  be  traced  to  some 
occurrence  of  the  preceding  day;  indeed, 
most  sufferers  from  chronic  asthma  know 
from  the  experience  of  their  waking  hours 
what  the  next  night  may  be  expected  to  have 
in  store  for  them. 

I  do  not  suppose  that  your  correspond- 
ent, whose  letters  bespeak  him  an  intelligent 
observer,  can  be  a  dupe  of  the  vulgar  fal- 
lacy which  mistakes  a  low  temperature  for 
the  cause  of  "  colds  "  and  catarrhs  ;  still,  it 
is  evident  that  he  overrates  the  danger  of 
its  employment  as  a  "  remedial  agent."  For 
one  life  lost  by  the  abuse  of  cold  water,  a 
million  have  been  lost  by  the  abuse  of  drugs. 
Dr.  Carl  Cock,  whose  manual  of  health, 
"Das  Buch  vom  gesunden  und  krankcn  Men- 
schen,"  is  a  standard  (though  entirely  non- 
st^steinic)  work  on  practical  hygiene,  recom- 
mends a  sponge  or  shower-bath  among  the 
safest  antispasmodics  (c,  "Angor  pectoris, 
or  Asthma,"  p.  502).  It  is  well  known  that 
the  paroxysms  of  yellow  fever  and  cognate 
diseases  decrease  the  intoxicating  effects  of 
alcoholic  stimulants,  and  hydropathists  have 
repeatedly  called  attention  to  the  fact  that 
under  similar  circumstances  the  dreaded 
nervous  shock  of  a  cold  douche  is  partly  neu- 
tralized by  the  conditions  of  the  disease  itself, 
and  acts  only  as  a  tonic  in  the  best  sense  of 
the  word  ;  and,  since  Dr.  Koch's  discovery, 
no  modification  of  accepted  medical  theo 
ries  has  excited  more  attention  than  the 
successful  application  of  cold  baths  to  the 
treatment  of  typhoid  fever.  For  a  practi- 
cal illustration  of  their  efficacy  in  severe 
cases  of  spasmodic  asthma,  I  can  refer  Mr. 
Crosby  to  the  experience  of  two  of  my  cor- 
respondents, Mr.  Otto  Schreiner,  of  Jack- 
sonville, Florida,  and  Dr.  H.  D.  Warner,  of 
Reliance,  Polk  County,  Tennessee.  After 
stating  his  personal  experience.  Dr.  Warner 
adds,  "  Priessnitz,"  the  founder  of  hydropa- 
thy," would  become  the  patron-saint  of  asth- 
ma-patients, if  they  could  rid  themselves  of 
the  superstitious  dread  of  cold  water  and  give 
the  plan  a  fair  trial." 

Stramonium  {vide  Datura  in  "American 
Cyclopedia,"  or  any  medical  or  pharmaceuti- 
cal compend)  is  one  of  the  strongest  narcotic 
poisons,  and  in  its  physiological  action  re- 
sembles belladonna  and  henbane,  produc- 
ing "dryness  of  the  throat,  active  deUrium, 
dilatation  of  the  pupils,  and  a  rapid  pulse. 
Death  may  occur  with  coma  and  convul- 
sions." And  such  remedies  Mr.  Crosby  pro- 
poses to  apply  to  patients  who  "  can  endure 
only  the  most  soothing  and  gentle  treat- 
ment "  !  It  is  true  that  the  action  of  the 
drug  is  somewhat  modified  by  the  abnormal 
condition  of  the  system;  still,  its  after-ef- 
fects are  perceptible  for  days;  while  those 
of  cold  water  arc  limited  to  the  dread  of 


direful  consequences,  and  one  or  two  test- 
experiments  will  rarely  fail  to'  remove  that 
objection,  which  is,  after  all,  only  a  special- 
ized form  of  the  same  traditional  fallacy 
which  in  winter  ascribes  fatal  consequences 
to  an  open  window,  but  risks  the  sickening 
eflBuvium  of  an  unventilated  bedroom;  which 
in  warm  weather  dreads  a  draught  of  cold 
water,  but  trusts  its  life  to  the  tender  mer- 
cies of  the  liquor-mixer.  Besides,  the  asthe- 
nia of  an  asthma-spasm  is  an  eclipse,  a  tem- 
porary paralysis,  rather  than  an  exhaustion 
of  the  vital  energies  ;  and  the  shiver  of  a  cold 
douche,  instead  of  complicating  the  afflic- 
tions of  the  patient,  relieves  them  by  break- 
ing the  spell  of  the  obstruction.  Of  course, 
neither  stramonium  nor  cold  water  alono 
can  reach  the  cause  of  the  disease,  which 
must  be  removed  by  an  invigorating  regi- 
men— out  -  door  life,  wholesome  food,  and 
persistent  continence ;  cold  water,  however, 
is  at  least  an  adjuvant  means  to  that  end, 
while  the  repeated  use  of  narcotic  drugs 
never  fails  to  impair  the  tone  of  the  nerv- 
ous system,  and  thus  directly  tends  to  per- 
petuate an  asthenic  diathesis.* 

But  I  fully  agree  with  your  correspond- 
ent that  asthma  is  the  most  capricious  dis- 
order of  the  human  organism,  and  that  its 
study  can  never  be  exhausted.  Most  of  his 
observations  can  be  readily  reconciled  with 
the  doctrine  of  my  treatise  ;  but,  even  in  as 
far  as  they  may  represent  the  record  of  an 
exceptional  experience,  I  consider  them,  on 
the  whole,  a  valuable  contribution  to  the 
pathology  of  the  disease. 

F.  L.  Oswald. 


ANIMAL  FEIENDSHIPS. 
M6»sr8.  Editors: 

An  article  on  animal  friendships,  which 
appeared  not  long  since  in  "The  Popular 
Science  Monthly,"  reminded  me  of  a  re- 
markable in-tance  that  came  under  my  own 
observation  a  short  time  ago. 

While  on  a  visit  to  a  farmer  in  a  neigh- 
boring county,  I  was  surprised  to  see  a 
magnificent,  full-grown  wild  -  turkey  wan- 
dering around  with  the  fowls  in  his  barn- 
yard. On  watching  the  turkey,  I  was  still 
more  surprised  to  notice  that  she  followed 
particularly  a  large  rooster  ;  the  two  seemed 
to  be  on  excellent  terms,  and  frequently 
strayed  off  from  the  main  flock  together. 
Inquiring  of  the  owner,  I  learned  the  fol- 
lowing facts  :  Two  of  his  children  found  a 
few  wild-turkeys'  eggs  in  the  forest  and 
brought  them  home,  placing  them  under  a 
domestic  turkey,  with  other  eggs,  to  hatch. 
Three  of  the  wild-turkey  eggs  hatched,  and 
two  of  the  chicks  lived  to  grow  up,  but  soon 


*  "China  tobacco"  and  niter  are  hardly  less  ob- 
jectionable. Only  three  weeks  apo  Charles  H.  Cod- 
man,  the  well-known  liberal  and  political  economist, 
died  from  the  t  ffects  of  inhalin«j  niter-fnmes.  (  Vide 
p.  l-k)  in  Boston  '•  Index  "  of  September  27, 1883.) 


EDITOR'S   TABLE. 


265 


betrayed  an  evident  dislike  for  the  domestic 
turkeys,  the  one  before  mentioned  showing 
a  warm  regard  for  the  rooster,  which  was 
evidently  reciprocated.  When  this  one  be- 
came fully  grown,  the  children  traded  it  oflf 
to  a  neighboring  boy  who  resided  about 
three  miles  distant  in  the  woods,  but  on  the 
following  day  the  turkey  appeared  at  its  old 


home  and  immediately  sought  out  its  friend 
the  rooster.  It  was  returned  to  the  neigh- 
bor, who  finally  found  it  impossible  to  keep 
his  new  possession,  and  so  the  bargain  had 
to  be  annulled,  and  rooster  and  turkey  were 
allowed  to  peacefully  enjoy  each  other's 
companionship.  E.  M.  S. 

SPEmGFiBU),  MissouEi,  October  22,  1883. 


EDITOR'S    TABLE. 


DEAD-LANGUAGE  STUDIES  NECESSA- 
RILY A  FAILURE. 

"TTTE  last  month  cited  conclusive 
VV  testimony  that,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  classical  studies  are  a  general  and 
notorious  failure ;  we  now  propose  to 
look  a  little  into  the  causes  of  that  fail- 
ure. The  partisans  of  the  system  have 
a  ready  reason  for  so  much  of  it  as  they 
have  not  the  assurance  to  deny.  They 
admit  that  the  dead  languages  may 
partially  fail  because  they  are  poorly 
taught. 

It  is  significant  that  this  complaint 
of  bad  classical  teaching  has  been  made 
for  hundreds  of  years.  The  indictments 
of  the  system  on  this  score  by  eminent 
men  would  fill  a  big  book.  But  why, 
then,  have  not  the  sorely-needed  re- 
forms been  carried  out?  The  subject  is 
surely  important  enough,  and  has  been 
prominent  enough  to  enforce  attention 
to  it.  It  has  occupied  the  scholarly 
talent  of  generations;  yet,  where  the 
system  has  been  tried  longest,  the  best 
minds  have  still  cried  out  against  the 
unbroken  experience  of  failure,  not- 
withstanding all  attempts  to  reform 
the  bad  practices.  Two  hundred  years 
ago,  the  mode  of  studying  the  dead 
languages  was  sharply  condemned  by 
John  Milton,  who  thus  wrote :  "  We 
do  amiss  to  spend  seven  or  eight  years 
in  scraping  together  so  much  miserable 
Greek  and  Latin  as  might  be  learned 
otherwise  easily  and  delightfully  in  one 
year."  Milton  believed  in  reform,  and 
had  the  most  sanguine  hope  from  a  bet- 
ter system,  which  would  do  more  even 
for  dunces  than  the  prevailing  method 


could  do  for  brighter  minds,  and  he  gives 
to  his  expectation  the  following  quaint 
and  vigorous  expression :  "  I  doubt  not 
that  ye  shall  have  more  ado  to  drive 
our  dullest  and  laziest  youth,  our  stocks 
and  stubs,  from  the  infinite  desire  of 
such  a  happy  nurture,  than  we  have 
now  to  hale  and  drag  our  hopefullest 
and  choicest  wits  to  that  asinine  feast 
of  sow-thistles  and  brambles  which  is 
commonly  set  before  them  as  the  food 
and  entertainment  of  their  tender  est 
and  most  docible  age."  And,  after  a 
couple  of  centuries  of  progress,  what 
is  the  outcome  ?  We  still  hear  every- 
where that  the  dead  languages  fail,  be- 
cause they  are  taught  by  obsolete  and 
irrational  methods,  and  it  is  stoutly 
claimed  that  all  we  need  is  their  refor- 
mation. 

But  what  mystery  is  there  about 
these  languages  that  their  study  should 
prove  the  great  chronic  scandalous  fail- 
ure of  higher  education,  age  after  age? 
There  can  be  no  reason  in  their  consti- 
tution or  peculiarities  that  should  neces- 
sitate any  such  result.  There  has  been 
a  thousand  times  more  practice  in  teach- 
ing them  than,  in  teaching  any  other 
languages ;  the  work  of  learning  them 
is  of  the  same  kind  as  that  of  learning 
other  languages,  and  they  are  said, 
moreover,  to  be  the  most  perfect  forms 
of  speech,  and  in  that  respect  would 
seem  to  have  advantages  over  other 
languages.  There  is  nothing  exception- 
al in  the  processes  of  their  study.  The 
meanings  and  relations  of  words  have 
simply  to  be  acquired,  so  that  they  can 
be  used  for  the  expression  of  thought. 


266 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


Dictionaries,  grammars,  literary  models 
abound,  and  experienced  teachers  su- 
perabound.  And  yet,  with  all  these 
facilities,  the  study  of  dead  languages 
has  been  the  one  pre-eminent  and  his- 
toric failure  of  the  so-called  liberal  edu- 
cation. There  is  more  repulsiveness  in 
it  and  more  hatred  of  it  than  any  other 
kind  of  study— mathematics  not  ex- 
cepted. There  have  been  more  flogging, 
bullying,  and  bribery  resorted  to  as  in- 
centives to  classical  study  than  to  all 
other  studies  whatever.  Both  in  Eng- 
land and  in  Germany  the  system  has 
long  maintained  an  exclusive  ascenden- 
cy by  a  barbaric  discipline  on  the  one 
hand,  and  on  the  other  by  all  kinds  of 
prizes,  honors,  and  emoluments  that 
could  stimulate  selfish  ambition,  and 
which  have  been  jealously  withheld 
from  modern  studies.  With  all  these 
factitious  stimulants  to  classical  study, 
its  failure  has  been  so  notorious  that  we 
can  not  attribute  it  to  any  accidental 
defects  in  the  modes  of  its  teaching. 
Nor  can  these  defects  be  so  readily  re- 
paired, for  no  possible  reform  in  the 
modes  of  studying  the  dead  "languages 
can  alter  their  relations  to  modern 
thought.  It  is  here  that  we  find  the 
open  secret  of  their  failure. 

Professor  Cooke  struck  the  key- 
note of  this  discussion  when  he  re- 
marked, in  his  article  on  "  The  Greek 
Question,"  in  the  last  "  Monthly  " :  "A 
half-century  has  wholly  changed  the 
relations  of  human  knowledge,"  and 
"  the  natural  sciences  have  become  the 
chief  factors  of  our  modern  civiliza- 
tion." This  change  in  the  relations  of 
knowledge,  by  which  the  sciences  have 
become  the  great  intellectual  factors 
of  civilization,  has  necessarily  brought 
with  it  a  corresponding  revolution  in 
education.  For  the  new  knowledge  did 
not  originate  by  the  old  methods  of 
study ;  it  came  by  new  exercises  of  the 
mind,  as  mnch  contrasted  with  previous 
habits  as  the  greatness  of  its  results  is 
contrasted  with  the  barrenness  of  the 
traditional  scholarship.   The  old  method 


occupied  itself  mainly  with  the  study 
of  language ;  the  new  method  passed 
beyond  language  to  the  study  of  the 
actual  phenomena  of  nature.  The  old 
method  has  for  its  end  lingual  accom- 
plishments; the  new  method,  a  real 
knowledge  of  the  characters  and  rela- 
tions of  natural  things.  The  old  method 
trains  the  verbal  memory,  and  the  rea- 
son, so  far  as  it  is  exercised  in  transpos- 
ing thought  from  one  form  of  expres- 
sion to  another.  The  new  method  cul- 
tivates the  powers  of  observation  and 
the  faculty  of  reasoning  upon  the  objects 
of  experience  so  as  to  educate  the  judg- 
ment in  dealing  with  the  problems  of 
life.  The  old  method  left  uncultivated 
whole  tracts  of  the  mind  that  are  of 
supreme  importance  in  gaining  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  actual  properties  and  prin- 
ciples of  things  which  are  fundament- 
al in  our  progressive  civilization;  the 
new  method  begins  with  the  systematic 
cultivation  of  these  neglected  mental 
powers.  The  old  method  has  yielded  to 
the  world  long  ago  all  that  it  is  capable 
of  giving  ;  the  new  method  has  already 
accomplished  much,  but  it  has  as  yet 
yielded  but  comparatively  Httle  of  what 
it  is  capable  of  giving  when  it  becomes 
organized  into  a  perfected  system  of  edu- 
cation. It  is  this  new  scientific  method, 
based  in  nature,  fortified  in  the  noblest 
conquests  of  the  human  mind,  and 
full  of  promise  in  its  future  develop- 
ment that  has  become  the  rival  in  these 
days  of  the  old  system  of  dead-language 
studies.  They  have  failed  because  they 
can  not  hold  their  ground  against  the 
new  competitor. 

The  classics  are  constantly  defended 
because  of  their  boasted  discipline,  yet 
they  have  declined  because  of  the  grow- 
ing sense  of  the  weakness  and  inferiority 
of  the  mental  cultivation  they  impart. 
They  are  accomplishments  for  show, 
rather  than  solid  acquisitions  for  use. 
The  study  of  words,  the  chief  scholarly 
occupation,  is  mentally  debilitating,  be- 
cause it  leaves  unexercised,  or  exercises 
but  very  imperfectly,  the  most  impor- 


EDITOR'S   TABLE, 


267 


tant  faculties  of  the  mind — those  which 
can  only  be  aroused  to  vigorous  action 
by  direct  application  to  the  facts  of  the 
phenomenal  world.  That  classical  stu- 
dies fail  here  has  been  long  conceded. 
Dr.  Whewell  declares  that  "  mere  clas- 
sical reading  is  a  narrow  and  enfeebling 
education,"  and  Sydney  Smith  speaks 
of  "  the  safe  and  elegant  imbecilities  of 
classical  culture."  A  system  charac- 
terized by  feebleness  and  imbecihty  in 
its  mental  reactions  is  no  preparation 
for  dealing  with  the  stern  problems  of 
modern  life.  More  and  more  it  is  felt 
to  be  out  of  place,  and  is  consequently 
neglected.  No  kind  of  culture  degen- 
erates so  readily  into  stupid  mechani- 
cal routine  as  that  of  language.  Pro- 
fessor Halford  Vaughn  thus  character- 
izes the  effects  upon  the  mind  of  our 
excessive  addition  to  lingual  pursuits : 
"There  is  no  study  that  could  pro^e 
more  successful  in  producing  often 
thorough  idleness  and  vacancy  of  mind, 
parrot -like  repetition  and  sing-song 
knowledge,  to  the  abeyance  and  de- 
struction of  the  intellectual  powers,  as 
well  as  to  the  loss  and  paralysis  of 
the  outward  senses,  than  our  tradi- 
tional study  and  idolatry  of  language." 
Very  properly  may  it  be  said  that  our 
inordinate  study  of  language  is  an  idol- 
atry of  which  the  blind  devotion  to 
Greek  is  but  the  fetichistic  form^  The 
cause  of  the  failure  of  the  classics  is, 
therefore,  not  because  a  thousand  years 
of  experience  with  them  has  failed  to 
give  us  good  methods  of  study,  but  be- 
cause, in  the  competition  with  modern 
sciences,  as  Canon  Farrar  remarks, 
"  they  have  been  weighed  in  the  bal- 
ance and  found  wanting." 

We  have,  therefore,  to  regard  the 
educational  failure  of  the  dead  lan- 
guages as  a  result  of  the  progress  of  the 
human  mind,  and  therefore  as  a  normal 
and  inevitable  thing.  They  hold  their 
position  against  the  advancing  knowl- 
edge of  the  age  through  the  power  of  tra- 
dition, through  the  blind  veneration  of 
things  ancient,  because  they  represent  a 


conventional  culture,  and  are  conserved 
by  old  and  wealthy  institutions.  There 
is,  besides,  a  good  deal  of  money  in  the 
classics,  which  is  not  to  be  overlooked 
when  we  wish  to  account  for  the  te- 
nacity with  which  they  are  maintained. 
Professor  Gildersleeve,  in  a  recent  arti- 
cle ''On  Classics  in  Colleges,"  in  the 
"  Princeton  Review,"  takes  a  very  hope- 
ful view  of  their  continued  ascendency 
because,  among  other  reasons,  "  the  vest- 
ed interests  of  classical  study  are,  even 
from  a  mercantile  point  of  view,  enor- 
mous. Not  only  teachers,  but  book- 
makers, have  a  heavy  stake  in  the  for- 
tunes of  the  classics,  and  the  capital 
involved  in  them  reminds  us  of  the 
pecuniary  hold  of  paganism  in  the  early 
Christian  centuries."  Through  the  op- 
eration of  such  causes,  the  classics  will 
undoubtedly  linger  long  in  the  uni- 
versities, but  that  they  must  yield  to 
the  pressure  of  modern  knowledge  is 
inevitable ;  and  the  indications  that 
they  are  yielding  are  apparent  on  every 
hand. 

But  if  the  failure  of  dead-language 
studies  be  thus  necessary  for  the  causes 
assigned,  can  they  then  be  said  to  suc- 
ceed, even  if  the  student  accomplishes 
everything  proposed  ?  Is  it  so  entirely 
clear  that  he  who  faithfully  masters 
them  is  not  worse  off  than  he  who 
slurs  and  neglects  them  ?  Tlie  presi- 
dents of  our  colleges  tell  us  that  the  stu- 
dents of  Latin  and  Greek  actually  suc- 
ceed, even  when  they  seem  to  fail ;  but 
may  it  not  be  said  with  more  truth  that 
they  fail  even  when  they  seem  most  to 
succeed,  so  that  it  is  hardly  a  para- 
dox to  say  the  greater  the  success  the 
greater  the  failure?  If  classical  studies 
are  behind  the  age  and  out  of  place, 
then  the  greater  the  proficiency  the 
worse  the  displacement.  The  hope  is 
on  the  idlers  at  the  tails  of  their  classes, 
as  they  stand  a  chance  of  learning  some- 
thing else,  while  the  poor  victim  of  clas- 
sical infatuation, with  his  cultivated  con- 
tempt of  everything  useful,  comes  out 
the  most  pitiable  of  all  failures.     Hap- 


268 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


pily  we  see  in  this  country  but  very 
few  of  the  bloomiog  specimens  of  what 
the  system  can  do,  because  our  classical 
standards  in  the  colleges  are  not  high, 
and  because  the  pressure  of  other  sub- 
jects is  not  to  be  entirely  resisted.  But 
observation  gives  abundant  assurance 
that  no  man  is  so  disqualitied  for  any  de- 
sirable use,  so  irremediably  helpless  in 
the  struggles  of  actual  life,  as  he  who  has 
attained  to  the  high  classical  ideal,  and 
made  himself  at  home  in  the  literatures 
of  Greece  and  Eome.  The  following 
sketch  of  a  successful  university  prod- 
uct appeared  a  few  years  ago  in  the 
London  "  Times  "  : 

"  Common  things  are  quite  as  much 
neglected  and  despised  in  the  education 
of  the  rich  as  in  that  of  the  poor.  It  is 
wonderful  how  little  a  young  gentle- 
man may  know  when  he  has  taken  his 
university  degrees,  especially  if  he  has 
deen  industrious^  and  has  stuclc  to  his 
studies.  He  may  really  spend  a  long 
time  in  looking  for  somebody  more  ig- 
norant than  himself.  If  he  talks  with 
the  driver  of  the  stage-coach,  that  lands 
him  at  his  father's  door,  he  finds  he 
knows  nothing  of  horses.  If  he  falls 
into  conversation  with  a  gardener,  he 
knows  nothing  of  plants  or  flowers.  If 
he  walks  into  the  fields,  he  does  not 
know  the  difi*erence  between  barley, 
rye,  and  wheat ;  between  rape  and  tur- 
nips; between  lucern  and  sainfoin  ;  be- 
tween natural  and  artificial  grass.  If 
he  goes  into  a  carpenter's  yard,  he  does 
not  know  one  wood  from  another.  If 
he  comes  across  an  attorney,  he  has  no 
idea  of  the  difference  between  common 
and  statute  law,  and  is  wholly  in  the 
dark  as  to  those  securities  of  personal 
and  political  liberty  on  which  we  pride 
ourselves.  If  he  talks  with  a  county 
magistrate,  he  finds  his  only  idea  of  the 
office  is,  that  the  gentleman  is  a  sort 
of  English  sheik,  as  the  mayor  of  the 
neighboring  borough  is  a  sort  of  cadi. 
If  he  strolls  into  any  workshop,  or  place 
of  manufacture,  it  is  always  to  find  his 
level,  and  that  a  level  far  below  the 


present  company.  If  he  dines  out,  and 
as  a  youth  of  proved  talents,  and  per- 
haps university  honors,  is  expected  to 
be  literary,  his  literature  is  confined  to 
a  few  popular  novels — the  novels  of  the 
last  century,  or  even  of  the  last  genera- 
tion— history  and  poetry  having  been 
almost  studiously  omitted  in  his  educa- 
tion. The  girl  who  has  never  stirred 
from  home,  and  whose  education  has 
been  economized,  not  to  say  neglected, 
in  order  to  send  her  own  brother  to  col- 
lege, knows  vastly  more  of  those  things 
than  he  does.  The  same  exposure 
awaits  him  wherever  he  goes,  and  when- 
ever he  has  the  audacity  to  open  his 
mouth.  At  sea  he  is  a  landlubber,  in 
the  country  a  cockney,  in  town  a  green- 
horn, in  science  an  ignoramus,  in  busi- 
ness a  simpleton,  in  pleasure  a  milksop 
— everywhere  out  of  his  element,  every- 
where at  sea,  in  the  clouds,  adrift,  or  by 
whatever  word  utter  ignorance  and  in- 
capacity are  to  be  described.  In  soci- 
ety and  in  the  work  of  life  he  finds 
himself  beaten  by  the  youth  whom  at 
college  he  despised  as  frivolous  or  ab- 
horred as  profiigate.  He  is  ordained, 
and  takes  charge  of  a  parish,  only  to  be 
laughed  at  by  the  farmers,  the  trades- 
people, and  even  the  old  women,  for  he 
can  hardly  talk  of  religion  without  be- 
traying a  want  of  common  sense." 

Have  we  not  here  delineated  the 
natural  outcome  of  a  method  of  instruc- 
tion which,  despising  utility  and  dis- 
paraging modern  knowledge,  would,  if 
strictly  carried  out,  multiply  incapa- 
bles  on  every  hand?  Classical  stud- 
ies are  theoretically  predominant  in 
most  of  our  higher  institutions  of  edu- 
cation. Could  they  be  "successful,"  as 
it  is  maintained  they  may  be  and  ought 
to  be — that  is,  could  they  he  pursued 
with  the  thoroughness  necessary  to  gain 
the  advantages  claimed  for  them — what 
other  eff'ect  would  follow  than  to  fill  the 
community  with  weaklings,  imbeciles, 
and  good-for-nothings,  of  which  the 
"  Times  "  has  portrayed  for  us  a  typical 
example?     Such  a   "success"  of  the 


EDITOR'S   TABLE. 


269 


classics  would  stop  tlie  progress  of 
knowledge,  and  arrest  the  advance  of 
civilization.  The  failure  of  dead-lan- 
guage studies  is  therefore  a  salutary 
result  in  the  course  of  nature — a  ne- 
cessity, a  blessing,  and  an  occasion  of 
thankfulness,  rather  than  of  regret  and 
lamentation. 


QUEER  DEFEASES  OF  THE  CLASSICS. 

They  played  it  rather  rough  on  Lord 
Coleridge  the  other  day  in  calling  him 
out  on  the  classical  question  at  Yale 
College.  To  be  sure,  it  was  a  great 
temptation  to  exploit  so  illustrious  a 
man  in  behalf  of  a  dechning  cause,  es- 
pecially just  now  when  it  is  understood 
that  they  are  somewhat  sore  at  that 
venerable  seat  of  learning  at  being  pil- 
loried as  fetich-worshipers,  on  account 
of  their  devotion  to  dead  languages.  It 
looked  a  little  like  a  put-up  job,  as 
President  Porter  called  up  the  subject 
in  his  pleasant  little  opening  speech, 
and  Lord  Coleridge  acknowledged  that 
he  had  been  posted  that  very  morning 
with  reference  to  Mr.  Adams's  address 
attacking  the  curriculum  for  which 
Yale  is  especially  distinguished.  But 
it  was  a  little  cruel  not  to  have  al- 
lowed his  lordship  more  time,  so  that 
he  might  at  least  have  refrained  from 
giving  away  his  whole  case.  Lord 
Coleridge  was  reported  as  saying:  "I 
have  done  many  foolish  things  in  my 
life,  and  wasted  many  hours  of  precious 
time;  but  one  thing  I  have  done  which 
I  would  do  over  again,  and  the  hours  I 
spent  at  it  are  the  hours  which  I  have 
spent  most  profitably,  and  the  knowl- 
edge thus  gained  I  have  found  the  most 
useful,  and  practically  useful.  From 
the  time  I  left  Oxford  I  liave  made  it  a 
religion,  so  far  as  I  could,  never  to  let 
a  day  pass  without  reading  some  Latin 
and  Greek,  and  I  can  teil  you  that,  so 
far  as  my  course  may  be  deemed  a  suc- 
cessful one,  I  deliberately  assert,  main- 
tain, and  believe,  that  what  little  suc- 
cess has  been  granted  to  me  in  life  has 


been  materially  aided  by  the  constant 
study  of  the  classics,  which  it  has  been 
my  delight  and  privilege  all  my  life  to 
persevere  in.  This  is  not  said  for  the 
sake  of  controversy  ;  still  less  is  it  said 
to  an  audience  of  American  university 
young  men  for  the  purpose  of  appear- 
ing eccentric ;  but  it  is  said  because  I 
believe  it  to  be  true,  and  I  will  tell 
you  why.  Statement,  thought,  arrange- 
ment,however  men  may  struggle  against 
them,  have  an  influence  upon  them,  and 
public  men,  however  they  may  dislike 
it,  are  forced  to  admit  that,  conditions 
being  equal,  the  man  who  can  state  any- 
thing best,  who  can  pursue  an  argument 
more  closely,  who  can  give  the  richest 
and  most  felicitous  illustrations,  and 
who  can  command  some  kind  of  beauty 
of  diction,  will  have  the  advantage  over 
his  contemporaries.  And  if  at  the  bar 
or  in  the  senate  anything  has  been  done 
which  has  been  conspicuously  better 
than  the  work  of  other  men,  it  has,  in 
almost  every  case,  been  the  result  of 
high  education.  I  say  high  education, 
not  necessarily  classical,  because  every 
man  can  not  have  it.  The  greatest 
orator  of  my  country  at  this  moment, 
as  he  himself  has  often  said,  has  '  only 
a  smack  of  it.'  " 

But  for  the  gravity  of  the  occasion, 
and  the  dignity  of  those  who  figured  in 
its  proceedings,  we  should  say  that  this 
was  a  little  funny,  and  might  query 
whether  the  noble  lord  had  not  been 
misreported  in  citing  the  greatest  orator 
of  England  in  connection  with  classical 
education.  But  there  can  be  no  mis- 
take, for  his  lordship  again  remarks, 
"  The  man  who  has  influenced  his  con- 
temporaries the  most  is,  generally  speak- 
ing, the  man  of  highest  education" 
and  he  had  previously  said,  "  If  John 
Bright  comes  here,  you  will  know  what 
English  speaking  is — you  will  know 
what  English  oratory  is."  Since  the 
celebrated  case  of  Balaam,  who  was 
sent  for  to  prophesy  one  way,  and, 
when  it  came  to  the  pinch,  went  back 
on  his  employers,  and  prophesied  in  ex- 


270 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


actly  tlie  opposite  way,  there  has  heen 
no  more  conspicuous  instance  of  incal- 
culable waywardness  in  mental  opera- 
tions than  was  here  furnished  by  the 
Chief-Justice  of  England.  He  might  as 
well  have  broken  into  a  eulogy  of  Na- 
poleon Bonaparte  before  the  Peace  So- 
ciety as  to  have  named  John  Bright  in 
Yale  College  in  connection  with  dead- 
language  studies.  He  was  expected  to 
applaud  the  ancient  classical  scholar- 
ship as  the  supreme  incomparable  means 
of  bringing  the  human  mind  up  to  its 
highest  power ;  and  he  did  this  by  quot- 
ing a  man  as  the  most  commanding 
orator  of  England  who  knew  nothing 
about  ancient  scholarship,  and  who  has 
achieved  his  distinction  entirely  by  the 
study  of  the  English  classics.  He  came 
to  eulogize  the  dead  languages,  and  gave 
super-eminence  to  a  man  who  knew 
nothing  of  either,  and  had  devoted  him- 
self exclusively  to  the  mastery  of  his 
vernacular  speech.  Lord  Coleridge  rep- 
resented the  intellectual  accomplish- 
ments that  give  the  highest  advantage  in 
the  bar  and  the  senate  as  fourfold.  The 
highest  education  is  exemplified  by  (1) 
"  the  man  who  can  state  anything  best " ; 
(2),  "  who  can  pursue  an  argument  more 
closely  "  ;  (3),  "  who  can  give  the  rich- 
est and  most  felicitous  illustrations"; 
and  (4),  "  who  can  command  some 
beauty  of  diction  " ;  and  he  then  pointed 
to  the  man  of  all  England  who  possesses 
the  traits  in  the  highest  degree,  and 
who  is  confessedly  only  a  smatterer  in 
Latin  and  Greek.  He  commended  clas- 
sical education,  but  he  referred  to  an- 
other education,  not  classical,  which 
yields  still  higher  results.  Certainly, 
if  the  Yale  boys  turn  this  memorable 
occasion  to  its  highest  uses,  they  will 
be  incited  to  tread  in  tlie  path  followed 
by  the  most  distinguished  orator  of  Eng- 
land, and,  wasting  little  time  upon  the 
dead  languages,  will  concentrate  their 
main  efforts  in  gaining  a  skillful  and 
powerful  control  of  the  living  lan- 
guage in  which  all  their  work  is  to  be 
done. 


The  case  of  John  Bright  turns  the 
tables  upon  the  classicists.  His  example, 
like  that  of  many  other  of  our  strongest 
men,  proves  the  advantage  of  not  squan- 
dering mental  force  over  a  wide  field 
of  lingual  study.  If  the  native  speech, 
as  an  instrument  of  expression,  is  to  be 
perfected,  it  must  become  an  object 
of  systematic,  undivided  cultivation. 
This  is  a  dictate  of  common  sense,  and 
has  been  long  understood.  We  dissi- 
pate our  energies  upon  foreign  tongues, 
and  it  is  still  as  true  as  it  was  in  the 
time  of  Dryden,  that  "  the  properties 
and  delicacies  of  the  English  are  known 
to  few."  The  mediaevals  studied  Latin 
because  they  had  to  make  use  of  it. 
All  learning  was  in  Latin,  and  the  lan- 
guage had  to  be  acquired  for  practical 
purposes.  Melanchthon,  in  1528,  made 
a  report  on  churches  and  schools  which 
became  the  basis  in  Saxony  of  a  re- 
formed education  independent  of  Rome, 
and  the  example  was  followed  in  other 
German  states.  In  this  report  it  is 
recommended  that  "the  children  be 
taught  Latin  only,  not  German,  Greek, 
or  Hebrew.  Plurality  of  tongues  does 
them  more  harm  than  good^  In  the 
very  nature  of  the  case,  our  craze  for 
foreign  languages,  living  and  dead,  must 
be  at  the  expense  of  a  perfected  Eng- 
lish. It  has  been  well  said  that  "  the 
idea  of  training  upon  a  foreign  language 
had  grown  up  in  modern  times.  The 
Greeks  did  not  train  upon  Persian  or 
Scythian  ;  they  knew  no  language  but 
their  own."  This  is  not  only  a  fact  ot 
profound  significance,  but  it  is  a  crush- 
ing answer  to  the  modern  polyglot  su- 
perstition. Everybody  is  recommended 
to  study  Greek  because  the  language  is 
so  beautiful  and  perfect.  Obviously  the 
true  lesson  is  that  the  Greeks  made  it 
so  because  they  were  shut  up  in  it,  and 
could  give  their  whole  power  to  its  im- 
provement. Granting  the  unapproach- 
able perfection  of  Greek  literature,  and 
that  the  Greeks  surpassed  the  world  in 
philosophical  acuteness,  the  invincible 
fact  remains  that  they  expended  no  ef- 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


271 


fort  in  the  study  of  foreign  languages, 
and  common  sense  declares  that  it  was 
because  of  it.  In  his  defense  of  the 
wholesale  study  of  language,  in  the 
St.  Andrew's  address,  Mr.  Mill  en- 
countered this  perplexing  considera- 
tion, and  his  treatment  of  it  was  hard- 
ly more  adroit  than  Lord  Coleridge's 
reference  to  Mr.  Bright.  Having  point- 
ed out  the  numberless  advantages  of 
a  knowledge  of  many  languages,  and 
then  having  to  explain  how  the  Greeks 
succeeded  so  remarkably  without  any 
such  knowledge,  he  is  driven  to  the 
shift  of  suggesting  that  these  Greeks 
were  a  very  wonderful  people.  He 
says,  "  I  hardly  know  any  greater  proof 
of  the  extraordinary  genius  of  the 
Greeks,  than  that  they  were  able  to 
make  such  brilliant  achievements  in  ab- 
stract thought,  knowing  as  they  did  no 
language  but  their  own."  From  which 
we  are  to  infer  that  if  these  clever 
Greeks  could  have  had  a  couple  of 
dead  languages  to  train  on,  and  three 
or  four  living  languages  to  expand  on, 
their  achievements  would  have  been 
simply  prodigious!  Another  illustra- 
tion of  the  power  of  fetich-worship  to 
pervert  the  logical  intellect. 

On  the  whole,  we  can  not  think  the 
Yale  devotees  have  made  much  by  try- 
ing to  play  off  the  Lord  Chief -Justice 
of  England  against  Mr.  Adams  on  the 
classical  question.  They  are  very  much 
in  agreement.  Mr.  Adams  said  that 
he  had  forgotten  his  Latin  and  Greek  ; 
Lord  Coleridge  says  that  by  calling 
in  the  aid  of  religion  he  has  been  able 
to  hold  on  to  his  classical  acquisitions. 
But  Mr.  Adams  was  before  him,  as 
shown  by  the  title  of  his  address,  in 
recognizing  the  peculiar  function  of 
religion  in  the  case. 

We  owe  thanks  to  our  classical 
friends  for  keeping  the  question  in  a 
lively  condition.  They  have  had  much 
to  say  about  the  German  experience 
with  classical  and  scientific  studies  ;  we 
will  see  how  much  they  make  by  that 
next  month. 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 

"What  Social  Classes  owe  to  Each  Other. 
By  William  Graham  Sumner,  Professor 
of  Political  and  Social  Science  in  Yale 
College.  New  York :  Harper  &  Brothers. 
Pp.  169.     Price,  60  cents. 

This  little  volume  has  exceptional  claims 
upon  the  attention  of  thinking  people.  It 
is  not  of  the  current  order  of  social  science 
literature,  but  is  rather  a  trenchant  protest 
against  its  prevailing  spirit,  and  an  able 
attempt  to  substitute  the  scientific  for  the 
sentimental  mode  of  studying  the  relations 
of  men  in  society.  Professor  Sumner  finds 
a  very  loose  state  of  thinking  in  regard  to 
social  obligations,  their  grounds,  and  their 
extent,  what  people  owe  to  each  other,  and 
what  they  expect  from  each  other,  and  he 
shows  very  clearly  that  from  erroneous  views 
upon  these  subjects  spring  a  large  number 
of  the  worst  evils  of  the  social  state. 

The  general  object  of  beings  who  recog- 
nize evil  as  something  to  be  avoided,  and 
good  as  something  to  be  sought,  and  who 
look  forward  to  ends  to  be  secured  and 
work  for  the  accomplishment  of  these  ends, 
is  undoubtedly  to  make  things  better,  but 
how  to  do  this  it  is  by  no  means  so  easy  to 
determine.  The  most  conflicting  projects 
are  offered  for  the  attainment  of  the  end, 
and  the  discords  of  opinion  as  to  what 
things  are  socially  best  show  that  ignorance, 
prejudice  and  passion  have  still  a  great 
deal  to  do  with  the  subject.  In  any  treat- 
ment of  it,  therefore,  that  can  become  in- 
structive and  helpful,  the  first  thing  is  to 
get  at  the  facts  and  call  things  by  their  right 
name.  Professor  Sumner  has  this  unques- 
tionable merit,  that  he  refuses  to  be  misled 
by  words,  and  insists  upon  stripping  off  the 
illusions  in  which  the  subject  is  shrouded, 
and  getting  at  the  real  things  represented. 
This  is  not  an  agreeable  task.  It  requires 
some  courage  to  encounter  an  ignorant  pub- 
lic sentiment  which  appropriates  to  itself 
the  whole  terminology  of  charity,  benevo- 
lence, and  sympathy  for  the  poor  and  weak, 
and  denounces  as  cold  and  hard-hearted  all 
who  do  not  share  its  sentimental  views  upon 
social  questions.  Professor  Sumner  comes  in 
for  a  liberal  amount  of  reprobation,  the  "New 
York  Tribune,"  for  example,  saying  that 
his  book  is  characterized  by  "  an  insolent 


272 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


dogmatism,"  and  its  critic  declares  that  he 
"  can  not  resist  the  feeling  that  our  profess- 
or has  a  great  contempt  for  the  poor." 

Professor  Sumner  is  charged  with  con- 
travening alike  the  dictates  of  Christianity 
and  the  impulses  of  humanity  in  the  views 
he  presents,  but  such  a  charge  is  clearly 
groundless.  For,  if  anything  is  established 
by  the  widest  experience,  it  is  that  Chi-istian 
philanthropy  and  benevolent  impulse  re- 
quire a  good  deal  better  guidance  than  they 
have  hitlierto  had.  Instinctive  sympathy  is 
not  enough,  and  it  is  simply  notorious  that 
indiscriminate  charity  does  more  harm  than 
good.  The  more  the  subject  is  looked  into, 
the  greater  is  the  accumulation  of  proof 
that  benevolence  and  generosity,  if  not  ex- 
ercised with  intelligent  caution,  work  wide- 
spread mischievous  effects.  What  we  need, 
therefore^  is  a  clearer  understanding  of  the 
principles  of  the  subject ;  and  he  who  helps 
us  to  these  may  claim  to  be  the  most  truly 
Christian  and  humane,  because  he  shows  us 
how  to  secure  the  most  permanently  benefi- 
cent ends.  In  spite  of  the  literary  cant  about 
*'  Gradgrind,"  and  the  "  dismal  science," 
what  we  want  most  urgently  are  facts  and 
their  rational  interpretations.  Professor 
Sumner  has  been  accused  of  an  unfeeling 
indifference  to  the  trials  of  the  helpless  and 
unfortunate,  and  of  recommending  the  hard 
and  selfish  policy  of  looking  out  for  one's 
self  and  neglecting  those  who  need  assist- 
ance. But  this  is  a  wholly  unjust  impu- 
tation. What  he  demands  is  simply  that 
aid  shall  be  given  with  a  good  deal  more 
discrimination  than  is  customary,  and  only 
where  the  giver  is  certain  that  he  will  not 
make  matters  worse  by  his  charity.  He 
never  says  that  men  in  society  owe  nothing 
to  each  other,  but  he  is  very  decided  in  the 
conviction  that  no  class  owes  to  another 
class  that  which  will  injure  it.  What  they 
owe  to  each  other  are  mutual  guarantees  of 
the  opportunity  to  earn,  possess,  and  enjoy, 
and  do  the  best  for  themselves  without  in- 
terference or  impediment.     He  says : 

"  The  only  help  which  is  generally  expe- 
dient, even  within  the  limits  of  the  private 
and  personal  relations  of  two  persons  to 
each  other,  is  that  which  consists  in  help- 
ing a  man  to  help  himself.  This  always 
consists  in  opening  the  chances,  A  man  of 
assured  position  can,  by  an  effort  which  is 


of  no  appreciable  importance  to  him,  give 
aid  which  is  of  incalculable  value  to  a  man 
who  is  all  ready  to  make  his  own  career,  if 
he  can  only  get  a  chance."  But  "  the  aid 
which  helps  a  man  to  help  himself  is  not 
in  the  least  akin  to  the  aid  which  is  given  in 
charity." 

But  it  is  best  to  let  Professor  Sumner 
speak  more  fully  for  himself,  and  we  accord- 
ingly give  some  extracts  from  his  book  in  an- 
other part  of  the  "  Monthly."  We  have  to 
apologize  to  the  author  for  the  fragmentary 
representation  of  his  thoughts,  but  the  read- 
er can  repair  that  by  getting  the  book. 

First  Annual  Report  of  the  Board  op 
Control  of  the  New  York  State  Ex- 
periment Station.    For  1882.    Pp.  156. 

The  grounds  of  the  station  are  situated 
near  Geneva,  and  embrace  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five  acres.  The  object  of  the  institu- 
tion is  understood  to  be  to  ascertain,  verify, 
and  group  facts  the  knowledge  of  which  shall 
assist  the  farmer  in  carrying  on  his  busi- 
ness. Its  duties  also  comprise  the  dissemi- 
nation of  information;  and  for  this  pur- 
pose the  director  has  published  weekly  bul- 
letins of  the  progress  of  the  experiments 
which  were  sent  to  newspapers,  to  the  direct- 
ors of  other  stations,  and  to  men  identified 
with  agricultural  progress.  Special  effort 
has  been  made  to  instruct  visitors,  and  every 
intelligent  visitor  has  brought  information 
of  value  to  the  station.  The  investigations 
have  had  a  practical  rather  than  a  theoret- 
ically-scientific bearing.  As  represented  in 
the  report,  they  have  had  a  wide  scope,  and 
involve  an  immense  number  of  details. 

Fifth  Annual  Report  of  the  State  Board 
OF  Health  of  the  State  of  Connecti- 
cut. Hartford:  Case,  Lockwood  & 
Brainard  Company.     Pp.  128. 

The  report  is  for  the  fiscal  year  ending 
November  80,  1882.  It  includes  several 
valuable  papers  on  subjects  of  theoretical 
and  practical  sanitation.  Among  the  most 
interesting  topics  discussed  is  that  of  the 
progress  of  epidemic  and  intermittent  fever 
in  Connecticut  and  other  parts  of  New  Eng- 
land, concerning  which  Dr.  G.  H.Wilson  con- 
tributes a  very  suggestive  paper,  and  the 
secretary's  report  embodies  many  valuable 
facts. 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


273 


Annual  Keport  of  the  Board  op  Regents 
OF  THE  Smithsonian  Institution,  for 
THE  Year  1881.  Washington:  Govern- 
ment Pnnting-Office.     Pp.  837. 

The  scale  and  magnitude  of  the  work 
accomplished  by  the  Institution  have  been 
greatly  increased  in  comparison  with  the 
work  of  previous  years,  while  the  expendi- 
tures have  not  been  augmented.  The  build- 
ing for  the  National  Museum  has  been  com- 
pleted and  occupied,  and  a  large  proportion 
of  its  material  has  been  provisionally  ar- 
ranged for  instructive  display.  Suitable  ac- 
commodations have  been  provided  within 
it  for  the  chemical  laboratory.  A  consid- 
erable number  of  original  researches  have 
been  undertaken  under  the  direction  of  the 
Institution,  among  the  most  important  of 
which  were,  perhaps,  those  in  Alaska.  The 
twenty-third  volume  of  the  "  Contributions 
to  Knowledge  "  has  been  published,  and 
contains  six  treatises;  and  the  twentieth 
and  twenty-first  volumes  of  the  "  Miscel- 
laneous Contributions  "  contain  three  parts 
or  memoirs  each.  A  valuable  work  has  been 
done  by  the  Ethnological  Bureau,  under  the 
direction  of  Major  Powell,  particularly  in 
the  line  of  Mr.  Cushing's  investigations 
among  the  Zunis,  and  Mr.  James  Steven- 
son's among  other  Pueblo  tribes.  Other  sci- 
entific enterprises  with  which  the  Institu- 
tion is  allied  are  noticed ;  and  the  report- 
volume  itself  embodies  the  results  of  a 
considerable  amount  of  research  in  meteor- 
ology and  allied  subjects,  astronomy,  phys- 
ics, chemistry,  botany,  zoology,  and  anthro- 
pology, with  numerous  special  papers  in  the 
last-mentioned  subject. 

God  and  Creation.  By  Robert  Reid  IIow- 
ISON.  Richmond,  Virginia :  West,  John- 
ston &  Co.     Pp.  578. 

The  author  of  this  work  is  a  Presbyterian 
clergjTuan  of  Richmond,  Virginia,  who  here 
deals  with  scientific  as  well  as  theological 
questions,  bringing  to  aid  him  in  his  task 
the  results  of  the  thoughts  and  studies  of 
years.  Starting  with  the  principle  that  be- 
lief in  Eternal  Being  is  a  necessary  result 
of  human  experience  and  of  all  thought  on 
the  origin  of  things,  the  question  arises 
what  is  this  Eternal  Being  ?  To  the  author 
it  is  not  solely  matter  or  solely  spirit  or 
mind,  but — and  this  is  what  it  is  the  avowed 

VOL.  XXIV. — 18 


purpose  of  the  book  to  maintain — it  "  con- 
sists in  God,  the  Eternal  Spirit,  or  Mind,  im- 
manent in  and  working  upon  eternal  mat- 
ter, and  bringing  out  of  it,  in  time,  the  best 
results  that  perfect  wisdom,  benevolence, 
and  power  can  produce."  This  at  once 
brings  the  doctrines  of  materialism  into  the 
discussion.  "  But  as  materialism  necessarily 
denies  the  existence  of  a  spiritual  and  per- 
sonal God,  and  asserts  itself  as  a  rival  and 
conflicting  system  of  faith,  of  course  its  ad- 
vocates can  not  be  overthrown  by  appeal  to 
the  authority  of  Scripture.  ...  If  met  at 
all,  they  must  be  met  on  the  ground  of  un- 
revealed  knowledge."  A  summary  of  the 
history  of  materialism  and  the  materialists, 
from  Democritus  down,  is  given,  and  the 
conclusion  is  expressed  that  "  Darwin,  Hux- 
ley, Spencer,  and  Tyndall,  have  not  ad- 
vanced a  step  nearer  to  the  construction  of 
the  universe  without  the  aid  of  a  spiritual 
intelligence  than  Lucretius  did  in  his  poem." 
The  attempt  is  next  made  to  show  that  the 
doctrine  of  creation  out  of  nothing  is  not 
found  in  any  of  the  canonical  books  of  the 
Bible,  nor  in  any  authoritative  Christian 
creed  or  confession  of  faith  of  a  date  older 
than  A.  D.  1500  ;  and  the  idea  of  a  creation 
in  six  days  is  dismissed  as  untenable.  The 
atomic  theory  of  the  constitution  of  matter 
is  reviewed,  and  declared  not  competent  to 
account  for  the  phenomena,  and  a  counter- 
hypothesis  is  advanced,  which  is  called  the 
nomian  theory,  or  the  hypothesis  of  law, 
the  substance  of  which  is  that  "  God  is  the 
Eternal  Power,  Force,  and  Cause,  in  the 
universe."  The  rest  of  the  book  is  mainly 
theological,  and  the  conclusion  is  reached, 
agreeably  to  the  philosophies  of  Kant  and 
Hamilton,  that  "  a  science  of  ontology  in 
its  full  meaning  is  impossible  to  man,"  or 
that,  though  we  know  that  spirit  i«,  and 
that  matter  i%  we  do  not  know,  and  proba- 
bly never  will  know,  what  is  the  essence 
either  of  spirit  or  of  matter." 

A  New  School  Dictionary  of  the  English 
Language  :  On  the  Basis  of  the  Latest 
Edition  of  the  Unabridged  Dictionary  of 
Joseph  E,  Worcester,  LL.  D.  Philadel- 
phia :  J.  B.  Lippincott  &  Co.  Pp.  390. 
Price,  90  cents. 

The  former  edition  of  Worcester's  "  Ele- 
mentary Dictionary  "  was  published  in  1835, 
and  was  revised  and  enlarged  in  1860.    So 


274 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY 


many  changes  have  been  made  of  late  in 
our  language  that  it  has  been  deemed  ex- 
pedient to  supersede  the  old  work  by  this 
essentially  new  one.  Besides  the  vocabu- 
lary proper,  it  contains  tables  of  words  and 
phrases  from  foreign  languages ;  of  pro- 
nunciation of  biographical,  mythological, 
and  geographical  names ;  of  abbreviations 
used  in  writing  and  printing  ;  and  of  weights 
and  measures,  the  metric  system,  foreign 
coins,  etc. 

Historical  Studies.  Edited  by  Titus  Mun- 
soN  CoAN.  New  York :  G.  P.  Putnam's 
Sons.     Pp.  205.     Price,  25  cents. 

This  is  the  fourth  number  of  Messrs. 
Putnam's  "  Topics  of  the  Time  "  series,  and 
includes  five  essays,  viz. :  "  Village  Life  in 
Norfolk  Six  Hundred  Years  ago,"  by  the 
Rev.  Dr.  Augustus  Jessopp;  "Siena,"  by 
Samuel  James  Cappar;  "A  Few  Words 
about  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  by  Fred- 
eric Harrison  ;  "  France  and  England  in 
1793,"  by  Oscar  Browning;  and  "  General 
Chanzy,"  from  "  Temple  Bar." 

The  Factors  of  Civilization,  Real  and  As- 
sumed ;  considered  in  their  Relation  to 
Vice,  Misery,  Happiness,  Unhappiness, 
and  Progress.     Atlanta,  Georgia :  James 
P.  Harrison  &  Co.    Vol.  i.,  Pp.  347. 
The  second  volume  of  this  work,  in  which 
were  considered    the   unhappiness   arising 
from  poverty  and  that  arising  from  uncon- 
genial pursuits   and  labor,  was  published 
some  months  ago,  when  in  our  review  of  it 
(see  the  "Monthly"  for   March,  1883,  p. 
711)  we  indicated  the  general  character  and 
scope  of  the  work  as  a  whole.     In  the  pres- 
ent volume,  which,  though  following  the  oth- 
er in  the  order  of  time,  is  intended  to  pre- 
cede it  in  logical  connection,  are  discussed 
the  unhappiness  due  to  erroneous  theologi- 
cal conceptions  and  doctrines ;  that  arising 
from  bad  forms  of  government ;   and  that 
arising  from  ignorance.     Much  attention  is 
given  to  the  doctrines  of  Mr.  Henry  George. 

A  History  op  the  New  York  State  Teach- 
ers' Association.  With  Sketches  of  its 
Presidents  and  Prominent  Members.  By 
Hyland  C.  Kirk.  New  York :  E.  L.  Kel- 
logg &  Co.     Pp.  175. 

This  book  aims  to  give  an  accurate  ac- 
count of  such  matters  in  the  history  of  the 
Association  as  seem  to  be  of  the  most  im- 


portance, and  of  such  as  would  present  the 
work  of  the  teachers  in  the  advancement  of 
education  in  the  State.  Summaries  are  given 
of  the  proceedings  of  each  of  the  thirty 
seven  meetings  of  the  Association.  Many  of 
the  biographical  sketches  are  accompanied 
with  portraits  of  their  subjects,  which,  unless 
the  artist's  or  the  printer's  work  were  bet- 
ter done,  had  better  been  omitted. 

Verbal  Pitfalls.  A  Manual  of  1,500  Words 
commonly  misused.  By  C.  W.  Bardeen. 
Syracuse,  New  York:  C.  W.  Bardeen. 
Pp.  223.     Price,  75  cents. 

This  work  is  intended  to  include  all  the 
words  the  use  of  which  has  been  questioned 
by  the  numerous  verbal  critics  whose  works 
are  current,  to  collate  the  verdicts  of  the  dif- 
ferent authorities,  and  estimate,  where  it  is 
practicable,  the  weight  to  be  attached  to 
their  views.  A  strictly  alphabetical  arrange- 
ment is  adopted  ;  and  the  indication  is  given, 
by  distinctions  in  type,  at  the  head  of  each 
article,  whether  the  word  in  question  is  in- 
defensible or  in  dispute,  or  whether  it  may 
be  regarded  as  legitimate. 

Astronomy.  By  Simon  Netvcomr,  LL.  D., 
and  Edward  S.  Holden,  M.  A.  New 
York :  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  Pp.  338.  Price, 
$1.40. 

The  present  treatise  is  a  condensed  edi- 
tion of  the  larger  "  Astronomy  "  of  the  same 
authors,  from  which  some  of  the  less  essen- 
tial details  of  practical  astronomy  and  most 
of  the  mathematical  formulas  have  been 
omitted.  Some  of  the  space  thus  gained 
has  been  utilized  in  giving  a  fuller  discus- 
sion of  the  more  elementary  parts  of  the  sub- 
ject, and  in  treating  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciples from  various  points  of  view. 

Finland  :  Its  Forests  and  Forest  Man- 
agement. Compiled  by  John  Croumdie 
Brown,  LL.  D.  Edinburgh :  Oliver  & 
Boyd  ;  Montreal :  Dawson  Brothers.  Pp. 
290. 

Dr.  Brown  has  undertaken,  as  rapidly 
as  his  means  will  allow,  to  publish  a  kind  of 
library  of  forestry,  to  which  this  is  the  third 
contribution.  The  other  two  volumes,  re- 
lating to  forestry  in  England  and  in  France, 
have  already  been  noticed  in  our  pages. 
The  object  sought  in  the  publications  is  to 
produce  popular  technical  treatises  which 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


275 


may  be  useful  to  students  of  forest  science 
who  have  not  access  to  the  works  quoted,  by 
stating  views  that  have  been  advanced  and 
have  required  attention,  and  by  citing  state- 
ments bearing  upon  them  in  such  form  as 
to  place  readers  in  a  position  to  work  out 
for  themselves  the  solution  of  problems 
raised.  Much  of  the  information  was  col- 
lected by  the  author  during  a  journey  in 
Finland  and  Scandinavia. 

God  out  and  Man  in  :  or.  Replies  to  Rob- 
ert G.  Ingersoll.  By  W.  H.  Platt, 
D.  D.,  LL.  D.,  Rector  of  St.  Paul's  Church, 
Rochester,  New  York.  Rochester :  Steel 
&  Avery.     Pp.  320. 

As  the  title  of  this  book  sufBciently  in- 
dicates, it  is  a  polemic  on  the  various  issues 
between  infidelity  and  Christianity,  and  is 
lively  and  interesting,  and  as  decisive  as  such 
works  usually  are.  It  is,  of  course,  not  a  sys- 
tematic treatise  in  defense  of  Christianity, 
but  takes  up  many  objections  that  are  urged 
by  unbelievers.  The  form  of  the  discussion 
favors  explicitness  of  treatment,  and  is  at- 
tractive to  the  reader.  Various  of  Mr.  In- 
gersoll's  statements,  put  forth  in  his  books 
and  in  his  published  lectures,  are  taken  up 
as  texts,  and  commented  upon  and  replied 
to  generally  briefly,  but  sometimes  with  am- 
plification. Dr.  Platt  is  familiar  with  the 
recent  forms  of  controversy  which  have 
arisen  through  the  progress  of  science  and 
the  later  aspects  of  philosophy,  and  he 
makes  free  and  effective  use  of  the  argu- 
ments and  concessions  of  eminent  repre- 
sentatives of  what  is  called  the  agnostic  or 
materialistic  school.  The  attention  which 
he  has  given  to  this  aspect  of  modern  reli- 
gious controversy  enables  him  to  handle  it 
with  unusual  ability,  and  imparts  to  his  vol- 
ume perhaps  its  strongest  claim  to  the  read- 
er's attention. 

A   COEEECTIOX. 

In  our  notice  of  Spencer's  "  Cyclopaedia 
of  Descriptive  Sociology,"  which  appeared  in 
the  October  "  Monthly,"  there  occurs  a  mis- 
leading statement  which  it  is  desirable  to 
rectify.  Part  III  of  that  work,  devoted  to 
"Types  of  Lowest  Races,  Xegritto  Races, 
and  Malayo-Polyncsian  Races,"  carelessly 
represents  that  the  Xegritto  races  and  the 
Malayo-Polynesian  races  were  specified  as 
races  meant  by  the  title  "  Types  of  Lowest 


Races."  This  is  incorrect.  The  title  is 
meant  to  indicate  three  separate  groups,  of 
which  "  Types  of  the  Lowest  Races,"  includ- 
ing Fuegians,  Veddahs,  and  Damans,  consti- 
tute only  the  first.  The  other  groups  do 
not  fall  within  this  category ;  the  Malayo- 
Polynesians,  various  of  them,  being  quite 
high  races  both  in  type  and  civilization.  It 
is  desirable  to  avoid  error  and  confusion  in 
this  important  gradation. 


PUBLICATIONS  KECEIVED. 

The  Classification,  Training',  and  Education  of 
the  Feeble  -  Minded.  Imbecile,  and  Idiotic,  ^y 
Charles  H.  Stanley  Davis,  M.D.  New  York:  E. 
Steiger  &  Co.    Pp.  46. 

Variations  in  Nature.  By  Thomas  Meehan. 
Salem  Press,  Salem,  Mass.    Pp.  14. 

Bureau  of  Ediication  Circular :  Proceedings  of 
'  the  Department  of  Superintendence,  American  Edu- 
!  cational  Association,  1SS3.  "Washington :  Govern- 
I  ment  Pi-inting-Office.  Pp.  81. 
I  A  Physician's  Sermon  to  Young  Men.  By  Will- 
i  iam  Pratt.  New  York :  M.  L.  Holbrook  &,  Co. 
i  Pp.  48.    25  cents. 

!  Das  Studium  der  Staatwissenschaften  in  Araer- 
\  ika  (The  Study  of  the  Political  Sciences  in  America). 
I  By  Dr.  E.  J.  James.    Jena :  Gustav  Fischer.    Pp. 

j  The  North-Atlantic  Cyclones  of  August,  1883. 
By  Lieutenant  W.  H.  H.  Southerland.  U.  S.  Navy. 
I  Washington :  Government  Printing-Oflace.  Pp.  22. 
I  Transactions  of  the  New  Y'ork  Academy  of  Sci- 
'  ences,  December.  18S2,  and  January,  1883.  Pp.  86. 
I  The  same,  February  and  March.  1883.  Pp.  82. 
Editor,  Ale.Kis  A.  Julien,  School  of  Mines,  Columbia 
I  College,  New  Y'^ork. 

I  Programme  of  Studies,  No.  10  Gramercy  Park, 
,  New  Y^ork.     Pp.  20. 

I  Some  Researches  after  Hnemoglobin.  By  Robert 
Saunders  Henry,  A.  M.,  M.  D.,  Charleston,  W.  Ya. 
Pp.L 

Quarterly  Report,  Bureau  of  Statistics,  Treasury- 
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gration, and  Navigation.  For  Three  Mouths  ending 
June  30, 1883.  "Washington  :  Government  Printing- 
office.     Pp.  112. 

Incineration.  By  John  D.  Beugless.  New 
York  Cremation  Society.    Pp.  16. 

On  the  Present  Status  of  the  Eccentricity  The- 
I  ory  of  Glacial  Climate,  pp.  8,  and  On  the  Origin  and 
Hade  of  Normal  Faults,  pp.  5.    By  W.  J.  McGee. 

Ueber  das  galvanische  Verhalten  der  Amalgamo 
des  Zinkes  und  des  Cadmiums  (On  the  Galvanic  Be- 
havior of  the  Amalgams  of  Zinc  and  of  Cadmium). 
By  "William  L.  Robb,  A.  B.  Berlin :  Gustav  Schade. 
Pp.81. 

The  Sun  changes  its  Position  in  Space.  By  Au- 
gust Tischner.     Leipzig  :  Gustav  Fock.     Pp.  87. 

Evolution  of  the  American  Trotting-Horse.  By 
Francis  E.  Nipher.     Pp.  6. 

Notes  on  American  Earthquakes.    Bv  Professor 

0.  G.  Rockwood,  Jr.,  Ph.  D.,  Princeton,  N.  J.  Pp.  8. 

Description  of  a  New  Hydrobiinoid  Gasteropod 

from  the  Mountain  Lakes  of  the  Sierra  Nevada.    By 

Robert  E.  C.  Stearns.    Pp.  6. 

Cholera  a  Disease  of  the  Nervous  System.  By 
John  Chapman,  M.  D.  London :  J.  &  A.  ChurchilL 
Pp.  16. 

Latitude,  Longitude,  and  Time.  By  J.  Anthony 
Bassett.  Syracuse,  N.  Y. :  C.  "W.  Bardeen.  Pp.  42. 
25  cents. 


276 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


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Prison  Labor.  Some  Considerations  in  Favor  of 
maintaining  the  Present  System.  By  John  S.  Per- 
ry.   Albany :  Weed,  Parsons  &  Co.    Pp.  l:iS. 

The  Treatment  of  Wounds  as  based  on  Evolu- 
tionarv  Laws.  By  C.  Pitfield  Mitchell.  Kew  York : 
J.  H.  Vail  ifc  Co.     Pp.  29.    50  cents. 

The  Mounds  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  Histori- 
cally Considered.  By  Lucien  Carr,  Cambridge, 
Mass.    Pp.  107. 

Transactions  of  the  Medical  and  Chirurgical  Fac- 
ulty of  the  State  of  Maryland,  April,  1SS3.  Balti- 
more :  Isaac  Friedenwald.    Pp.  3o2. 

Aperpu  sur  la  Theorie  de  TEvolution  (Summary 
of  the  Theory  of  Evolution).  By  Dr.  Ladislao  Net- 
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Questoes  Hygienicas  (Hygienic  Questions) :  Ani- 
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enic Counsels  to  the  People.  By  Dr.  Joao  Pires'Fa- 
rinha.  Rio  de  Janeiro  ;  T}T)ogniphia  Nacional.  Pp. 
54. 

Die  Physik  im  Dienste  der  Wissenschaft,  der 
Kimst,  und  des  practischen  Lebens  (Physics  in  the 
Service  of  Science,  Art,  and  Practical  Life).  By  Dr. 
G.  Krebs.  Stuttgart :  Ferdinand  Enke.  Part  L 
Pp.112.     2  marks. 

Beyond  the  Sunrise :  Observations  of  Two  Trav- 
elers. New  York  :  John  W.  Lovell  Company.  Pp. 
237.    20  cents. 

King's  Hand  -  Book  of  Boston.  Cambridge, 
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Ancient  Egypt  in  the  Light  of  Modern  Discov- 
eries. Bv  Professor  H.  S.  Osborn,  LL.  D.  Cincin- 
nati :  Robert  Clarke  &  Co.     Pp.  232.    $1.25. 

The  Handy  Book  of  Object-Lessons.  By  J. 
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Sea-Sickness:  Its  Cause,  Nature,  and  Preven- 
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Cassino  &  Co.    Pp.  147.     $1.25. 

Chemistrv :  General,  Medical,  and  Pharmaceu- 
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History  and  Uses  of  Limestones  and  Marbles, 
By  S.  M.  Burnham.  Boston :  S.  E.  Cassino  &  Co. 
Pp.  392.     ^6.    Illustrated. 

Natural  Philosophv.  Bv  Isaac  Sharpless,  Sc.  D.. 
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pincott &  Co.    Pp.  342. 

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ter. Galpin  &  Co.    Pp.  618.    $2.50.     Illustrated. 

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Hopkins  University.  Baltimore:  John  Murphy  &, 
Co.     18»3.    Pp.  336. 

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POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 

Glacial  Theories  at  tlie  Ameriran  Asso- 
ciation.— Topics  connected  with  the  glacial 
theory  received  much  discussion  at  the  Min- 
neapolis meeting  of  the  American  Associa- 
tion. In  his  paper  on  "  The  Life  History 
of  the  Niagara  River,"  Mr.  Julius  Pohlman 
held  that  the  falls  had  no  part  in  excavat- 
ing the  gorge  below  the  whirlpool ;  but  that, 
Lake  Ontario  subsiding  slowly,  no  waterfall 
was  formed  at  its  entrance,  and  the  lower 
part  of  the  gorge  was  worn  out  by  the  river 
as  a  rapid  in  an  old  shallow  valley,  till 
at  the  whirlpool  this  path  met  the  ancient 
river-valley,  while  it  was  along  that  valley 
only  that  the  falls  receded  to  their  present 
site.  In  a  paper  on  "  Glacial  Canons,"  W. 
J.  McGee,  of  Salt  Lake  City,  suggested  that 
the  formation  of  the  canons  could  be  ac- 
counted for  by  presuming  that  typical  water- 
cut  canons  were  temporarily  occupied  by 
glacial  ice,  which  would  convert  them  from 
a  V  into  a  U  shape,  and  that  their  features 
do  not  "  necessarily  imply  extensive  glacial 
excavation,  or  indicate  that  glaeiers  are  su- 
perlatively energetic  engines  of  erosion." 
In  his  paper  on  the  extent,  character,  and 
teachings  of  the  ancient  glaciation  of  North 
America,  Professor  Newberry  maintained 
that — 1.  Glaciei's  covered  most  of  the  ele- 
vated portions  of  the  mountain-belts  in  the 
far  West  as  far  south  as  the  thirty-sixth  par- 
allel, and  in  the  eastern  half  of  the  conti- 
nent to  the  fortieth  parallel  of  latitude.  2. 
The  ancient  glaciers,  which  occupied  the 
area  above  described,  were  not  produced  by 
local  causes,  but  were  evidences  of  a  general 
climatic  condition.  3.  They  could  not  have 
been  the  effect  of  a  warm  climate  and  an 
abundant  precipitation  of  moisture,  but 
were  results  of  a  general  depression  of  tem- 
perature. Having  stated  his  objections  to 
the  iceberg  theory.  Professor  Newberry  add- 
ed that  "  the  record  of  the  ice  period  on 
our  continent  is  far  more  impressive  and 
extensive  than  it  has  been  represented.  The 
phenomena  were  due  to  an  extraneous  and 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY, 


277 


cosmical  cause,  not  to  anything  local  or  even 
telluric.  The  question  here  passes  from 
the  geologist,  and  must  be  addressed  to  the 
astronomer."  In  another  paper,  on  "  The 
Eroding  Power  of  Ice,"  Professor  Newberry 
reiterated  these  views,  and  maintained,  be- 
sides, in  answer  to  objections,  that  "  ice  has 
a  great,  though  unmeasured  and  perhaps 
immeasurable,  eroding  power ;  and  that,  in 
regions  which  they  have  occupied,  glaciers 
have  been  always  important  and  often  pre- 
ponderating agents  in  effecting  geological 
changes."  He  supported  his  views  with 
citations  from  his  own  extended  studies  of 
glacial  action  in  the  Alps  and  in  many  dif- 
ferent regions  of  the  United  States  and 
Canada.  G.  F.  Wright,  of  Oberlin,  Ohio, 
pointed  out,  in  a  paper  on  the  '*  Result  of 
Explorations  of  the  Glacial  Boundary  be- 
tween New  Jersey  and  Illinois,"  that  "  the 
signs  of  glaciation  cease  where  there  is  no 
barrier  to  account  for  their  cessation,  and 
where  no  barrier  ever  could  have  existed, 
such  as  must  be  supposed  if  the  so-called 
glacial  phenomena  are  the  product  of  float- 
ing ice."  To  the  question.  Why  is  the  bound- 
ary of  the  glacial  area  so  crooked  ?  the  au- 
thor replied,  assigning,  as  a  principal  cause, 
aside  from  differences  of  level,  the  proba- 
bility that  unequal  amounts  of  snow  fell 
over  different  regions  of  the  north,  and  this 
snow  became  very  unevenly  extended  in 
its  subsequent  flow  over  the  surface.  A 
little  reflection,  he  added,  "  will  show  that 
the  glacial  theory  will  not  make  extravagant 
suppositions  as  to  the  amount  of  ice  re- 
quired." In  the  general  discussions  of  the 
subject.  Dr.  Dawson  objected  to  the  loose 
significance  with  which  the  term  "  moraine  " 
has  been  used,  and  especially  to  the  defini- 
tion of  it  as  "  detrital  matter  heaped  up  by 
the  forcible  mechanical  action  of  ice  "  ;  and 
pointed  out  that  such  a  definition  would  cer- 
tainly include  work  which  was  not  per- 
formed by  land-glaciers.  Major  Powell 
called  attention  to  the  fact  that  wholly  dif- 
ferent agencies,  each  acting  in  its  own  way, 
produced  a  class  of  geological  features  that 
went  under  the  general  name  of  "  terraces." 
We  have  sea-beach  terraces,  lake-shore  ter- 
races, and  yet  another  class  of  terraces  ex- 
ceedingly common  in  the  Rocky  and  Cascade 
Mountains,  due  to  a  different  cause  from 
the  others. 


Parental  Rights  and  the  Gens  among 
the  Omahas. — Alice  C.  Fletcher,  of  New 
York,  gave,  at  the  recent  meeting  of  the 
American  Association,  a  paper  on  the  laws 
and  privileges  of  the  gens,  among  the  Oma- 
ha Indians.  A  child  who  has  lost  its  fa- 
ther or  mother  is  considered  an  orphan. 
Its  particular  place  is  gone,  and  it  passes 
into  the  getis.  If  it  is  the  father  who  dies, 
the  mother  loses  all  maternal  rights.  Each 
child,  unless  of  very  tender  age,  will  be  sep- 
arated from  the  mother,  and  will  go  into 
the  family  of  some  one  of  the  father's  rela- 
tives. It  may  thereafter  be  claimed  as  his 
own  child  by  the  male  head  of  the  family 
to  which  it  has  been  allotted.  This  separa- 
tion of  her  children  from  a  widow  is  per- 
manent. She  usually  marries  again,  and  in 
that  event  is  not  burdened  with  her  off- 
spring by  previous  husbands;  but,  if  she 
remains  unmarried,  she  is  expected  to  work 
for  the  family  that  has  adopted  her  chil- 
dren, rather  than  for  the  children  them- 
selves. The  women  are  not  wanting  in  af- 
fection for  the  children  of  whom  they  are 
bereft ;  but  the  separation  is  looked  upon 
as  a  matter  of  course,  and  none  of  the  in- 
terested parties  regard  it  as  a  grievance,  or 
even  as  a  hardship. 

Tarantnla-Bites  and  the  Dancing-Cnre. 

— The  tarantula,  that  gigantic  spider  of  sup- 
posed very  poisonous  qualities,  is  native  in 
Italy,  and  in  the  neighborhood  of  Tarento, 
whence  its  name  is  derived.  Its  bite  and 
sting  have  been  supposed  to  be  extremely 
painful,  and  to  produce  a  periodical  de- 
rangement, manifesting  itself  in  various 
ways.  The  affected  persons  were  fabled  to 
be  attacked  with  a  kind  of  compulsion  to 
dance,  which  was  called,  after  its  cause, 
tarantismus  ;  and  real  benefit,  in  the  shape 
of  a  dilution  of  the  poison,  and  a  weakening 
of  its  effects,  was  supposed  to  accrue  from 
subjecting  the  bitten  person  to  a  violent 
exercise  of  dancing.  The  doctors  regarded 
the  tarantismus  as  a  kind  of  hypochondria, 
to  which  the  women  of  Southern  Italy  were 
peculiarly  subject,  and  some  had  prescrip- 
tions of  particular  kinds  of  music  and  spe- 
cial dances  for  its  cure.  Some  held  that 
different  kinds  of  music  should  be  pre- 
scribed to  different  persons,  according  to 
their  character  and  temperament.     Possi- 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


bly,  however,  a  play  upon  names  is  con- 
nected with  these  conditions  ;  and  the  dance 
called  the  tarantella^  which  is  in  great  favor 
in  Italy,  may  have  derived  its  name  in  the 
same  way  as  the  great  spider,  simply  from 
the  fact  that  it  is  indigenous  to  the  Taren- 
tine  province.  The  tarantula  insect  will 
bite,  like  any  spider,  when  it  is  trodden 
upon ;  but  that  its  bite  is  more  dangerous 
than  the  sting  of  the  hornet  has  not  been 
proved.  It  is  still  customary  in  Apulia  to 
make  one  dance  who  thinks  he  has  been 
bitten  by  a  tarantula.  Waldemar  Kaden 
relates  that  he  was  disturbed  once  by  the 
noise  of  music  and  dancing,  and  that  look- 
ing out  he  saw  a  youth,  who  was  supposed 
to  have  been  bitten  while  asleep  in  the 
field,  going  through  the  performance.  The 
poor  fellow  was  in  the  center  of  a  circle  of 
persons  of  all  ages,  held  by  the  collar  and 
arms  by  a  strong  peasant,  and  compelled 
to  make  the  motions  whether  he  would  or 
not,  while  the  crowd  kept  him  excited  with 
their  shouts  and  clapping.  The  great  point 
to  be  gained  was  to  make  him  sweat,  and, 
when  this  was  brought  about,  the  crowd 
rejoiced  and  gave  him  a  glass  of  wine.  The 
only  mark  on  the  youth  was  a  red  spot  on 
the  forehead  that  might  have  been  a  scratch. 
He  had  never  seen  a  tarantula,  and  felt  no 
pain  or  uneasiness,  and  was  out  at  play  an 
hour  after  the  dance.  Herr  Kaden  inquired 
of  the  people  how  many  of  them  had  been 
tarantolati.  Not  one  of  them  had  ever  seen 
a  tarantula,  but  they  had  all  danced ! — Die 
Natur. 

The  British  Association.— The  meeting 
of  the  British  Association  for  1883  was  held 
at  Southport,  beginning  September  19th. 
The  President  for  the  year  was  Professor 
Cayley,  whose  address  on  the  "  Obligations 
of  Mathematics  to  Philosophy,  and  to  Ques- 
tions of  Common  Life,"  though  it  may  have 
been  to  minds  trained  in  mathematical  modes 
of  thought  an  admirable  presentation  of  the 
subject,  was  far  too  abstruse  to  be  capable 
of  popular  adaptation.  Professor  Ray  Lan- 
kester  opened  the  Biological  Section  with 
an  address,  urging  greater  liberality  on  the 
part  of  the  state  in  encouraging  the  prose- 
cution of  biological  studies.  He  drew  a 
comparison  decidedly  unfavorable  to  Eng- 
land with  what  is  done  in  this  line  on  the 


Continent,  especially  in  Germany,  and, 
dwelling  on  the  practical  utility  of  such 
studies,  declared  that  forty  new  biological 
institutes,  requiring  a  capital  sum  of  about 
two  millions  sterling,  were  needed  in  Eng- 
land. The  section  suggested  the  founda- 
tion of  a  marine  laboratory  at  some  point 
on  the  British  coast,  as  a  suitable  object  to 
which  the  surplus  of  funds  anticipated  from 
the  Fisheries  Exhibition  could  be  applied. 
Dr.  Gladstone's  address  in  the  Chemical  Sec- 
tion was  on  "The  Elements,"  and  covered 
the  history  of  the  theories  that  have  pre- 
vailed and  the  knowledge  that  has  been 
gained  on  the  subject  ;  and  showed  that 
we  have  much  yet  to  learn  upon  it.  Among 
the  more  important  papers  read  in  this  sec- 
tion was  that  of  Professor  A.  W.  William- 
son, "  On  the  Constitution  of  Matter."  Pro- 
fessor W.  C.  "Williamson,  as  Vice-President, 
gave  in  the  Geological  Section  "  a  clear  and 
concise  exposition"  of  our  present  knowl- 
edge of  the  carboniferous  flora.  By  the 
doctrine  of  evolution,  there  must  have  ex- 
isted prior  to  the  Devonian  period,  when  the 
cryptogams  were  flourishing  in  wonderful 
grandeur,  and  distributed  all  over  the  earth, 
a  vast  succession  of  forms  of  vegetable  life  ; 
yet  hardly  a  vestige  of  this  pre-Devonian 
flora  has  been  unearthed ;  and  it  is  clear 
that  we  are  not  yet  in  a  position  to  construct 
a  genealogical  tree  of  the  vegetable  king- 
dom. Colonel  Godwin-Austen  addressed  the 
Geological  Section  on  the  orography  and 
geology  of  the  Himalaya  Mountain  system ; 
and  Mr.  Trelawney  Saunders  explained  the 
scheme  for  connecting  the  Mediterranean 
with  the  Red  Sea  by  means  of  a  navigable 
canal  through  the  valley  of  the  Jordan.  A 
communication  was  received  in  this  section 
from  Mr.  Stanley,  advising  the  establish- 
ment of  a  British  protectorate  over  the  Con- 
go. Mr.  Pengelly,  of  the  Anthropological 
Section,  having  the  discoveries  in  Kent's 
Cavern  as  his  subject,  adduced  new  evi- 
dence in  favor  of  the  belief  in  glacial  or 
even  prc-glacial  man.  Professor  Hcnrici, 
in  the  Mathematical  Section,  spoke  of  the 
position  of  the  study  of  geometry  in  Eng- 
land. In  the  Mechanical  Section,  Mr.  Brun- 
lees,  engineer,  traced  the  growth  of  mechan- 
ical appliances  for  the  construction  and 
working  of  railways  and  docks.  In  his 
address  be  referred  to  the  assistance  Mrs. 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


279 


Roebling  had  given  her  husband  during  the 
construction  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge,  which 
he  characterizes  as  "  honorable  to  the  indi- 
vidual woman,  to  the  energetic  nation  to 
which  she  belongs,  and  to  the  better  half 
of  the  human  race."  In  the  Statistical  Sec- 
tion was  presented  the  final  report  of  the 
Anthropometric  Committee,  which  has  been 
for  several  years  engaged  in  collecting  evi- 
dence as  to  the  stature  and  other  physical 
characteristics  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  Brit- 
ish Isles.  The  evening  lectures  were  on 
"  Recent  Researches  on  the  Distance  of  the 
Sun,"  by  Professor  R.  S.  Ball ;  "  Galvani 
and  Animal  Electricity,"  by  Professor  Mc- 
Kendrick,  of  Glasgow ;  and  "  Telephones," 
by  Sir  F.  Bramweli.  The  next  meeting  of 
the  Association  will  be  held  in  Montreal, 
and  the  meeting  for  1885  in  Aberdeen. 

The  Study  of  onr  Sidereal  System. — 

In  his  address  before  the  American  Associ- 
ation, on  "  The  German  Survey  of  the  North- 
ern Heavens,"  Professor  William  A.  Rogers 
defined  the  present  condition  of  knowledge 
regarding  the  proper  motions  of  the  stars 
and  of  the  solar  system  in  space.  Struve 
concluded  several  years  ago  that  the  solar 
system  was  moving  in  a  direction  toward 
a  point  in  the  constellation  Hercules,  and 
Madler  has  indicated  Alcyone  in  the  Pleia- 
des as  the  probable  center  of  the  greater  sys- 
tem of  which  it  forms  a  part ;  but,  "  Biot 
in  1812,  Bessel  in  1818,  and  Airy  in  1860, 
reached  the  conclusion  that  the  certainty  of 
the  movement  of  the  solar  system  toward 
a  given  point  in  the  heavens  could  not  be 
affirmed.  ...  It  must  always  be  kept  in 
mind  that  the  quantities  with  which  we 
must  deal  in  this  investigation  are  exceed- 
ingly minute,  and  that  the  accidental  errors 
of  observation  are  at  any  time  liable  to 
lead  to  illusory  results.  ...  It  can  not  be 
affirmed  that  there  is  a  sidereal  system  in 
the  sense  in  which  we  speak  of  the  solar 
system.  .  .  .  Admitting  that  the  solar  sys- 
tem is  moving  through  space,  can  we  at  the 
present  moment  even  determine  whether 
that  motion  is  rectilinear  or  curved,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  laws  which  govern  it  ?  "  The 
questions  connected  with  these  points,  if 
solved  at  all,  must  be  solved  by  a  critical 
study  of  observations  of  precision  accumu- 
lated at  widely  separated  epochs  of  time. 


The  first  step  in  the  solution  has  been  taken 
in  the  systematic  survey  of  the  northern 
heavens  undertaken  by  the  \_Astronomischc'\ 
Gesellschaft,  and  in  the  survey  of  the  south- 
ern heavens  at  Cordova  by  Dr.  Gould.  "  The 
year  1875  is  the  epoch  about  which  are 
grouped  the  data  which,  combined  with  simi- 
lar data  for  an  epoch  not  earlier  than  1950, 
will  go  far  toward  clearing  up  the  doubts 
which  now  rest  upon  the  question  of  the 
direction  and  the  amount  of  the  solar  mo- 
tion in  space;  and  it  can  not  be  doubted 
that  our  knowledge  of  the  laws  which  con- 
nect the  sidereal  with  the  solar  system  will 
be  largely  increased  through  this  investiga- 


Ideas  about  Fossils. — Professor  August 
Quenstedt  gives  in  his  "  Petrefacten  Kunde  " 
a  review  of  the  hypotheses  that  have  been 
advanced  at  different  times  concerning  the 
nature  and  origin  of  fossils,  and  of  the  slow 
processes  by  which  the  true  theory  of  the 
subject  has  been  reached.  The  views  of 
the  ancients  were  crude  enough,  but  among 
them  were  some'more  intelligent  and  nearer 
to  the  truth  than  any  that  were  held  during 
the  middle  ages.  The  crude  speculations 
of  the  latter  period  survived  down  to  an 
age  of  greater  scientific  enlightenment ;  and 
the  time  is  not  extremely  remote  when  be- 
lemnites  were  regarded  as  thunderbolts,  and 
other  fossils  were  looked  upon  as  sports  of 
Nature,  or  as  efforts  of  Nature  to  prepare  in 
the  bosom  of  the  earth  the  material  forms 
of  bodies  preliminary  to  their  receiving  the 
breath  of  life.  At  a  later  period  the  belief 
arose  that  the  fossils  were  once  actually  liv- 
ing creatures,  and  had  been  destroyed  by 
the  flood;  and,  as  recently  as  1828,  Buck- 
land  supported  such  a  view  in  his  "  Reli- 
quse  Diluvianee."  This  author  was  one  of 
the  earliest  cave-hunters,  and  believed  that 
the  bones  found  in  the  caves  were  those 
which  had  been  washed  into  them  by  the 
Noachian  deluge.  "With  such  views  having 
held  a  footing  in  our  own  century,  we  have 
little  right  to  be  amused  at  those  who,  in 
the  age  of  Scheuchzer  and  Leibnitz,  thought 
the  bones  of  the  gigantic  salamander  (Sala- 
mandra  gigantcd)  were  the  remains  of  an 
old  human  sinner  destroyed  in  the  flood. 
Even  Leibnitz  had  no  doubt  that  the  re- 
mains of  a  mammoth  which  were  found 


28o 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


near  Quedlinburg  belonged  to  the  unicorn 
of  the  Bible.  Because  the  Bible  assigned 
extremely  long  terms  of  life  to  the  antedilu- 
vian patriarchs,  popular  belief  ascribed  a 
gigantic  size  to  the  ancestors  of  the  present 
human  race ;  and  parts  of  huge  fossil  skele- 
tons were  occasionally  preserved  in  the 
churches  as  relics.  Such  a  belief  was  al- 
ready so  extensive,  even  in  the  time  of 
Empedocles,  b.  c.  450,  that  a  mass  of  hip- 
popotamus -  bones  found  in  Sicily  was  de- 
clared by  the  learned  of  the  day  to  be  the 
remains  of  the  giants  who  fought  against 
the  gods.  The  Mohammedans  believed  that 
Adam  was  as  tall  as  a  palm-tree,  or  about 
sixty  feet,  and  found  a  mound  of  corre- 
sponding size  in  Syria  to  answer  for  his 
grave.  The  academician,  Henrien,  in  1718, 
described  Adam  as  thirty-eight  and  a  half 
metres  and  Eve  as  thirty-seven  metres  high, 
and  herein  did  not  greatly  disagree  with  St. 
Augustine.  The  former  world  was  long  be- 
lieved to  have  been  constructed  on  a  much 
more  gigantic  scale  than  the  present ;  and 
the  opinion  that  the  old  order  of  things  and 
organisms  was  vastly  different  from  the  ex- 
isting one,  and  was  subverted  by  a  tremen- 
dous revolution,  prevailed  quite  generally, 
till  Lamarck  and  Cuvier  pointed  out  the 
way  to  a  more  consistent  theory. 

Defective  Hearing  in  Sehool-Childrcn. — 

Dr.  Gelle,  a  French  physician,  has  recently 
published  an  important  paper  on  defects  of 
hearing  among  school-children.  Dr.  Weil, 
of  Stuttgart,  a  year  or  two  ago  expressed  the 
opinion  that  about  thirty  per  cent  of  the  chil- 
dren in  commercial  schools,  and  ten  per  cent 
of  well-to-do  school  children,  hear  but  im- 
perfectly. Dr.  Gelle,  from  the  examination 
of  fourteen  hundred  cases  of  deafness  in 
schools,  fixes  the  proportion  of  children  thus 
affected  at  about  twenty  or  twenty-five  per 
cent  of  the  whole  number.  The  deficiency 
is  most  obvious  in  the  case  of  the  consonant- 
sounds,  the  vciy  ones  most  essential  to  the 
understanding  of  what  is  said.  Dr.  Gelle 
•observes  that  the  range  of  hearing  for  a  giv- 
en sound  diminishes  outside  the  class-room, 
or  even  in  a  covered  yard  ;  that  mistakes 
cease  or  diminish  as  the  distance  of  the 
teacher  from  the  pupil  is  lessened ;  and  that 
deafness  increases  with  age.  To  make  the 
conditions  convenient  for  the  hearing  of  the 


pupil,  the  teacher  should  take  pains  to  place 
himself  in  the  most  favorable  position  and 
to  articulate  distinctly,  and  the  size  of  the 
class-room  should  be  adjusted  aecordmg 
to  the  laws  which  limit  the  range  of  the 
most  distinct  hearing  to  about  twenty-three 
or  twenty-seven  feet.  The  scholars,  having 
been  previously  examined  with  reference  to 
their  hearing,  should  be  arranged  so  as  to 
place  those  most  deficient  in  this  respect 
nearest  to  the  teacher. 

Significance  of  the  Aboriginal  Monnds. 

— In  the  discussions  of  the  Anthropologi- 
cal Section  of  the  American  Association,  re- 
specting the  mounds.  Dr.  S.  D.  Peet  divided 
those  structures  into  five  classes,  as  follows : 
1.  Emblematic  mounds,  built  by  hunters 
who  worshiped  animals.  2.  Burial-mounds, 
a  class  mostly  represented  in  Michigan,  Illi- 
nois, and  Minnesota.  3.  Jlounds  which  are 
probably  the  remains  of  the  stockades  of 
an  agricultural  people.  4.  Village  mounds 
— the  remains  of  villages,  and  their  high 
places  for  worship,  5.  The  peculiar  mounds 
of  the  Pueblos  and  Aztecs.  The  emblematic 
mounds,  having  the  forms  of  animals  hunt- 
ed, served  a  useful  as  well  as  a  religious 
purpose,  and  were  used  as  screens  from  be- 
hind which  to  shoot  the  animals  that  would 
pass  along  the  game-drives  between  them. 
Of  their  religious  significance.  Dr.  Pect's 
theory  is,  that  the  animals  were  supposed 
to  be  scattered  about  to  guard  the  central 
sacrifice  or  altar  mound.  He  has  been  led 
to  this  belief  by  observing  that  the  altar- 
mounds  are  nearly  always  situated  on  high 
ground,  overlooking  a  river,  while  the  em- 
blematic mounds  are  so  disposed  around  the 
altar-mounds  as  to  suggest  the  notion  of 
guarding  the  latter. 

Tlie  Singing-Sands  of  Mandiester,  Mas- 
saclinsetts. — A.  A.  Julien  and  Dr.  H.  C. 
Bolton  presented  a  paper  to  the  American 
Association,  on  the  sands  of  the  singing- 
beach,  at  Manchester,  Massachusetts.  On 
the  beach,  feldspathic  rocks  are  intersected 
by  numerous  dikes  of  igneous  rocks.  The 
sonorous  phenomenon  is  confined  to  par- 
ticular parts  of  the  sand,  and  is  exhibited 
in  areas  to  which  closely  contiguous  ones 
are  silent.  The  sound  is  produced  by  press- 
ure,  and   may   be   likened    to   a  subdued 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


281 


crushing  of  low  intensity  and  pitch,  not 
metallic  or  crackling.  It  occurs  when  the 
sand  is  pressed  by  ordinary  walking,  in- 
creases with  sudden  pressure  of  the  foot 
upon  the  sand,  and  is  perceptible  upon 
mere  stirring  by  the  hand,  or  even  plunging 
one  finger  and  removing  it  suddenly.  It 
can  be  intensified  by  dragging  wood  on  the 
beach.  Somewhat  similar  phenomena  have 
been  observed  in  sands  at  various  other 
places.  The  authors  explain  the  phenomena 
upon  the  hypothesis  that  the  sand,  instead 
of  being,  as  ordinarily,  composed  of  round- 
ed particles,  is  made  up  of  grains  with  flat 
and  angular  surfaces.  In  the  present  in- 
stance, the  plane  surface  of  feldspar  is  ap- 
parent in  many  of  the  grains.  Probably  a 
certain  proportion  of  quartz  and  feldspar 
grains  is  adapted  to  give  the  sound,  while 
less  or  more  of  either  component  would 
fail  of  the  result.  It  is  concluded  that  the 
sound  is  produced  either  by  the  intermix- 
ture of  grains  having  cleavage-planes,  or  of 
grains  with  minute  cavities. 

Use  and  Abuse  of  Check-Selns.— Bear- 
ing-reins, or  check-reins,  in  the  harness  of 
horses,  are  useful  and  advantageous  in  their 
places  and  when  rightly  adjusted,  but  the 
instances  in  which  they  simply  torture  the 
animals  that  have  to  endure  them  are  more 
conspicuous.  In  crowded  streets,  with  high- 
mettled  horses  that  run  freely  up  to  their 
bits,  a  well-fitted  bearing-rein  gives  the 
driver  a  more  thorough  control  of  the  ani- 
mal that  is  valuable  in  avoiding  collisions. 
A  bolting  horse,  says  the  "Pall  Mall  Ga- 
zette," endeavors  to  get  his  head  well  down, 
so  as  to  extend  his  neck,  and  thereby  obtain 
a  stronger  purchase  against  the  restraint  of 
the  reins ;  and  if  he  is  restrained  by  a  bear- 
ing-rein, so  that  he  can  not  lower  his  head 
below  the  level  to  which  he  would  require 
to  carry  it  for  ordinary  equilibrium  in 
draught,  his  powers  of  bolting  are  greatly 
circumscribed,  and  if  he  is  not  excessively 
borne  up  he  is  not  conscious  that  the  rein 
is  restraining  him,  and  his  powers  of 
draught  are  not  cramped.  The  fashion  of 
coachmen  is,  however,  to  pull  the  bearing, 
rein  up  so  tight  that  the  horse's  neck  is 
cramped,  and  the  animal  is  thrown  into  an 
unnatural  and  painful  position,  and  is  de- 
prived of  much  of  his  power  to  draw  the 


load  that  is  intrusted  to  him.  Ilis  feeling 
must  be  much  the  same  as  that  of  a  man 
would  be  whose  head  was  pulled  back  so 
that  he  would  have  to  stand  for  hours  look- 
ing up  at  the  sky  without  being  able  to 
turn  his  eyes  away,  and  had  while  in  such 
a  position  to  draw  a  baby-carriage.  The 
fact  that  the  adjustment  of  the  rein  is 
painful  can  be  recognized  from  the  unnatu- 
ral attitude  of  the  horse's  neck,  and  from 
his  fretfully  tossing  his  head  every  few 
minutes  to  relieve  himself,  and  shake  off 
the  foam  from  his  jaws.  "  This  tossing  of 
the  head  and  flecking  of  flanks,  brisket,  and 
harness  with  foam,  seem  to  the  coachman 
and  to  the  upracticed  observer  to  be  pict- 
uresque, and  characteristic  of  high  cour- 
age ;  to  the  experienced  eye  they  betray 
that  the  animal  is  not  only  inconvenienced 
but  is  also  pained  by  his  position."  Be- 
sides this  annoyance,  the  animal  thus  tight- 
ly checked,  being  unable  to  throw  the  head 
reasonably  forward  when  feeling  his  collar, 
can  not  utilize  his  natural  powers  of 
draught,  and,  in  default  of  them,  has  to 
draw  from  the  lateral  purchase  of  his  limbs 
instead  of  from  his  height,  and  thereby  un- 
duly to  tire  his  muscles  and  joints  and  strain 
them  ;  and,  if  he  stumbles,  the  danger  of 
his  falling  is  increased.  The  instinct  of  a 
horse  in  stumbling  is  to  let  his  head  drop 
to  a  certain  point  where  it  helps  to  restore 
equilibrium.  A  rein  adjusted  to  catch  the 
head  at  that  point  would  be  helpful,  but 
the  common  tight  reins  prevent  its  drop- 
ping at  all,  and  thereby  augment  the  inse- 
curity of  the  horse. 

Cnltivation  of  the  Date-Palm.— Dates 

are  cultivated  profitably  in  two  oases  of  the 
Algerian  Sahara.  At  the  oasis  of  Rir,  where 
the  conditions  are  most  favorable,  an  un- 
failing supply  of  water  is  obtained  by  arte- 
sian wells  from  a  depth  of  about  two  hun- 
dred feet.  The  use  of  these  wells  has  been 
known  to  the  natives  from  time  immemorial, 
but  has  been  facilitated,  and  the  number  of 
them  has  consequently  increased  since  the 
introduction  of  improved  systems  of  boring 
by  the  French.  Sixty-four  of  the  wells  had 
been  bored  by  the  French  in  18Y8,  furnish- 
ing an  average  of  more  than  1,500  quarts 
of  water  each  a  minute.  They  vary  among 
themselves  greatly  in  capacity,  one  of  them 


282 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


being  rated  at  4,800  and  another  at  20 
quarts  a  minute.  At  the  averaged  rate  of 
supply,  each  of  the  wells  should  furnish 
water  enough  to  sustain  15,000  palm-trees, 
representing  a  plantation  of  426  acres. 
Each  tree,  if  thriving,  well  manured,  and 
cared  for,  will  bear  from  one  hundred  to 
one  hundred  and  twenty -five  pounds  of 
dates ;  raised  by  the  quantity  and  without 
manure  or  particular  attention,  the  average 
crop  per  tree  is  thirty-five  or  forty  pounds, 
and  this  is  worth  about  sixty  cents.  It  is 
not  a  matter  of  very  great  expense  to  start 
a  plantation  of  dates.  A  lot  of  five  or  six 
hundred  acres,  on  which  30,000  trees  may 
be  planted,  can  be  bought  for  about  five 
hundred  dollars;  the  wells  will  cost  eight 
hundred  dollars  apiece ;  the  trees  cost 
about  thirty  cents  apiece  ;  and  M.  Jus  esti- 
mates the  whole  expense  of  stocking  an  oasis 
with  1 0, 000  trees  at  about  $4,000.  The  trees 
are  expected  to  bear  a  crop  in  the  fifth  year 
after  planting.  The  cost  might  be  greater  and 
the  time  of  waiting  longer  than  is  calculated, 
as  will  often  probably  turn  out  to  be  the 
case,  and  the  enterprise  still  be  a  profitable 
one,  especially  as  the  expense  of  the  outlay, 
it  is  thought,  may  be  nearly  covered  by  the 
barley  that  may  be  raised  with  the  aid  of 
the  winter  rains.  The  care  of  the  young 
trees  is  intrusted  to  tenant  farmers,  who 
take  half  the  barley  and  a  sixth  of  the 
dates.  When  the  plantation  has  come  into 
bearing,  it  will  return,  if  all  is  prosperous, 
375,000  pounds  of  dates,  worth  $6,000 
gross,  of  which  the  proprietor  receives 
$4,800,  or  a  few  hundred  dollars  more  than 
his  estimated  first  outlay.  The  prospect 
has  proved  flattering  enough  to  attract  the 
attention  of  a  few  capitalists  who  have 
started  several  plantations  near  Ourlana,  in 
the  center  of  the  oasis. 

The  Polsonons  Principle  of  Bnlbs.— 

Professor  Ilusemann  remarked  several  years 
ago  that  a  certain  class  of  poisons  was  gen- 
erally diffused  in  plants  of  the  families 
IAliac€(e  and  Amaiyllidca;.  His  view  has 
been  confirmed  by  the  results  of  later  re- 
searches. Gerrard  has  extracted  from  the 
tulip  a  poison  called  tuHpin,  the  nitrate  of 
which,  according  to  Sydney  Ringer,  has  the 
power  of  stopping  the  contraction  of  the 
heart,  with  many  of  the  properties  of  vera- 


trin.  Professor  "Warden,  of  Calcutta,  has 
extracted  from  a  lily  of  India  a  very  poi- 
sonous principle  (superbin),  which  appears 
to  be  identical  with  the  scilUtoxin  of  the 
squill,  and  a  very  small  dose  of  which  killed 
a  grown  cat.  The  presence  of  the  poison- 
ous principle  in  bulbs,  on  which  many  plants 
are  more  dependent  for  propagation  than 
on  the  seed,  has  an  important  bearing  on 
the  perpetuity  of  species  by  its  agency  in 
preserving  them  from  the  attacks  of  ani- 
mals which  would  be  likely  to  destroy  them 
by  eating  them.  While  the  poisons  are 
comparatively  harmless  to  men,  they  are 
peculiarly  deadly  to  the  rodcntia  ;  and  it  is 
from  the  depredations  of  animals  of  this 
class  that  bulbs  would  be  most  hkely  to 
suffer. 

Seope  and  Yalne  of  Antbropological 
Studies. — Professor  Otis  A.  Mason,  in  his 
address  before  the  Anthropological  Section 
of  the  American  Association,  on  the  "  Scope 
and  Value  of  Anthropological  Studies,"  an- 
swers the  inquiry  as  to  what  benefit  the  world 
has  derived  from  the  cultivation  of  that 
science :  First,  every  study  is  improved  by 
study,  and,  if  "  the  proper  study  of  mankind 
is  man,"  it  is  eminently  important  that  that 
should  be  improved  and  pursued  scientifi- 
cally. Secondly,  the  value  of  a  study  must 
be  estimated  by  its  effects  upon  human 
weal ;  and  are  not  the  questions  agitated  by 
anthropologists  connected  with  human  wel- 
fare ?  "  Do  they  not  relate  to  the  body,  mind, 
and  speech  of  man,  to  the  races  of  mankind, 
their  arts,  amusements,  social  needs,  pohti- 
cal  organizations,  religion,  and  dispersion 
over  the  earth  ?  For  instance,  the  French 
in  Africa,  the  British  in  India,  and  our  own 
citizens  in  malarious  and  fever-laden  re- 
gions, have  they  not  learned  from  loss  of 
treasure,  ruined  health,  and  the  shadow  of 
death,  that  there  is  a  law  of  nature  which 
can  not  be  transgressed  with  impunity  ?  It 
is  the  same  with  sociology  and  religion. 
The  pages  of  history  glow  with  the  narra- 
tives of  crusades  against  alleged  wrongs, 
which  were  in  reality  campaigns  against  the 
sacred  laws  of  nature.  Social  systems,  which 
had  required  centuries  to  crystallize,  have 
been  shattered  in  some  effort  to  bend  them 
to  some  new  order  of  things.  Arts  and  in. 
dustries  planted  in  uncongenial  soil,  at  great 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


283 


expense,  have  brought  ruin  upon  their  pa- 
trons, who  had  not  studied  the  intricate  laws 
of  development.  .  .  .  The  better  knowledge 
of  races  and  race  peculiarities  has  revolu- 
tionized and  humanized  the  theories  of  abo- 
rigines. The  doctrine  of  extermination,  for- 
merly thought  to  be  the  only  legitimate  re- 
sult of  colonization,  has  become  as  odious 
as  it  is  illogical.  The  inductive  study  of 
mind  has  hardly  begun ;  but  how  much  more 
successfully  and  rapidly  will  education  and 
the  development  of  the  species  progress 
when  the  teacher  and  the  legislator  can  pro- 
ceed at  once  from  diagnosis  to  safe  pre- 
scription, when  natural  selection  and  human 
legislation  shall  cooperate  in  the  more  speedy 
survival  of  the  fittest " !  A  third  benefit 
of  the  study  is  the  opportunity  which  the 
science  affords  for  the  exercise  of  every  tal- 
ent, even  the  highest.  It  is  possible  for 
every  craft  to  prosecute  its  researches  and 
make  its  contributions  on  the  subject. 

The  Big  Trees  of  Tnrkistan.— Accord- 
ing to  ancient  accounts,  the  mountains  of 
Turkistan  were  formerly  covered  with  large 
and  handsome  forests.  Now,  the  absence 
of  trees  and  the  savage  nudity  of  the  moun- 
tain-slopes are  what  most  strike  the  traveler 
in  that  country.  The  denudation  would,  per- 
haps, have  been  complete  by  this  time  if  the 
Russian  Government  had  not  interposed  to 
prevent  further  waste ;  and  the  restoration 
of  the  forests  is  at  present  under  considera- 
tion by  a  commission.  The  growth  of  plants 
in  as  hot  a  climate  as  that  of  Turkistan  is 
very  rapid.  Trees  at  Samarcand  and  Tash- 
kend  have  been  known  to  make  growths  by 
measure  in  a  single  year  of  from  fifteen  to 
nearly  twenty  feet,  and  a  corresponding  de- 
velopment in  thickness.  Nevertheless,  fine 
trees  are  very  rare,  though  a  few  exist  of  ex- 
traordinary size.  They  are  generally  found 
near  some  holy  place  or  overshadowing  some 
mosque  or  hermit's  retreat,  where  they  owe 
their  preservation  to  the  respect  in  which 
the  natives  hold  the  shrines  to  which  they 
appertain.  The  Sartes  of  Tashkend  tell  of 
an  arbor-vitae,  in  the  inclosure  of  one  of  the 
mosques  of  their  town,  which  is  nearly  six 
feet  and  a  half  in  diameter  and  five  thou- 
sand years  old.  A  French  traveler  has 
measured  mulberry-trees  at  Ourgout  and  at 
Salavad  that  were  more  than  sixteen  feet  in 


circumference  at  the  height  of  the  shoulder, 
but  they  did  not  seem  to  grow  proportion- 
ately in  height.  These  trees  were  all  in 
religious  places,  and  were  accompanied  by 
plane-trees  of  equal  size.  The  latter  tree  is 
occasionally  found  of  really  wonderful  di- 
mensions, Madame  0.  Fedtchenko  made  a 
drawing  of  one  which  was  six  feet  four 
inches  in  diameter,  the  interior  of  which 
had  been  converted  into  a  little  medrcsseh. 
It  was  growing  on  a  saint's  tomb,  not  far 
from  Samarcand.  A  plane-tree  in  the  Tajik 
village  of  Sairob  is  twenty-seven  feet  and  a 
half  in  circumference  at  the  height  of  the 
shoulder.  It  has  been  protected  from  the 
wash  of  rains  by  a  barrier  of  stones,  and 
its  hollow  trunk  has  been  formed  into  a 
square  room  and  fitted  up  as  the  village 
school-house.  Near  it  is  another  twenty-six 
paces  in  circumference  at  the  base.  The 
people  say  that  these  trees  were  planted  by 
Ali.  Of  a  group  of  old  plane-trees  at  Cho- 
jakend,  east  of  Tashkend,  the  largest  is  a 
rotten  and  hollow  old  stump,  looking  like 
the  ruin  of  a  giant  wall,  from  which  six 
vigorous  lateral  trees  have  shot  up.  The 
whole  plant  is  forty-eight  paces  in  circum- 
ference at  the  base,  and  the  hollow  of  the 
principal  trunk  is  nine  metres,  or  more  than, 
twenty-seven  feet,  in  diameter.  A  party  of 
a  dozen  tourists  from  Tashkend  once  had  a 
feast  in  the  inside  of  this  stump,  and  were 
not  cramped  for  room. — La  Nature. 

Anthropology  and  Philanthropy. — Pro- 
fessor Otis  T.  Mason,  in  his  American  Asso- 
ciation address  on  the  "  Scope  and  Value  of 
Anthropological  Studies,"  speaking  of  their 
value  to  philanthropy,  says :  "  With  what 
admiration  do  we  read  of  the  devotion  of 
those  missionaries  who  have  suffered  the 
loss  of  all  things  in  their  propagandist  zeal ! 
Science  has  her  missionaries  as  well  as  re- 
ligion, and  the  scientific  study  of  peoples 
has  notably  modified  the  methods  of  the 
Christian  missionary.  The  conviction  that 
savage  races  are  in  possession  of  our  fam- 
ily records,  that  they  are  our  elder  kindred, 
wrinkled  and  weather-beaten,  mayhap,  but 
yet  worthy  of  our  highest  respect,  has  revolu- 
tionized men's  thoughts  and  feelings  respect- 
ing them.  The  Bureau  of  Ethnology  has  its 
missionaries  among  many  of  the  tribes  in 
our  domain,  no  lonjjer  bent  on  their  destruc- 


284 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


tion,  but  treating  them  with  the  greatest 
consideration,  in  order  to  win  their  confi- 
dence, to  get  down  to  their  level,  to  think 
their  thoughts,  to  charm  from  them  the 
sibylline  secrets.  It  sounds  something  like 
the  old  Jesuit  relations  to  hear  of  Mr.  Gush- 
ing at  Zuni  eating  vile  food,  wearing  savage 
costume,  worshiping  Xature-gods,  subject- 
ing himself  to  long  fastings  and  vigils,  com- 
mitting to  memory  dreary  rituals,  standing 
between  disarmed  Indians  and  their  white 
enemies  on  every  hand,  in  order  to  save 
their  contributions  to  the  early  history  of 
mankind.  You  will  recall  the  fact  that  an 
honorable  senator  more  than  a  year  ago 
offered,  as  an  argument  against  sudden 
disruption  of  tribal  affinities,  an  elaborate 
scheme  of  the  Wyandotte   Confederacy." 

Farming  in  Japan, — According  to  the 
report  of  Consul  Van  Buren,  the  Japanese 
farmer  holds  in  public  opinion  and  estima- 
tion an  exalted  position.  He  is  owner  of 
the  soil  he  tills,  is  generally  represented  by 
members  of  his  class  as  officers  in  the  agri- 
cultural villages,  and  has  electoral  rights 
which  are  in  some  instances  exclusive.  His 
position  has  been  raised,  and  his  privileges 
have  been  increased,  during  the  last  two 
years.  A  considerable  percentage  of  the 
land-owners  are  able  to  employ  laborers,  and 
are  thus  not  themselves  tied  to  labor ;  but 
the  farm-work  allows  no  rest,  for  in  the 
mild  climate  the  hardier  crops  may  be  raised 
in  the  winter  as  well  as  others  in  the  sum- 
mer. Almost  every  farmer  can  read,  write 
and  keep  his  farm  accounts.  He  sends  his 
sons  to  school,  and  his  daughters  are  taught 
needlework  and  music  at  home.  The  labor 
on  the  farm  is  all  mere  hand-work  ;  a  plow 
is  seldom  seen,  but  a  kind  of  long-toothed 
harrow  is  sometimes  used  to  follow  the  mat- 
tock. The  laborers  are  treated  with  great 
kindness.  Those  engaged  in  the  cultivation 
of  tea,  silk,  and  sugar,  need  more  skill  than 
the  others,  and  are  paid  higher  wages.  They 
live  almost  entirely  on  vegetable  food,  re- 
fraining from  the  use  of  meat  by  virtue  of  re- 
ligion, custom,  popular  prejudice,  and  neces- 
sity. Their  clothing  is  extremely  light,  and 
does  not  cost  more  than  about  four  dollars  a 
year.  Several  holidays  are  allowed  each  year 
for  religious  festivals  and  family  celebra- 
tions, and  the  laborers  generally  have  small 


gardens  attached  to  their  cottages.  "Women 
and  children  are  employed  in  tea-picking, 
and  in  the  lighter  and  in-door  operations  of 
silk-culture,  and  are  paid  for  skill.  The 
labor  employed  on  the  cotton  plantations  is 
not  skilled,  and  is  paid  for  at  low  rates.  A 
farming  population  of  15,500,000  is  engaged 
on  12,000,000  acres  of  land,  giving  about 
three  quarters  of  an  acre  to  each  person. 
The  tillage  is  of  the  most  thorough  order. 
Two  crops  are  raised  each  year,  so  that  the 
producing  capacity  of  the  land  is  double 
what  it  appears  to  be. 

Animal  Plagues.— Mr.  George  Fleming, 
in  his  recent  work  on  "Animal  Plagues," 
remarks  that  no  description  of  disease,  suffi- 
ciently exact  to  be  identified  with  the  type 
of  which  pleuro -pneumonia  is  an  example, 
is  found  till  about  two  hundred  years  ago. 
Even  then,  the  earliest  record  suggesting 
that  disease  is  of  a  doubtful  character.  It 
dates  from  1613,  when  there  had  been  a 
course  of  years  marked  by  phenomenal  dis- 
turbances, mildew,  and  blight.  Oxen  and 
cows  died  in  great  numbers  from  a  pulmonary 
phthisis  that  appears  to  have  been  brought 
on  in  part  by  severe  cold  after  intense  heat. 
Men  also  were  attacked  with  dysentery  and 
malignant  fevers.  In  1713,  again,  a  "  cattle- 
plague,"  distinctly  so  described,  raged  over 
Europe,  and  wild  creatures  suffered  with  the 
tame.  In  1725  a  wet  and  chilly  year  of 
blight  was  followed  by  an  exceedingly  dry 
and  hot  one ;  honey-dew  and  rust  were  abun- 
dant on  the  crops  and  foliage ;  a  great  mor- 
tality prevailed  among  cattle ;  while  the  deer 
perished  in  numbers,  and  even  the  fish  suf- 
fered. In  1769,  after  a  rainy  year  and  a 
bad  harvest,  a  lung-disease,  called  murie  in 
Franche-Comt6,  raged  among  the  cattle  and 
horses  in  the  north  of  France ;  but  it  appears 
to  have  been  less  virulent  than  genuine  bo- 
vine contagious  pleuro-pneumonia.  About 
1779  the  last-named  disease,  now  thoroughly 
ascertained  and  distinguished  from  other 
cattle-plagues,  appeared  in  Upper  Silesia 
and  Istria ;  then,  after  holding  its  ground 
there  for  many  years,  it  spread  to  Bavaria. 
It  was  carried  into  France  during  the  wars 
of  the  French  Revolution,  into  Italy  in  1815, 
and  into  Holland  and  Belgium  in  1 827.  Hav- 
ing established  itself  upon  the  Continent,  it 
was  introduced  into  England  in  1841,  when 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


285 


Liverpool  and  other  ports  at  which  diseased 
animals  were  landed  became  centers  of  con- 
tagion. The  history  of  this  disease  is  only 
one  example  out  of  many  in  the  list  of  mala- 
dies to  which  animals  are  liable.  The  study 
of  Mr.  Fleming's  histories  induces  the  con- 
viction that  hardly  a  creature  in  any  way 
connected  with  man,  or  coming  under  our 
observation,  is  free  from  liability  to  hosts 
of  plagues,  or  has  not  its  full  share  of  spe- 
cial or  common  troubles,  Mr.  Fleming's 
work  is  published  in  England. 

Wind-Sounds  in  tlie  Desert,— The  trav- 
elers' tales  of  sounds  like  the  ringing  of 
bells,  which  they  have  heard  in  deserts  and 
lonely  places,  are  familiar.  Some  of  thera 
are  too  well  substantiated  to  admit  of  seri- 
ous dispute.  Among  them  is  that  of  the 
noises  heard  at  the  Gebel  Nakus,  in  the 
Sinaitic  Peninsula,  which  the  Arabs  say  pro- 
ceed from  a  convent  of  damned  monks; 
the  musical  cliffs  of  the  Orinoco,  told  of  by 
Humboldt ;  and  the  sounds  which  the  French 
savants  Jollois  and  Devilliers  declare  they 
heard  at  sunrise  at  Karnak,  Egypt,  and  de- 
scribed as  comparable  to  the  ancient  fable 
of  the  vocal  Memnon.  The  sounds  are  not 
always  or  exactly  like  the  ringing  of  a  bell ; 
sometimes  they  resemble  the  music  of  a 
string,  and  may  be  generally  described  as  of 
an  intermediate  character  between  the  two 
classes.  A  characteristic  of  the  sounds  is, 
that  no  one  can  discern  where  they  come 
from.  M.  Emile  Sorel,  fls,  in  order  to  deter- 
mine their  origin,  has  made  some  successful 
experiments  in  reproducing  them  artificially. 
Taking  his  gun  into  an  open  field,  he  placed 
it  at  an  angle  of  45°  against  the  wind,  when 
it  gave  forth  a  sound.  Then  moving  it 
around,  he  caused  it  to  utter  the  exact  tone 
he  sought.  The  sound  could  not  be  local- 
ized. Addressing  a  peasant,  he  asked  him, 
"  Do  you  hear  my  gun  ?  "  *'  Pardon,  mon- 
sieur, it  is  the  bells  of  ."     A  similar 

answer  was  got  from  every  one  whose  at- 
tention was  called  to  the  noise.  It  was  be- 
lieved to  come  from  about  two  miles  and  a 
half  to  the  windward.  M.  Sorel  believes 
this  experiment  authorizes  the  hypothesis 
that  the  ringing  is  the  result  of  the  blowing 
of  the  wind  over  a  slope  at  the  foot  of 
which  is  something  that  may  act  as  a  reso- 
nator.    What  is  done  on  a  small  scale  in  a 


gun  may  be  done  on  a  large  scale  in  nature, 
on  the  face  of  a  mountain  or  a  rock  which 
is  backed  by  a  valley  or  a  ravine,  or  which 
is  itself  elastic  enough  to  give  the  resonant 
effect.  The  sounds  are  apparently  not  as 
readily  given  when  the  vibrating  surfaces 
and  media  are  moist. 

Artificial  Drying  of  Fodders.— A  prac- 
tical, economical  apparatus  for  artificially 
drying  fodder-crops  might  be  the  means  of 
effecting  immense  savings  to  farmers  in  bad 
seasons  for  hay-making,  Mr.  William  A. 
Gibbs  has  described  before  the  British  So- 
ciety of  Arts  two  such  apparatuses  which, 
he  claims,  accomphsh  the  object  at  a  cost 
that  makes  their  use  profitable.  His  own 
apparatus,  which  he  has  spent  many  years 
in  perfecting,  is  in  its  primitive  and  simplest 
form  a  stove  or  furnace  for  burning  coke, 
to  which  is  attached  a  fan  for  blowing  the 
hot  air  resulting  from  the  combustion — of 
a  temperature  that  may  rise  to  520° — 
through  the  wet  grass.  An  exposure  of 
from  four  to  six  minutes  is  sufficient  to  con- 
vert each  lot  of  grass — the  proportion  of 
which  is  adapted  to  the  force  of  the  blast — 
into  hay.  This  has  been  developed  into  a 
machine  of  eleven  tons  weight  "  which,  when 
in  action,  eats  up  a  one-horse  load  of  coke, 
draws  off  ten  to  fifteen  tons  of  water,  and 
converts  twenty  great  cart-loads  of  wet  rub- 
bish into  good  stack-hay  in  a  single  day's 
work.*'  The  perfected  machine  has  a  sys- 
tem of  giant  forks  and  fiat  iron  plates,  kept 
in  rapid  action,  through  which  the  wet  grass 
is  shaken  down  in  successive  stages  while  it 
is  permeated  through  and  through  with  the 
hot  air.  Another  process,  the  invention  of 
Mr.  Neilson,  is  for  cooling  hay  in  the  stack, 
and  uses  the  heat  which  is  developed  in  the 
natural  process  of  "heating,"  to  dry  the 
whole.  A  hole  six  inches  in  diameter  is 
bored  through  the  stack  to  the  point  at 
which  the  greatest  heat  is  developed,  and  a 
fan  fixed  at  the  outlet  of  the  hole  is  made 
to  draw  off  the  heat  from  that  point  and 
promote  the  ventilation  and  drying  of  the 
whole  mass.  Mr.  Gibbs  believes  that  these 
processes  are  about  equal  in  value,  and  that 
their  value  is  real.  He  also  described  a 
"  sheaf-tube  "  for  drying  sheaves  of  wheat. 
It  is  "  like  a  gun-barrel  open  at  both  ends, 
and  about  eighteen  inches  long ;  such  tubes 


286 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


as  these  are  stuck  into  sockets  all  over  a 
plate-iron  floor,  at  just  such  a  distance 
apart  as  will  enable  a  wheat-sheaf  to  be 
comfortably  spiked  upon  each  tube.  The 
floor,  with  its  small  forest  of  tubes,  is  laid, 
air-tight,  upon  a  dwarf  foundation  wall  of 
about  two  bricks  high,  with  a  partition  down 
its  center.  The  hot-blast  is  then  blown  into 
the  closed  space  thus  formed  between  the 
ground  and  the  tube  floor,  and  rises  through 
the  tubes  into  the  sheaves  just  where  they 
are  wettest,  viz.,  at  the  band.  A  simple 
shunting  valve  directs  the  hot  air  first  under 
one  half  of  the  floor,  and  then  under  the 
other,  so  that,  while  the  sheaves  on  one  half 
are  drying,  the  others  may  be  lifted  off  and 
replaced  with  more  wet  sheaves." 

Fogginess  of  Malaysian  Ideas. — Mr.  D. 

D.  Daly,  who  has  been  engaged  in  surveys  of 
the  native  states  of  the  Malay  Peninsula,  says 
that  the  natives  show  an  almost  total  lack 
of  notions  of  definite  points,  and  have  only 
the  vaguest  ideas  with  reference  to  the  de- 
termination of  boundaries.  "  The  boundary 
of  our  state,"  said  one,  *'  extends  as  far  as 
the  meeting  of  the  fresh  water  with  the  salt 
water  of  the  river  "  ;  or,  "  If  you  wash  your 
bead  before  starting,  it  will  not  be  dry  be- 
fore you  reach  the  place  " ;  or,  "  The  bound- 
ary may  be  determined  on  the  river,  as  far 
as  the  sound  of  a  gun  may  be  heard  from 
this  hill."  The  shot  might  be  fired  from  a 
smooth-bore  or  from  a  twelve-pounder,  or 
a  gale  of  wind  might  carry  the  report  far- 
ther than  was  contemplated.  Such  ambigu- 
ous phrases  were  calculated  to  mislead,  but 
they  were  essentially  Malaysian  in  their 
generality. 

Electricity  from  Gas.— A  German  pro- 
fessor. Dr.  Von  Marx,  has  shown  that  more 
light  can  be  obtained  from  a  given  quantity 
of  gas  by  burning  it  in  a  gas-motor  which 
drives  a  dynamo-machine,  than  by  burning 
it  in  the  ordinary  burner.  His  estimate  is 
based  on  the  following  calculations :  A  gas- 
motor  will  consume  on  the  average  thirty- 
seven  cubic  feet  of  gas  per  hour  for  each 
horse-power.  An  argand  burner,  giving  a 
light  equal  to  eighteen  candles,  will  consume 
five  and  a  half  cubic  feet  per  hour,  so  that 
the  amount  of  light  obtained  by  burning 
thirty-seven  cubic  feet  of  gas  in  an  argand 


burner  will  equal  one  hundred  and  twenty 
candles.  In  the  Swan  system  of  electric 
lighting,  the  light  obtained  from  each  horse- 
power (or  by  burning  thirty-seven  cubic  feet 
of  gas)  is  stated  to  be  equal  to  one  hundred 
and  fifty  candles.  The  light  obtained  by 
the  Edison  lamp  he  gives  as  between  one 
and  two  hundred  candles.  Mr.  Lungren,  in 
his  paper  in  the  September  number  of  "  The 
Popular  Science  Monthly,"  estimates  that 
eight  lamps  can  be  maintained  for  each 
actual  horse-power,  and  if  we  make  each 
lamp  equal  eighteen  candles,  we  have  a  total 
of  one  hundred  and  forty-four  candles  per 
horse-power,  a  gain  of  twenty  per  cent  over 
the  use  of  an  argand  burner.  When  the 
Jablochkoff  candle  is  used,  the  results  are 
much  higher,  each  horse-power  yielding  a 
light  equivalent  to  four  hundred  and  seventy- 
two  candles ;  while  other  arc  systems  run 
four  or  five  times  as  high.  In  showing  that 
more  light  is  obtained  by  burning  thirty- 
seven  feet  of  gas  in  a  gas-motor  than  by 
burning  it  in  an  argand  burner.  Professor 
Von  Marx  does  not  prove  that  it  would  -  be 
economical  to  do  so,  for  the  margin,  taken 
as  twenty  per  cent,  is  not  sufficient  to  cover 
the  cost  of  converting  gas  into  electricity, 
so  to  speak.  That  the  latent  energy  pent 
up  in  illuminating  gas  should  produce  more 
light  when  converted  into  electricity,  not- 
withstanding the  loss  at  each  stage  of  the 
operation,  than  when  burned  directly,  is  ex- 
plained by  the  fact  that  the  larger  part  of 
the  energy  of  burning  gas  is  manifest  in  the 
form  of  heat,  the  lesser  part  in  the  form  of 
light.  In  electricity  we  have  just  the  oppo- 
site conditions. 

Transparent   Points   in   Leares.  —  M. 

Theodore  Bokorny  has  published  a  prize 
essay  in  the  University  of  Munich  on  the 
"Transparent  Points  in  Leaves."  These 
points,  which  are  quite  common  in  some 
plants,  mark  the  places  where  a  group  of 
cells,  containing  resin  or  an  ethereal  oil,  has 
been  collected.  One  of  the  most  familiar  in- 
stances of  this  kind  is  that  of  the  St.-John's- 
wort  {Hypericum  perforatum),  in  which  me- 
dieval superstition  imagined  a  connection 
between  the  lucid  spots  and  the  wounds  of 
Christ,  and  assigned  a  healing  virtue  to  the 
plant.  In  other  cases  the  points  in  ques- 
tion arc  caused  by  cells  with  a  slimy  coat- 


NOTES. 


287 


ing  which  produce  secretions  of  slime,  or  by 
the  presence  of  cells  containing  crystals  of 
oxalate  of  lime.  The  operation  of  these 
agencies  is  associated  with  the  action  of  se- 
cretory organs,  or  glandular  processes,  caus- 
ing a  tendency  of  particular  substances  to 
certain  points.  The  cells  forming  the  trans- 
parent points  probably  have  some  particu- 
lar significance  in  connection  with  the  life 
of  the  leaf,  for  their  occurrence  is  so  uni- 
form in  particular  species  that  they  become 
distinguishing  marks  by  which  the  species 
is  known.  So,  also,  the  presence  of  raphides- 
cells  (cells  containing  needle-shaped  crystals 
of  oxalate  of  lime)  is  constant  in  some  fam- 
ilies, as  in  the  Dioscoreas^  smilaxes,  and  Tac- 
cacece,  although  the  transparent  points  are 
rarely  observed  in  their  leaves.  Cells  con- 
taining resin  or  ethereal  oil  are  constant  in 
at  least  three  species  of  pepper,  and  in  all 
of  the  Monimiacece.  Interior  glands,  with 
brown  radiating  crystals  of  resinous  sub- 
stance, are  characteristic  of  the  Myrsiniece, 
and  are  wanting  in  only  a  few  species.  The 
anatomical  structure  which  leads  to  the  pro- 
duction of  these  points  evidently  has  some 
systematic  importance,  and  should  not  be 
overlooked  in  the  determination  of  the  char- 
acteristics of  the  different  groups. 


NOTES. 

In  Dr.  Pyburn's  article  on  "A  Home-made 
Telescope,"  in  the  last  (November)  number 
of  the  "  Monthly,"  page  86,  seven  lines  from 
the  bottom,  the  diameter  of  the  thirty-inch 
roller  is  given  as  "  two  and  five  eighths 
inches  " ;  it  should  read  "  one  and  five  eighths 
inch." 

Professor  Baird  announces  the  final 
solution  of  the  problem  of  the  culture  of 
oysters  from  artificially  impregnated  eggs. 
The  Government  station  at  Stockton,  Mary- 
land, had  in  September  last  many  millions 
of  young  oysters  three  quarters  of  an  inch 
in  diameter,  which  had  been  hatched  from 
eggs  artificially  impregnated  forty-six  days 
before.  Oysters  had  already  been  artifi- 
cially impregnated  by  Dr.  Brooks,  but  the 
practical  difficulty  existed  of  preventing  the 
young  oysters,  which  could  pass  through  the 
meshes  of  the  most  closely  woven  fabrics, 
from  escaping. 

Our  Educational  Bureau  is  circulating 
an  excellent  paper  from  an  address  given  to 
school-teachers  in  Switzerland  on  how  nat- 
ural science  should  be  taught.  The  object, 
it  says,  Bhould  be,  not  to  fill  the  mind  with 


facts,  but  to  bring  all  the  scholars,  includ- 
ing the  slowest  ones,  to  discover  and  observe 
facts  for  themselves.  Books  should  be  lit- 
tle used,  and  nothing  about  an  object  should 
be  taught  without  the  object  being  before 
the  class.  The  next  lessons  should  be  in 
describing  the  facts  observed,  with  the  help 
of  drawing,  if  possible.  Plants  should  be 
chosen  first,  then  animals  of  different  class- 
es, then  minerals,  with  observations  of  me- 
chanical and  afterward  of  chemical  effects 
upon  them.  But  the  bare  making  of  collec- 
tions should  not  be  particularly  encouraged. 

The  "United  States  Hay  Fever  Asso- 
ciation" held  its  tenth  annual  meeting  at 
Bethlehem,  New  Hampshire,  during  the  last 
week  in  August.  The  speeches  made  and 
the  experiences  related  indicate  that  the 
cause  and  specific  cure  for  the  uncomfort- 
able disease  in  question  are  yet  to  be  found. 
A  particular  preparation  which  has  been 
much  recommended  was,  by  nearly  general 
consent,  pronounced  of  no  value  as  a  reme- 
dy. Much  information  regarding  the  mal- 
ady had  been  gathered  by  Dr.  Geddings. 

The  lowering  of  the  freezing-point  of 
water  by  increased  pressure  is  frequently 
illustrated  by  the  experiment  of  Bottomley, 
which  consists  in  throwing  across  a  cake  of 
ice  a  wire  weighted  heavily  at  both  ends. 
The  wire  slowly  sinks  through  the  cake,  the 
ice  melting  beneath  it  and  freezing  above 
it.  Professor  Guthrie,  at  a  meeting  of  the 
Physical  Society  in  London,  has  stated  his 
belief  that  the  wire  conducts  heat  to  the  ice 
from  the  atmosphere,  and  that  therefore 
the  experiment  does  not  illustrate  the  fact 
above  mentioned.  A  silk  cord  weighted  to 
the  same  amount  as  a  wire  will  not  cut 
through  a  block  of  ice. 

The  death  is  recorded  of  Hermann  Miil- 
ler,  of  Lippstadt,  one  of  the  most  industri- 
ous and  distinguished  scientific  investigators 
of  the  day.  His  specialty  was  the  fertiliza- 
tion of  flowers  by  insects,  in  which  subject 
he  was  regarded  by  naturalists  as  the  high- 
est authority.  He  was  the  author  of  two 
books  on  the  subject,  "  Die  Bef  ruchtung  der 
Blumen  durch  Insecten  "  ("  The  Fertilization 
of  Flowers  by  Insects  "),  recently  translated 
into  English,  and  "  Alpenblumen,  ihre  Be- 
fruchtung  durch  Insecten"  ("Alpine  Flowers, 
their  Fertilization  by  Insects  ") ;  of  an  article 
in  Schenk's  "  Ilandbuch  der  Botanie,"  and  of 
frequent  contributions  to  the  German  peri- 
odical "  Kosmos." 

Ernest  Ingersoll  observes,  in  the 
"American  Naturalist,"  that  if  we  judge  by 
the  standard  of  their  possessing  a  conven- 
ient currency,  the  American  Indians  must  be 
ranked  high  among  barbarians  in  point  of 
advance  toward  civilization.  They  had  in 
their  wampum  a  regular  money  of  recog- 
nized value.    It  marked  an  advance  upon 


288 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


the  African  cowry,  for,  while  the  latter  was 
simply  a  shell  with  a  hole  in  it,  wampum 
was  a  manufactured  article,  made  with  a 
degree  of  patient  labor  which  was  included 
in  estimating  the  value  given  to  it.  That 
to  which  the  most  value  was  attached  was 
made  from  the  dark  part  of  clam-shells. 
An  inferior  "  coinage  "  was  made  from  the 
white  parts  of  the  shells,  and  from  peri- 
winkle-shells. The  value  of  wampum  was 
almost  as  well  defined  as  that  of  our  own 
money,  and  regular  tests  were  in  use  for 
judging  of  it.  Shell-money  was  also  used 
by  the  Indians  of  the  Pacific  slope;  and 
Mr.  Ingersoll  describes  three  kinds  of  it,  all 
somewhat  different  from  genuine  wampum. 

Mr.  Ernest  Hart,  Chairman  of  the  Lon- 
don Smoke  Abatement  Institute,  remarks 
that  at  the  recent  exhibition  by  that  society 
improvements  in  the  construction  of  open 
fire-places  were  shown  by  which  common 
bituminous  coal  can  be  consumed  in  a  prac- 
tically smokeless  manner.  Simple  methods 
of  underfeeding  were  exhibited  which  proved 
to  be  productive  of  admirable  results  both 
in  respect  to  economy  of  fuel  and  reduction 
of  smoke  from  ordinary  coal.  Mr.  Hart 
recommends  as  an  elementary  measure  of 
economy  the  use  of  equal  quantities  of  coke 
and  coal  mixed.  He  has  great  expectations 
of  the  realization  of  Dr.  Siemens's  projects 
for  using  gas  as  a  heating  agent. 

The  French  Academy  of  Sciences  has 
had  a  discussion  about  busts.  It  was  in- 
vited to  witness  the  progress  of  the  bust 
of  Leverrier,  and  express  an  opinion  as  to 
the  quality  of  the  resemblance  and  the 
work.  M.  Bertrand  took  the  opportunity 
to  speak  of  the  scandalous  badness  of  some 
of  the  busts  in  the  ball  of  the  Academy, 
particularly  of  those  of  Delaunay  and  Claude 
Bernard,  which,  he  said,  were  mere  carica- 
tures, and  to  advise  that  they  be  turned  out 
at  once ;  and  M.  Dumas  remarked  that  sev- 
eral of  the  busts  were  in  reality  only  fit  to 
be  used  for  making  carbonic  acid. 

Mr.  Cromwell  Fleetwood  Varlet,  F. 
R.  S.,  an  English  engineer  distinguished  for 
his  work  in  connection  Mith  electric  tele- 
graphs, died  September  2d.  He  devised  a 
method  of  locating  distant  faults  in  land 
telegraphic  wires,  and  was  associated  with 
other  engineers  in  devising  the  first  really 
successful  Atlantic  cable. 

Thb  curious  question  has  been  raised  in 
England  whether  the  recent  decline  in  the 
death-rate  has  actually  added  to  the  average 
length  of  useful  life,  or  whether  its  bene- 
fits have  not  chiefly  been  spent  in  relatively 
unimportant  prolongations  of  the  lives  of 
children  and  of  the  aged.  It  has  been  an- 
swered by  Mr.  Noel  A.  Humphreys,  after  a 
new  examination  of  the  returns  of  mor- 
tality,  and  the  compilation  of  new  life-tables. 


I  He  finds  that  the  average  expectation  of 
j  life  of  males  at  birth  has  been  raised  from 

3991  years,  as  it  was  fixed  in  Dr.  Farr's 
I  tables,  to  41-92  years  by  the  new  tables,  or 

has  been  increased  by  two  years,  or  five  per 
j  cent ;  and  that  the  expectation  of  females 
]  has  been  raised  from  40*86  years  to  43-56 

years,  or  by  2-70  years,  or  nearly  7  per  cent. 

Charles  F.  Parkes,  Curator  of  the  Acad- 
emy of  Natural  Sciences  of  Philadelphia, 
died  September  7th,  after  a  long  illness.  He 
had  considerable  distinction  as  one  of  the 
leading  botanists  of  America,  and  had  paid 
special  attention  to  the  botany  of  New  Jer- 
sey. 

Professor  C.  V.  Riley,  in  a  paper  read 
at  the  American  Association  recommends 
emulsions  of  petroleum  to  be  applied  to 
plants  as  insecticides.  A  soap  emulsion  of 
twenty  parts  of  scraped  bar-soap,  ten  parts 
of  water,  thirty  parts  of  kerosene,  and  one 
part  of  fir-balsam,  is  stable  enough  for  all 
practical  purposes,  but  milk  emulsions  are 
better.  One  or  two  parts  of  refined  kero- 
sene to  one  part  of  sour  milk  is  quite  satis- 
factory. It  must  be  churned  till  a  butter 
is  formed,  which  is  thoroughly  stable,  and 
will  keep  indefinitely  in  closed  vessels,  and 
may  be  diluted  at  pleasure  with  water  when 
needed  for  use.  An  emulsion  of  gum  from 
the  root  of  Zamia  inicgrifolia^  of  Florida, 
has  proved  useful.  The  diluted  emulsion, 
of  strength  varying  according  to  the  plants 
and  insects  to  which  it  is  applied,  should 
be  finely  spraved  upon  the  insects  to  be 
killed. 

Science  has  furnished  another  victim  to 
African  sickness  in  the  person  of  Mr.  Will- 
iam Alexander  Forbes,  Prosector  to  the 
Zoological  Society  of  London,  whose  death 
on  the  Niger  River  has  been  reported.  He 
made  an  excursion  to  the  forests  of  Pernam- 
buco,  Brazil,  in  1880,  afterward  passed  some 
time  in  the  United  States,  and  started  from 
England  for  Africa  and  the  eastern  tropics, 
in  July,  1882.  His  published  works  consist 
chiefly  of  about  sixty  papers  in  the  "  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  Zoological  Society  "  and  the 
"Ibis." 

M.  Engelman  has  been  studying  the  man- 
ner in  which  the  movements  of  the  lower 
organisms  are  influenced  by  light.  He  finds 
that  light  may  act  in  three  ways :  1.  Direct- 
ly, by  a  modification  of  the  exchanges  of 
gases  ;  2.  By  modifications  of  the  sensation 
of  respiratory  necessities,  and,  3.  By  means 
of  a  specific  special  process  corresponding 
probably  in  some  sort  to  our  luminous  per- 
ception. 

Mr.  Thomas  Plant,  a  life  long  student 
of  meteorology,  died  in  Birmingham,  Eng- 
land, about  the  Ist  of  September.  His  regu- 
lar records  of  the  weather  and  associated 
phenomena  are  complete  for  forty-six  years. 


firiENNE  GEOFFROY  SAINT-HILAIRE. 


THE 

POPULAR    SOIENOE 
MONTHLY. 


JANUARY,  1884 


THE  CLASSICAL  QUESTIOiT  m  GEmiANY. 

By  EDMUND  J.  JAMES,  Ph.  D., 

PBOFESSOB   OF  FINANCE   AND  ADillNISTBATION  IN  THE   UNIVEESITY   OF  PENNSYLVANIA. 

THE  struggle  between  the  adherents  of  the  old  classical  curriculum 
and  the  representatives  of  modern  culture  has  nowhere  been  car- 
ried on  with  more  bitterness  than  in  Germany.  In  no  other  land  have 
the  respective  antagonists  shown  more  narrowness  and  bigotry,  or  been 
less  inclined  to  allow  their  opponents  the  possession  of  common  sense 
or  pure  motives. 

The  representatives  of  the  classics,  intrenched  behind  a  strong  wall 
of  tradition  and  usage,  were  from  the  first  in  the  enjoyment  of  all  the 
honors  and  privileges.  They  were  supported  by  the  mighty  power 
of  a  public  sentiment  which  had  been  begotten  at  a  time  when  the 
classics  and  mathematics  formed  the  only  subjects  worthy  of  serious 
study,  and  had  been  nourished  by  a  long  line  of  illustrious  men  whose 
only  school-education  had  been  a  training  in  Latin,  Greek,  and  geom- 
etry. They  were  upheld  by  the  powerful  force  of  a  government 
which  made  the  acquisition  of  such  an  education  the  condition  of  all  its 
favors.  They  looked  down,  therefore,  naturally  enough,  with  a  certain 
contempt  and  loathing  upon  those  rude  materialists  who  insisted  that 
there  was  something  in  the  modern  world  worthy  of  serious  study. 
The  other  party,  on  the  contrary,  driven  to  extremes  by  the  bigotry 
and  obstinacy  of  their  opponents,  were  compelled  to  make  war  to  the 
death,  by  denying  all  virtue  of  any  sort  to  a  classical  training.  They 
insisted  on  purely  modern  subjects  as  opposed  to  classics,  on  a  multi- 
plicity of  branches  in  preference  to  a  few,  on  technical  education  for 
particular  callings  instead  of  a  liberal  training  for  good  living. 

But  in  the  course  of  events  we  find  both  parties  in  that  country 
receding  from  their  extreme  positions  and  gradually  approaching  each 

VOL.  XXIV. — 19 


290 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


other.  "We  find  the  "  classicists  "  agreeing  that  the  study  of  modem 
languages  may  also  be  made  valuable  ;  that  modem  literature  is  adorned 
with  names  which  rival  in  luster  the  greatest  of  the  Greek  or  Roman. 
They  give  up  slowly  more  and  more  of  that  valuable  time  formerly 
spent  in  conniDg  Greek  and  Latin  grammars,  or  in  learning  to  write 
Greek  and  Latin  verses,  or  to  talk  a  jargon  which  they  dignify  by  the 
name  of  classical  Latin,  to  the  study  of  French,  Italian,  Spanish,  Ger- 
man, and  English.  They  allow  the  elements  of  the  natural  sciences, 
one  after  another,  to  creep  in,  and  even  grant  some  hours  a  week  to 
modern  history.  They  still  devote  the  most  of  their  attention,  how- 
ever, to  Latin  and  Greek,  and  justify  their  course  by  the  claim  that  the 
shortest  road  to  modem  literature  is  through  Athens  and  Rome  ;  that 
modern  languages  are  so  intimately  connected  with  the  classics  that, 
after  mastering  the  latter,  the  acquisition  of  French,  English,  Italian, 
and  Spanish,  is  a  matter  for  leisure  hours,  a  mere  after-dinner  amuse- 
ment ;  that  the  nomenclature  of  the  modern  sciences  is  so  largely 
Greek  that  time  would  be  saved  in  learning  them  by  first  mastering 
Homer,  Xenophon,  and  Plato  ;  that  modem  history  is  only  the  second 
chapter  of  the  world's  history,  and  can  be  rightly  understood  only 
after  learning  what  goes  before. 

Their  most  thoughtful  opponents  have  also  given  up  many  of  the 
claims  advanced  by  their  prototypes.  They  allow  that  there  is  a  vast 
difference  between  knowledge  and  power  ;  that  a  mass  of  undigested 
facts  in  the  memory  is  as  depressing  for  the  mind  as  a  mass  of  undi- 
gested food  in  the  'stomach  is  for  the  brain.  They,  or  at  least  the 
most  advanced  among  them,  allow  that  the  old  humanists  followed 
sound  pedagogical  principles  in  selecting  but  few  subjects,  and  in 
lingering  over  them  long  enough  to  secure  that  mental  power  and 
grasp  which  come  from  the  detailed  and  long-continued  study  of 
any  great  branch  of  human  knowledge.  They  grant  that  the  second- 
ary schools  should  give  a  liberal  education,  in  the  sense  of  an  education 
which  shall  prepare  the  students,  not  for  the  particular  calling  which 
they  may  afterward  take  up,  but  for  right  and  intelligent  living,  in 
any  sphere  to  which  circumstances  may  call  them.  They  maintain, 
however,  that  for  the  purposes  of  such  an  education  modern  subjects 
are  as  good  as  or  better  than  ancient ;  that  French  and  English,  if 
properly  taught,  can  afford,  so  far  as  is  desirable,  the  same  kind  of 
mental  discipline  as  that  obtained  from  Latin  and  Greek  ;  that  mod- 
ern literature  embraces  classics  as  worthy  of  detailed  and  continuous 
study  as  ancient  literature  ;  that  the  proper  study  of  the  modern  sci- 
ences develops  certain  faculties  with  a  completeness  of  which  no  other 
instrument  is  capable  ;  that  modern  history  offers  subjects  as  worthy 
of  labor,  as  fruitful  in  results,  as  anything  which  ancient  times  can 
afford. 

The  objective  points  of  the  contest  have  also  changed  in  the  course 
of  time.    The  old  philanthropinists  demanded  the  total  abolition  of  all 


THE   CLASSICAL    QUESTION  IN  GERMANY.       291 

classical  study  as  a  waste  of  time.  The  classical  party  of  that  period 
resisted  the  introduction  of  any  studies  but  Latin,  Greek,  and  mathe- 
matics. The  "  modernists  "  of  to-day  demand  the  abolition  of  Greek 
as  a  required  study  in  a  liberal  course.  Many  of  them,  indeed,  would 
like  to  send  Latin  the  same  road.  The  modern  "  classicists  "  are  on 
the  defensive,  and  constantly  grant  more  concessions,  or  see  them 
wrested  from  them. 

This  discussion,  which  in  one  form  or  another  has  appeared  in  every 
civilized  nation,  has  been  everywhere  marked  by  bitterness  and  pre- 
judice, and  has  resulted  in  a  slowly-growing  victory  for  modern  cul- 
ture. The  question  has  attracted  renewed  and  wide  attention  in  this 
country  of  late,  owing  to  Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams's  attack  upon 
the  requisition  of  Greek  as  a  part  of  the  course  in  Harvard  College. 
The  old  weapons  on  both  sides  have  been  again  brought  out  and  bur- 
nished, and  made  to  do  valiant  service  in  the  good  cause.  The  result 
of  the  criticism  and  counter-criticism  has  been  to  demonstrate  pretty 
clearly  that,  however  we  may  feel  about  it,  the  fact  is,  that  the  cause  of 
the  "  modernists  "  is  gaining  ground.  President  Porter,  in  a  rejoinder 
to  Mr.  Adams,  in  the  "Princeton  Review"  for  September  last,  re- 
marks, in  substance,  that  the  proposition  to  drop  Greek  from  the  list 
of  required  studies  was  somewhat  "  hesitatingly  urged  many  years  ago 
by  the  adventurous  and  sanguine  President  of  Harvard  College."  If 
the  writer  is  not  greatly  mistaken.  President  Eliot  did  not  only  urge 
it  years  ago,  but  has  vigorously  and  persistently  urged  it  ever  since, 
and  it  is  probably  only  a  question  of  time  when  his  policy  will  be 
adopted,  whether  urged  by  him  or  by  some  one  else. 

The  discussion  as  to  the  relative  merits  of  the  classics  and  other 
subjects,  as  constituents  of  a  liberal  course  of  study,  has  always  been 
marked  by  a  great  deference  to  authority.  The  assertions  of  eminent 
men,  as  to  the  advantage  or  disadvantage  to  them  of  the  classical 
course  which  they  pursued  while  young,  always  play  a  prominent 
part.  The  testimony  of  eminent  educators,  as  to  their  observation  of 
the  effect  that  a  study  of  the  classics  seemed  to  have  on  the  minds 
and  hearts  of  their  pupils,  is  quoted  and  requoted.  The  tradition 
and  usages  of  hundreds  of  years  are  strongly  appealed  to  in  order  to 
show  the  superiority  of  the  one  system  over  the  other. 

The  present  discussion  in  our  American  press  has  been  no  excep- 
tion to  the  rule.  But,  in  addition  to  the  regular  authorities  which  are 
quoted  on  all  occasions,  a  new  witness  has  been  appealed  to  in  this 
controversy,  whose  testimony  on  the  question  is  regarded  by  many  as 
decisive  and  final.  This  is  the  experience  of  the  Germans,  embodied 
in  what  is  known  as  the  "  Berlin  Report,"  and  which  has  been  widely 
urged  as  an  authoritative  answer  to  Mr.  Adams's  argument.  It  seems 
to  be  supposed  that  this  thorough-going  people  have  entered  into  the 
subject  experimentally  and  on  an  extensive  scale,  with  a  view  of  set- 
tling it  effectually.     They  have  made,  it  is  asserted,  a  fair  trial  of 


292  TEE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTELY. 

these  two  systems  of  education,  and,  having  weighed  both  in  the  "bal- 
ance, they  have  found  the  modem  system  wanting  to  such  a  degree 
that  they  have  concluded  to  discard  it  forever.  There  seems  to  be 
wide-spread  misconception  about  this  German  experiment,  and*  the 
conclusions  drawn  from  it  are  so  unwarrantable  that  a  review  of  the 
main  features  of  the  case  may  be  useful  in  correcting  erroneous  im- 
pressions. 

As  is  well  known,  there  are  two  classes  of  schools  in  Germany 
which  prepare  boys  for  the  university — the  Gymnasien  (gymnasia) 
and  the  Eealschulen  (real  schools).  The  former  are  the  classical 
schools,  whose  curriculum  consists  in  the  main  of  Latin,  Greek,  and 
mathematics,  and  graduation  from  which  confers  the  right  to  enter 
any  department  of  the  university.  The  real  schools  are  institutions 
whose  course  of  study  embraces  less  Latin  than  the  former,  and  no 
Greek,  the  place  of  the  latter  being  represented  partly  by  more  of 
the  modem  languages  and  partly  by  natural  science.  The  gymnasia 
are  old  schools,  being  the  legitimate  successors  of  the  schools  which 
dated  from  the  revival  of  letters.  The  real  schools  are  products  of 
the  modern  spirit,  and,  although  dating  from  about  1740,  they  did 
not  acquire  a  recognized  standing  until  late  in  this  century.  The 
earliest  of  these  schools  were  the  answer  to  the  demand  for  "prac- 
tical "  education  in  the  narrowest  sense  of  that  term.  It  was  not 
until  1859  that  the  Government  of  Prussia  fully  recognized  them. 
In  that  year,  the  schools  passing  under  that  name  were  classified,  ac- 
cording to  length  of  course,  into  first,  second,  and  third  class.  The 
course  of  the  first  class  was  made  of  the  same  length  as  that  of  the 
gymnasium — that  of  the  other  classes  was  shorter.  From  that  year 
the  friends  of  the  real  schools  demanded  that  graduates  of  schools 
of  the  first  class  should  be  admitted  to  the  universities.  Their  claims 
excited  at  first  only  a  smile  of  derision,  but  so  vigorously  did  they 
push  matters  that  the  Government,  in  1869,  was  persuaded  to  take  the 
first  move  in  the  case  by  asking  the  faculties  of  the  various  Prussian 
universities  for  their  opinions  on  the  subject.  This  called  out  a  series 
of  reports  which  were  very  strong  against  admission.  It  is  curious 
that  in  this  series  of  reports  language  was  used  from  which  we  might 
infer  that  the  universities  had  already  tried  the  experiment  ;  as  when 
it  is  asserted  in  one  report  that  the  gymnasium  students  soon  overtake 
real-school  students  even  in  natural  science — that  at  a  time  when  real- 
school  graduates  were  not  admitted  to  the  universities.  The  Gov- 
ernment decided,  however,  to  admit  the  real-school  students  to  certain 
branches,  which  it  did  by  the  order  of  December  7,  1870. 

Until  1871,  then,  the  graduates  of  real  schools  were  not  admitted 
to  any  department  of  the  universities  in  Prussia  as  candidates  for  a 
degree.  In  that  year  they  were  allowed  to  matriculate  in  the  univer- 
sity for  the  study  of  modern  languages,  mathematics,  and  natural  sci- 
ence.    After  an  experience  of  about  eight  years,  on  the  18th  of  De- 


THE   CLASSICAL    QUESTION  IN  GERMANY.       293 

cember,  1879,  Professor  Droysen,  of  the  University  of  Berlin,  moved 
that  the  faculty  of  that  institution  request  the  Government  to  recon- 
sider its  policy  in  regard  to  the  admission  of  real-school  students  to 
the  philosophical  faculty.  After  some  discussion,  Professor  Hiibner, 
the  dean  of  the  faculty,  was  requested  to  ask  the  various  professors 
for  statements  of  their  experience  with  the  two  classes  of  students. 
These  statements  were  laid  before  the  faculty,  and  the  most  important 
being  incorporated  in  the  form  of  a  report,  were  sent  in,  March,  1880, 
to  the  Government,  with  the  petition  that  the  latter  would  reconsider 
the  whole  matter — ^the  real  object  of  the  report  being  to  move  the 
Government  to  rescind  the  order  of  December  7,  1870.  These  were 
not  the  first  statements  on  the  question,  for  the  Minister  of  Public  In- 
struction had  already,  a  short  time  before,  made  inquiries  of  many 
leading  professors  in  the  various  universities  as  to  their  experience  in 
the  matter  since  1871.  The  most  of  them  held  views  similar  to  those 
of  the  Berlin  professors.  The  set  of  statements,  with  the  petition 
above  referred  to,  constitutes  the  "  Berlin  Report,"  and,  on  account  of 
its  formal  and  authoritative  character,  has  excited  world-wide  atten- 
tion and  discussion. 

These  reports  are  now  quoted  by  many  as  a  final  settlement  of  the 
much-disputed  question  between  the  "  classicists "  and  the  "  modern- 
ists," and  by  many  more  as  expressing  the  judgment  of  educated 
Germany,  at  least,  on  the  subject.  Thus,  President  Porter,  in  the 
article  above  mentioned  says  :  "The  question  of  the  superiority  of 
a  classical  to  a  modern  training  has  of  late  been  subjected  to  a  practi- 
cal trial  on  an  extensive  scale,  by  a  comparison  of  the  results  of  the 
gymnasial  curriculum  and  that  of  the  Mealschule,  as  a  preparation 
for  a  university  course  and  indirectly  for  civil  administration.  In 
most  of  the  German  states — in  Prussia  pre-eminently — an  attendance 
upon  the  university  course,  with  a  certificate  of  fidelity  and  a  suc- 
cession of  satisfactory  examinations,  had  been  the  essential  prerequi- 
sites to  many  of  the  most  desirable  ofiicial  positions  in  civil  life.  To 
admission  to  all  the  privileges  of  the  university  an  attendance  upon 
the  gymnasium  with  the  classical  curriculum  was  an  essential  prerequi- 
site, carrying  with  it  the  consequence  that  to  all  the  higher  posts  of 
civil  life  a  course  of  classical  study,  including  Greek  and  Latin,  had  till 
recently  been  a  conditio  sine  qua  non.  The  Healschulen,  which  gave 
a  shorter  and  a  more  scientific  and  popular  course,  in  which  Greek  was 
not  included,  and  the  Latin  was  scanty,  furnish  an  example  of  a  mod- 
ernist education.  It  was  very  natural  that  this  condition  of  things 
should  be  felt  to  be  inequitable  by  the  teachers  and  pupils  of  these 
schools,  and  that  an  earnest  movement  should  be  made  to  set  it  aside. 
In  several  of  the  states  it  was  successful.  In  Prussia,  against  strong 
conviction  to  the  contrary,  it  was  allowed  for  a  term  of  years  by  way 
of  experiment,  that  the  *  modernists '  (the  Abiturienten  der  Healschideri) 
should  enter  the  university  and  enjoy  all  its  privileges.     When  this 


294  ^^^  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

term  had  expired,  elaborate  reports  were  called  for  from  the  leading 
instructors  in  all  the  universities,  of  their  judgment  as  to  the  proved 
capacity  and  success  of  the  students  who  had  attended  upon  their 
classes,  from  each  of  the  two  preparatory  institutions  with  their  sepa- 
rate curricula.  With  but  few  exceptions  the  reports  were  decidedly 
in  favor  of  the  classical  curriculum  as  giving  a  better  training  even 
to  the  students  of  the  mathematical  and  physical  sciences." 

We  wish  to  call  attention  here  to  the  fact  that  President  Por- 
ter's first  sentence,  though  evidently  without  any  intention  on  his  part, 
is  misleading.  He  says  that  "the  question  of  the  superiority  of  a 
classical  to  a  modern  training  has  of  late  been  subjected  to  a  prac- 
tical trial."  Not  at  all ;  but  simply  the  question  of  the  relative  supe- 
riority of  the  graduates  of  the  German  gymnasia  and  real  schools, 
as  they  exist  to-day  in  Germany,  as  indeed  President  Porter  himself 
states  in  the  next  to  the  last  sentence  quoted  above.  This  last  is  a 
very  different  question,  indeed,  from  the  former.  The  one  is,  so  to 
speak,  concrete  ;  the  other,  abstract.  The  professors  were  not  asked 
for  their  opinions  as  to  whether  a  classical  is  better  than  a  modern 
training,  but  is  the  gymnasiast,  as  you  know  him  from  the  existing 
schools,  better  fitted  for  your  work  than  the  real  scholar  who  during 
the  last  eight  years  has  attended  the  university  ? 

If  it  should  appear  upon  examination  that  the  curricula  of  the 
real  schools  are  not  what  is  demanded  by  the  most  thoughtful  "  mod- 
ernists," that  the  teachers  are  not,  as  a  class,  equal  to  those  in  the 
gymnasia,  that  the  pupils  are,  as  a  whole,  inferior  in  natural  ability, 
that  the  real  schools  are  not  fostered  by  the  Government  to  the  same 
extent  as  the  classical  schools,  it  will  be  evident  to  every  one  that  the 
significance  of  the  Berlin  report  for  the  real  question  at  issue — viz., 
classics  at  their  best  vs.  modern  subjects  at  their  best  on  an  equal  foot- 
ing in  every  respect — ^becomes  very  slight. 

As  appears  from  what  we  have  said  above.  President  Porter  is 
mistaken  when  he  says  that  the  graduates  of  the  real  schools  were  ad- 
mitted to  all  the  privileges  of  the  university.  They  were  only  admit- 
ted to  certain  branches  in  one  faculty,  viz.,  the  philosophical  faculty. 
They  were  not,  however,  admitted  for  a  definite  number  of  years,  as 
President  Porter  states,  but  for  an  indefinite  period.  The  ministerial 
regulation  admitting  them  says  nothing  whatever  of  any  number  of 
years  for  which  it  is  valid.  It  holds  good  until  supplanted  by  one 
prohibiting  the  admission  of  real-school  students,  and  there  is  no  sign 
that  such  a  regulation  will  ever  be  made. 

To  begin  with,  then,  all  this  quoting  of  the  Berlin  and  similar 
reports  in  favor  of  retaining  Greek  as  a  required  study  in  our  liberal 
curricula  is  aside  from  the  point,  since  that  report  was  made  on  a  very 
different  subject.  The  attempt  to  apply  conclusions  on  concrete  ques- 
tions in  one  country  to  concrete  questions  in  another  is  at  all  times  a 
misleading  and  often  a  dangerous  procedure. 


THE   CLASSICAL    QUESTION  IN  GERMANY,       295 

Now  as  to  the  report  itself,  it  may  fairly  be  objected  by  the  real- 
school  men  that  the  real  schools  have  not  had  a  fair  trial,  that  the  pe- 
riod of  probation  has  been  so  brief  that  any  report  made  now,  whether 
favorable  or  unfavorable,  must  be  regarded  as  premature  and  at  best 
merely  provisional.  The  real  schools  of  the  first  class  are  not  yet 
twenty-five  years  old.  The  regulation  admitting  their  graduates  to 
partial  university  privileges  bears  date,  as  said  above,  of  December  7, 
1870.  In  less  than  ten  years  they  were  expected  to  win  a  place  by  the 
side  of  their  rivals,  which  even  their  bitter  opponents  (for  the  profess- 
ors who  made  the  reports  were  all  graduates  of  the  gymnasia)  should 
acknowledge  to  be  an  equal  one,  and  if  they  should  not  succeed  in  do- 
ing this  they  were  to  be  condemned  as  unable  to  fit  boys  properly  for 
the  university.  Further,  they  were  expected  to  do  this  with  almost 
no  aid  from  the  Government,  while  their  rivals  were  largely  supported 
by  contributions  from  the  state.  How  just  this  complaint  is  may  be 
seen  from  the  reports  of  government  aid  accorded  in  Prussia  to  these 
two  classes  of  schools.  In  the  year  1869  the  Government  contributed 
714,148  thalers  out  of  a  total  expenditure  of  2,851,253  thalers  for  gym- 
nasia ;  and  in  1874,  1,319,990  thalers  out  of  a  total  of  4,385,940  tha- 
lers for  the  same  purpose.  In  the  former  year  the  real  schools  of  the 
first  class  cost  666,368  thalers,  of  which  the  Government  contributed 
15,558  thalers.  In  the  latter  year  the  respective  sums  stood  1,251,921 
and  97,421  thalers.  It  thus  appears  that  the  Government  paid  in  1869 
nearly  forty-six  times  as  much  toward  supporting  gymnasia  as  it  did 
toward  supporting  real  schools,  and  in  1874  over  thirteen  times  as  much. 
In  1869  it  paid  over  twenty-five  per  cent  of  the  total  expense  of  all 
gymnasia,  and  less  than  three  per  cent  of  that  of  the  real  schools  ;  in  1874 
the  respective  rates  stood  over  thirty  per  cent  and  less  than  eight  per 
cent.  It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  Government  has  proceeded  on  the 
plan  of  allowing  the  real  schools  to  pay  their  own  way.  The  wonder 
is,  that  they  have  such  good  results  to  show  for  their  work  under  such 
circumstances.  It  should  be  also  considered  in  this  connection  that 
the  proper  equipment  of  a  real  school,  with  first-class  apparatus,  etc., 
costs  much  more  than  that  of  a  gymnasium.  Another  fact  should 
be  borne  in  mind,  that  owing  to  this  lack  of  support  the  number  of  such 
schools  is  much  smaller  than  that  of  the  gymnasia,  and  they  have  con- 
sequently not  had  so  extensive  a  field  to  draw  from  as  the  latter.  An- 
other important  point  must  be  mentioned  in  this  connection.  Up  to 
1871  the  graduates  of  the  real  school  passed  immediately  into  active 
life  instead  of  attending  a  higher  institution  of  learning.  The  matter 
and  methods  of  the  school  had,  therefore,  exclusive  reference  to  that 
fact,  and  under  the  new  system  they  must  have  time  to  modify  and 
adapt  themselves  to  the  altered  circumstances.  Any  practical  teacher 
will  appreciate  the  importance  of  this  consideration.  These  are  some 
of  the  objections  which  the  defenders  of  the  real  schools  have  to  urge 
against  any  unfavorable  report  made  at  this  stage  of  the  work.   Against 


296  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

this  particular  series  of  reports,  made  in  the  manner  in  which  they 
were,  they  have  still  more  serious  objections,  which  we  shall  notice 
later. 

Turning  aside  now  to  another  phase  of  the  subject,  let  us  see 
whether  any  influences  have  been  at  work  which  tend  to  give  the  gym- 
nasia a  better  class  of  material  to  work  with.  If  the  boys  who  enter 
the  gymnasia  are  decidedly  superior  in  ability  to  those  entering  the 
real  schools,  we  shall  have  a  partial  explanation  of  the  better  results 
achieved  by  the  former. 

The  first  point  to  be  mentioned  in  this  connection  is  that  the  tra- 
ditions of  Germany  are  classical.  For  decades  and  decades  nearly 
every  prominent  man  in  law,  medicine,  theology,  teaching,  and  (so  far 
as  nobility  has  not  been  accepted  as  a  substitute  for  education)  in  the 
civil  and  military  service  of  the  country,  has  enjoyed  the  benefits  of  a 
classical  education,  if  for  no  other  reasons,  simply  because  he  was  obliged 
to  "enjoy"  them  as  a  condition  of  entering  these  careers.  "We  all 
know  how  easily  we  associate  two  things  which  we  always  see  together, 
in  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect.  And  so  this  eminence  and  culture 
which,  owing  largely  to  the  artificial  pressure  we  have  mentioned, 
have  for  years  and  years  in  Germany  been  found  in  connection  with  a 
more  or  less  complete  knowledge  of  Latin  and  Greek,  have  come  to  be 
associated  with  the  latter  as  effect  from  a  cause.  The  sign  has  come 
to  be  largely  accepted  in  place  of  the  thing  signified.  It  can  not  have 
escaped  the  observation  of  any  reflective  person  who  has  ever  lived  in 
Germany,  that  there  is  a  very  wide  social  chasm  in  that  country 
between  the  so-called  liberally  educated  {die  Studirten)  and  those  who 
have  not  pursued  such  courses.  There  is,  so  to  speak,  an  educational 
hierarchy,  and  the  only  path  to  it  lies  through  the  gymnasium.  As  in 
all  hierarchies,  so  in  this,  there  is  an  immense  amount  of  Pharisaism, 
a  touch-me-not  and  a  come-not-near-with-unholy-hands  kind  of  spirit 
which  looks  down  on  everything  not  of  its  type  as  something  infinitely 
lower.  The  Studirter  looks  down,  not  only  on  the  merchant  or  the 
artisan,  but  also  upon  the  Vblksschullelirer  (common-school  teacher) 
with  a  calm  sense  of  superiority  and  a  provoking  self-conceit — no 
matter  how  successful  the  career  of  the  latter  may  have  been.  A 
small  professor  in  a  small  university,  of  small  ability  and  still  less  suc- 
cess, commiserates  the  most  successful  common-school  teacher  because 
he  has  not  studied  Latin  and  Greek  ;  and  we  must  add  that  the  latter 
envies  the  former,  taking  the  sign  (Latin  and  Greek)  for  the  thing  sig- 
nified (culture).  No  Studirter  thinks  of  seriously  discussing  any  ques- 
tion with  a  Non-studirter^  but  disposes  of  all  diflScult  objections  by 
the  crushing  answer  that  his  opponent  is  an  imgebildeter  Mensch, 

The  artisan  or  merchant  sees  that  no  amount  of  culture  derived  from 
the  study  of  modern  subjects,  or  in  the  pursuit  of  his  calling,  or  from 
the  vigorous  contact  with  active  life,  can  secure  for  him  a  social  recog- 
nition or  equality  with  the  Gelehrter ;  the  common-school  teacher  sees 


THE   CLASSICAL    QUESTION  IN  GERMANY.       297 

that  no  career  of  public  service  in  his  sphere,  however  useful  or  suc- 
cessful, can  secure  entrance  for  him  into  that  charmed  circle  of  the 
Gelehrtenthum,  and  silently  resolves  that  his  boy  must  have  a  different 
chance  from  that  which  he  has  had.  Of  the  force  which  this  tradi- 
tional influence  exerts  no  one  can  form  an  adequate  idea  who  has  not 
had  the  opportunity  of  associating  intimately  with  the  various  classes 
of  the  people  ;  for,  although  a  similar  spirit  may  be  met  in  America, 
it  is  of  such  small  influence  as  hardly  to  be  discernible. 

A  classical  education  has,  then,  come  to  be  the  proper  thing  in 
Germany  for  every  aspiring  man.  It  is  a  stamp  of  gentility,  an  ab- 
solute essential  to  high  social  position  and  influence.  Every  parent 
desires  to  give  it  to  his  boy,  if  for  no  other  reason,  simply  on  account 
of  this  different  social  position  which  it  confers  upon  him.  To  give 
him  this  education  he  must  send  him  to  the  gymnasium. 

But  there  is  another  and  still  more  powerful  influence  at  work 
to  secure  the  attendance  at  the  classical  schools.  We  have  already 
corrected  President  Porter's  statement  that  the  graduates  of  the  real 
schools  are  admitted  to  all  the  privileges  of  the  university.  They 
are  not  allowed  to  enter  the  law,  medical,  or  theological  facul- 
ties, and  their  privileges  in  the  philosophical  faculty  are  practically 
limited  to  the  study  of  natural  science,  mathematics,  and  modern 
languages.  That  is  to  say,  if  a  father  wishes  to  keep  open  to  his  son 
when  he  becomes  twenty  years  of  age  the  choice  of  the  learned  pro- 
fessions, and  the  possibility  of  obtaining  any  of  the  higher  positions 
of  the  civil  service,  he  must  put  him  through  the  gymnasium  in  the 
first  place. 

Of  course,  under  such  circumstances,  all  professional  men  desire 
their  boys  to  follow  one  of  the  learned  professions,  and  send  them 
consequently  to  a  gymnasium.  During  an  extensive  tour  in  Germany 
last  summer,  the  writer  had  the  opportunity  of  meeting  a  large  num- 
ber of  university  and  other  professional  men.  In  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion which  was  quite  regularly  asked,  "  What  school  do  your  boys  at- 
tend ?  "  they  replied,  almost  without  exception  :  "  The  gymnasium,  of 
course  ;  we  send  them  to  the  real  school  only  when  they  are  too 
stupid  or  too  lazy  to  keep  up  in  the  gymnasium."  Thus  the  educated 
and  intelligent  classes  send  their  boys,  who,  to  some  extent  at  least, 
have  inherited  their  intelligence  and  ability,  to  the  gymnasium.  Those 
members  of  the  mercantile  or  artisan  class,  who  have  bright  boys 
from  whom  they  hope  much,  strain  every  nerve  to  suj)port  them  at 
the  school  which  forms  the  sole  avenue  to  all  government  honors  and 
social  position. 

Do  we  not  find  here  the  explanation  we  are  seeking  ?  Is  not  this 
the  secret  why  the  boys  who  graduate  from  the  gymnasium  are  as 
a  class  superior  to  those  who  finish  a  real-school  course  ?  They  are 
the  brighter  boys  of  the  community  ;  they  are,  as  a  rule,  of  educated 
blood,  from  homes  where  education  and  refinement  prevail,  and  life 


298  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

within  which  is  of  itself  an  education,  where  they  find  wise  and  dis- 
criminating assistance  in  their  studies,  and  encouragement  and  incite- 
ment to  effort. 

But  the  case  is  not  by  any  means  fully  stated.  The  gymnasium 
not  only  gets  better  material  to  work  upon  than  its  rival,  but  it  has 
also  a  superior  corps  of  teachers.  The  writer  was  told  by  a  gentleman 
who  was  a  graduate  of  a  real  school,  and  who  had  been  a  teacher 
in  one  for  some  time,  but  had  afterward  made  up  the  Greek  and 
Latin  of  a  gymnasium  course  in  order  to  qualify  himself  for  teaching 
in  a  gymnasium,  that  no  teacher  of  ability  and  enterprise  would  re- 
main in  a  real  school  any  longer  than  he  was  obliged  to  remain  there. 
"  There  is  no  career  in  that  line  of  work,"  said  he,  "  and  only  block- 
heads and  lazy  hides  (Dumnikopfe  und  Faulpelze)  stay  in  it."  Of 
course,  that  was  a  great  exaggeration,  and  yet  it  contained  an  element 
of  truth,  viz.,  that  a  process  of  selection  is  going  on  between  these 
two  schools,  not  only  in  regard  to  pupils,  but  also  in  regard  to  teach- 
ers, and  the  gymnasium  has  its  pick  of  both. 

The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  It  is  to  be  found  in  the  higher  so- 
cial position  which  tradition  assigns  to  the  office  of  gymnasial  teacher, 
and  the  better  career  which  the  Government  opens  to  it.  How  idle,  in 
the  face  of  all  these  facts,  is  the  assertion  that  the  Berlin  report 
has  settled  the  question  between  the  real  school  and  the  gymnasium, 
or  that  it  is  of  paramount  significance  in  the  deeper  question  of  clas- 
sical against  modern  training  ! 

To  get  a  fair  idea  of  the  significance  of  this  report,  let  one  imagine 
the  state  of  things  which  would  exist  in  this  country  if  the  law  of  the 
land  had  for  generations  permitted  no  one  to  practice  law  or  medicine,  or 
enter  the  ministry  or  the  civil  service,  or  become  a  teacher  in  our  higher 
schools  and  colleges,  who  had  not  first  completed  the  classical  course 
in  an  average  college,  and  then  attended  a  professional  school  for  three 
years.  Suppose  that,  after  such  a  law  had  been  enforced  for  a  century, 
a  proposition  were  made  to  allow  such  scientific  schools  as  could  spring 
up  under  those  circumstances  to  present  their  students  for  certain  sub- 
ordinate places  in  the  civil  service  and  in  the  academic  career.  Can 
there  be  any  doubt  that  the  adherents  of  the  classical  culture  would 
point  with  pride  to  the  fact  that  every  eminent  professional  man  for 
several  generations  had  been  the  graduates  of  classical  schools,  and 
would  make  that  a  reason,  as  they  do  now  in  Germany,  for  refusing 
to  admit  any  man  with  a  different  education  to  the  practice  of  those 
professions  ?  Would  they  not  dwell  on  the  great  danger  to  the  na- 
tional civilization  which  would  arise  from  the  fact  that  an  element  of 
discord  would  be  introduced  into  the  culture  of  the  people  by  educat- 
ing the  young  along  two  widely  different  lines  ?  * 

*  This  argument  plays  a  large  part  in  the  German  defense  of  a  single  scbool  and  a 
single  course  in  preparation  for  all  higher  professions.  "  Our  education,"  says  one,  "  is 
homogeneous.     Let  the  real  school  carry  its  point,  and  a  hopeless  and  fatal  element  of 


THE   CLASSICAL    QUESTION  IN  GERMANY.       299 

Would  not  our  professors  complain,  as  does  one  in  Berlin,  that 
they  could  not  make  so  many  references  to  Greece  and  Rome  in  their 
lectures,  since  some  of  their  hearers  would  not  understand  them? 

Let  us  suppose  further  that  the  above  proposition  should  be  ac- 
cepted, and  that  after  eight  years  a  committee  of  the  opponents  of  the 
measure  should  be  called  upon  to  express  their  opinions  as  to  the  re- 
sults of  the  experiment.  Could  their  report  be  considered  as  settling 
anything  between  the  two  opposing  parties — the  defenders  and  oppo- 
nents of  classical  culture  ?  Could  the  statement  of  these  witnesses, 
that  the  students  who,  under  such  conditions,  came  from  the  scientific 
schools  were  not  fully  equal  to  those  coming  from  the  classicals  chools, 
be  regarded  as  forever  disposing  of  the  claims  of  modern  culture? 
The  answer  to  this  question  can  hardly  be  doubtful.  And  yet  those 
who  quote  the  Berlin  report,  as  settling  this  mtich-vexed  question, 
must  maintain  that  such  a  report  as  the  imaginary  one  above  de- 
scribed would  be  satisfactory  and  conclusive. 

We  have  thus  far  proceeded  upon  the  assumption  that  the  Berlin 
and  similar  reports  were  prepared  by  unprejudiced  men,  after  a  careful 
and  detailed  examination  of  the  records  made  by  the  graduates  of 
these  two  schools,  and  uninfluenced  by  extraneous  considerations.  We 
are  compelled  to  believe,  however,  after  a  somewhat  detailed  investi- 
gation, that  no  one  of  these  assumptions  is  true. 

The  men  who  were  asked  for  their  opinions  on  this  subject  were 
almost,  if  not  absolutely,  without  exception  graduates  of  the  gym- 
nasia. That  lay,  of  course,  in  the  nature  of  the  case.  Real-school 
graduates  could  not  enter  the  universities  until  the  spring  of  1871. 
Allowing  four  years  for  the  average  leugth  of  time  spent  in  the  uni- 
versities, the  first  real-school  men  were  graduated  in  1875,  and  in  1879 
the  first  of  these  reports  was  prepared.  As  the  candidates  for  admis- 
sion to  the  university  faculty  must  study  one  year  more  before  enter- 
ing the  lowest  grade  of  academic  positions,  and  as  promotions  are  very 
slow  in  Prussia,  it  would  be  a  very  rare  thing  for  a  graduate  of  1875 
to  have  reached  a  professorial  chair  by  1879.  Those  who  made  these 
reports  were  therefore  men  from  rival  schools,  men  imbued  with  preju- 
dice in  favor  of  the  preparatory  curriculum  which  they  themselves 
had  completed,  men  entirely  under  the  sway  of  the  traditional  feeling 
in  regard  to  the  classics,  and,  of  course,  inclined  to  look  with  disfavor 
upon  real-school  men  as  representing  a  movement  which  questions  the 
worth  of  classical  culture.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  there  is  usually 
a  strong  tendency  for  a  man  to  attribute  his  general  success  in  life  to 
the  particular  things  which  he  did,  or  left  undone,  and  that  it  is  an 
easy  thing  to  regard  an  incidental  as  an  essential.  The  worthy  Ger- 
man professors  are  no  exception  to  the  rule.  Many  of  them  were  so 
strongly  convinced  of  the  superiority  of  classical  to  modern  training 

antagonism  will  be  introduced  into  our  national  life,  and  oui   higher  scholarship,  that 
fairest  flower  of  our  civilization,  will  perish  from  the  earth ! " 


300  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

that  they  went  out  of  their  way  to  declare  that  a  study  of  Latin  and 
Greek  is  absolutely  essential  to  high  excellence  in  any  department  of 
intellectual  effort ! 

All  these  reports,  both  those  of  1869  and  those  of  later  years, 
so  far  as  they  were  made  by  the  faculties,  were  as  a  rule  drafted 
by  volunteers  in  the  faculty,  and  some  rabidly  classical  man  gener- 
ally offered  to  do  the  work.  When  his  report  was  laid  before  the 
faculty,  many  voted  for  it,  or  refrained  from  voting  against  it,  for 
the  simple  reason  that  they  did  not  have  time  to  offer  such  modifi- 
cations as  they  would  like  to  have  seen  made  in  the  language  or 
matter  of  the  report.  Thus,  the  writer  was  told  by  one  professor 
in  a  university  which  sent  in  a  very  strong  report  in  favor  of  the 
gymnasiasts  as  against  the  real-school  graduates :  *'  Professor  So- 
and-so  "  (mentioning  his  name — one  well  known  in  Germany)  "  drew 
up  our  report.  He  is  perfectly  crazy  on  the  subject,  but  there  was 
no  one  else  to  do  it,  and  after  he  submitted  it  we  did  not  want  to  do 
such  an  ungracious  thing  as  reject  a  service  which  nobody  else  would 
undertake.  I  voted  for  his  report,  though  I  should  have  been  glad  to 
have  a  much  more  moderate  and  judicial  report  than  the  one  we  sent 
in."  It  thus  appears  that  these  reports  were  prepared  by  men  who 
were  not  only  graduates  of  the  gymnasium,  but  who  were  also,  in  some 
cases  at  least,  regarded  by  their  own  friends  as  extremists.  Add  to 
this  the  fact  that  there  were  no  representatives  of  the  real  schools  in  the 
reporting  board  who  might  have  called  attention  to  exaggerations  or 
misstatements,  whether  intentional  or  unintentional,  and  it  is  pretty 
clear  that  these  reports  can  not  be  called  judicial,  either  in  their  form 
or  spirit,  but  partake  largely  of  the  character  of  advocates'  pleas. 

It  would  be  fair  to  suppose,  however,  that  these  men  would  at 
least  examine  the  facts  in  the  case  as  to  how  these  real-school  gradu- 
ates turned  out  in  after-life,  before  making  a  report  on  their  compara- 
tive ability.  But  even  this  supposition  turns  out  to  be  an  unfounded 
one.  As  is  well  known,  there  is  no  general  system  of  recitation  and 
record-keeping  in  German  universities,  such  as  we  have  in  our  Ameri- 
can colleges.  The  professor  has,  therefore,  as  a  rule,  no  means  of 
judging  of  a  student's  attainments.  There  are  no  examinations  except 
the  final  one  for  a  doctor's  degree.  The  only  institution  bearing  a 
resemblance  to  our  recitation  is  the  Seminar,  a  voluntary  organization 
which  many  students  never  enter,  and  which  varies  greatly  in  char- 
acter, according  to  the  temperament  of  the  professor  in  charge  or  to 
the  subject-matter  discussed.  Being  at  times  a  society  for  the  train- 
ing of  the  members  in  the  power  of  independent  investigation  and 
research,  it  becomes  often  a  mere  "  quiz,"  or  indeed  but  little  more 
than  a  two  hours'  lecture  on  the  part  of  the  leader.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  those  students  who  enter  the  Seminar,  the  professor  has  no 
means  of  judging  of  the  ability  or  training  of  the  university  students. 
The  only  test,  therefore,  is  the  record  of  such  students  in  the  final 


THE   CLASSICAL    QUESTION  IN  GERMANY.       301 

university  examinations  for  a  degree,  which  comparatively  few  stu- 
dents ever  attempt,  their  record  in  the  state  examinations  which  nearly 
all  try,  and  the  final  and  decisive  test  of  practical  life  and  its  demands. 

Now,  it  is  a  pretty  plain  fact  that  the  professors  who  made  these 
reports  did  not  take  the  trouble  to  investigate  the  results  of  these 
various  tests,  since  it-  was  reserved  for  a  director  of  a  real  school  to 
collect  the  first  reliable  and  comprehensive  statistics  on  the  subject, 
and  that  after  these  reports  were  prepared.  The  data  were  furnished 
by  the  reports  of  the  universities  as  to  the  number  of  degrees  granted 
to  real-school  graduates,  by  the  reports  of  government  examiners  as  to 
standing  attained  in  the  public  examinations  of  such  students,  and, 
finally,  by  the  reports  from  the  present  positions  and  sphere  of  labor 
of  all  real-school  graduates  who  had  taken  degrees  from  the  universi- 
ties, or  who  had  passed  into  the  ranks  of  teachers  without  trying  the 
university  examination.  We  have  not  room  to  introduce  the  statistics 
here.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  they  make  a  very  good  showing  for  real- 
school  graduates.  The  point  that  interests  us  most  in  this  immediate 
connection  is,  that  these  facts  were  not  ascertained  or  considered  by 
the  university  professors  who  reported  on  this  subject. 

The  same  gentleman  who  collected  these  statistics  tells  a  well- 
authenticated  story  of  Professor  Hanstein,  of  the  University  of  Bonn, 
which  very  well  illustrates  the  fairness,  deliberation,  and  investigation 
which  preceded  and  accompanied  these  reports.  Upon  receiving  the 
notice  asking  for  his  written  opinion,  he  remarked  to  his  assistant : 
"  So  we  have  to  commit  ourselves  in  writing  again,  do  we  ?  Of  course, 
the  gymnasia  students  are  superior."  "But,  Herr  Professor,"  ob- 
jected his  assistant,  "Mr.  X ,  who  recently  took  his  degree  in 

natural  science,  passed  summa  cum  laude^  and  he  is  a  real-school 

graduate."    "Yes  ;  well,  he's  an  exception."   "And  Herr  Dr. ,  the 

Prwatdocent  here  in  Bonn,  is  also  from  a  real  school."  "  He's  an  ex- 
ception too,"  answered  Hanstein.  "  And  a  few  weeks  ago,"  continued 
his  assistant,  "  one  of  our  real-school  students  passed  his  teacher's  ex- 
amination in  chemistry  and  natural  history  No.  1."  "  Exceptions — 
all  exceptions  ! "  replied  the  professor.  "  Yes,  but,  Herr  Professor, 
there  are  only  seven  or  eight  of  us  real-school  men  altogether  here  in 
Bonn."  "  We  ?  Are  you  a  real-school  graduate  ?  "  "  Yes,  sir."  "  Well, 
you  are  the  biggest  exception  of  all."  And,  with  that,  he  turned  and 
left  the  room.     The  story,  which  is  vouched  for,  needs  no  comment. 

There  is  still  another  point  to  be  considered.  The  practical  object 
of  these  reports,  as  some  professors  conceived  it,  was  to  ascertain 
whether  the  faculties  were  in  favor  of  excluding  real-school  students 
from  the  universities,  and  indeed  the  language  of  the  request  justified 
that  view.  Some  voted  for  the  reports,  therefore,  because  they 
thought  that  the  attendance  at  the  universities  is  too  large,  and  that 
the  exclusion  of  real-school  graduates  offers  a  convenient  means  of 
getting  rid  of  the  surplus  students.     The  writer  visited  twelve  out  of 


302  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

the  twenty-one  German  universities,  during  the  last  semester,  in  order 
to  ascertain  what  is  doing  in  the  various  departments  in  which  he 
takes  special  interest.  Everywhere  the  question  was  asked  of  univer- 
sity professors,  **Do  you  think  that  too  many  are  studying  at  the 
universities?"  Almost  uniformly  the  answer  was  returned,  "There 
is  no  doubt  about  it."  A  few  figures  will  make  clear  how  rapidly  of 
late  years  the  number  of  students  has  increased.  During  the  five 
years  ending  1861,  for  every  100,000  inhabitants  in  Germany  there 
were,  on  an  average,  thirty-two  students  in  the  universities.  During 
the  year  1881-82  there  were  fifty-one  students  for  the  same  number 
of  inhabitants.  Of  these  in  the  former  period  eight  were  enrolled  in 
the  philosophical  faculty  (the  only  faculty  to  which  real-school  stu- 
dents are  admitted)  ;  in  the  latter  period  20*7.  That  is,  in  a  little 
more  than  twenty  years  the  number  of  students  in  the  philosophical 
faculty  per  100,000  inhabitants  has  more  than  doubled.  The  average 
for  the  five  years  ending  1881  was  eighteen,  and  the  proportion  is  still 
increasing.  This  enormous  increase  in  the  number  of  students  excites 
the  gravest  apprehension,  and  is  characterized  by  thinking  men  as  a 
sad  state  of  affairs. 

It  may  seem  somewhat  ludicrous  to  us  to  hear  of  an  over-produc- 
tion of  educated  men.  A  German  professor  gave  the  key  to  the  rid- 
dle, in  a  remark  to  the  writer,  that  Germany  is  fostering  the  growth 
of  an  intellectual  proletary — i.  e.,  a  class  of  professionally  educated 
men  for  whom  there  is  no  room  in  the  professions,  and  who  are  too 
proud  to  go  into  business  of  any  sort.  This  state  of  affairs  can  not  be 
fully  appreciated  without  going  further  into  detail  than  the  limits  of 
this  article  allow.  Sufiice  it  to  say  that  the  German  universities  are 
essentially  professional  schools.  A  man  who  enters  such  an  institu- 
tion intends  to  be  a  lawyer,  a  physician,  a  minister,  teacher,  professor, 
or  member  of  the  civil  service  of  the  country,  and  he  receives  there 
his  professional  training.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  there  can  be  an  over- 
production in  each  and  all  of  these  fields.  In  this  country  such  a  state 
of  things  is  easily  remedied.  If  a  man  finds  he  has  no  chance  to  suc- 
ceed as  a  lawyer,  a  year  or  two  will  turn  him  out  a  physician.  If  he 
fails  in  that,  he  can  try  theology,  or  he  may  go  into  business  of  some 
sort,  or  anybody  can  go  into  politics.  In  Germany  the  case  is  widely 
different.  The  Government  demands  such  a  long  preliminary  train- 
ing and  such  intense  and  laborious  effort  in  preparation,  that,  by  the 
time  a  man  finds  there  is  no  place  for  him  in  the  profession  he  has 
chosen,  his  elasticity  has  gone,  and  there  is  no  desire  or  ability  to  try 
anything  else.  To  take  up  another  profession  he  has  become  too  old, 
and  to  go  into  mercantile  or  industrial  life  he  is  forbidden  by  his 
ideas  of  social  position  and  scholarly  dignity.  To  such  a  man  two 
courses  are  open — to  drag  out  a  bare  existence,  with  many  wants 
which  his  education  has  developed,  but  which  he  has  no  means  of 
gratifying,  or — to  commit  suicide.     Many  take  the  latter  alternative. 


THE  CLASSICAL    QUESTION  IN  GERMANY.       303 

and  the  enormous  increase  in  suicides  during  the  last  few  years  is  one 
of  the  saddest  and  most  striking  phenomena  of  German  society,  high 
and  low. 

That  there  is  an  over-production  in  the  professional  fields  nearly 
all  German  thinkers  agree.  How  can  it  be  helped  ?  The  Government 
has  lately  called  the  attention  of  parents  and  teachers  to  the  fact  that 
the  higher  administrative  positions  in  the  civil  service  are  all  provided 
for,  and  that  all  vacancies  for  years  to  come  can  be  filled  from  the 
present  candidates.  The  opponents  of  the  real  schools  now  come  for- 
ward and  say  :  "  We  can  help  the  matter  very  easily.  Shut  out  real- 
school  graduates  from  the  philosophical  faculty  and  there  will  be  room 
enough  for  the  surplus  students  of  law  and  medicine  to  find  careers." 
Some  professors  voted  for  exclusion  because  they  thought  that  the 
shutting  out  of  real-school  students  would  meet  this  rapidly-growing 
evil  of  over-production  in  professional  spheres. 

We  think  enough  has  been  advanced  to  prove — 1.  That  the  Berlin 
report  has  little  bearing  on  the  question  we  are  discussing  in  this 
country  as  to  the  respective  merits  of  classical  and  modern  training, 
for  the  simple  fact  that  it  was  on  an  altogether  diiferent  point.  2. 
That  as  to  the  particular  subject,  in  regard  to  which  it  was  prepared, 
it  can  lay  no  claim  to  be  considered  final,  because  it  was  made  prema- 
turely, at  a  tinie  when  the  institution  judged  could,  by  the  very  nature 
of  the  case,  have  had  no  fair  trial,  and  because  it  was  made  by  preju- 
diced parties  without  sufficient  investigation,  and  influenced  by  con- 
siderations which  should  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  decision. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  opinion  seems  to  be  quite  general  in  Ger- 
many that  the  real  schools  are  bound  to  go  forward  to  new  struggles 
and  to  new  conquests.  They  have  lost  none  of  the  ground  which 
they  have  ever  won  ;  they  are  gaining  new  ground  every  day.  It  is  a 
mere  question  of  time  when  the  medical  schools  will  be  opened  to 
them,  and  some  even  dare  hope  that  the  law  schools  must  yield  also. 
They  may  suffer  temporary  reverses,  but  they  are  sure  to  win  in  the 
long  run.  One  significant  fact  may  be  noted,  which  is  beginning  to 
tell  in  their  favor.  The  men  in  Germany  who  have  made  the  deepest 
and  longest  studies  in  the  science  of  education  are  assuming  a  more 
favorable  attitude  toward  the  real  schools. 

The  writer  recently  visited  Professor  Masius,  who  holds  a  chair 
of  Pedagogics  in  the  University  of  Leipsic.  He  was  for  years  the 
director  of  a  gymnasium,  then  of  a  real  school  of  the  first  rank,  and 
then  for  years  a  member  of  the  Ministry  for  Public  Instruction  in 
Saxony.  On  being  asked  what  his  position  on  the  question  of  real 
school  vs.  the  gymnasium  is,  he  replied  :  "  If  you  mean  to  ask  me, 
whether  the  real-school  graduates  I  get  in  my  work  are  the  equals  of 
the  gymnasium  graduates,  I  should  say,  no  !  If  you  mean  whether 
our  real  schools,  as  they  are,  afford  as  good  a  liberal  training  as  the 
gymnasia,  I  should  say,  no  !    If  you  mean  whether  a  real-school,  as  fully 


304  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

equipped  in  regard  to  teachers  and  apparatus  as  an  ordinary  gymna- 
sium, and  with  a  simplified  course  of  study,  could  give  a  liberal  train- 
ing equal  to  that  afforded  by  the  gymnasium,  I  should  reply,  I  do  not 
know,  as  the  experiment  has  never  been  tried  ;  but  I  am  inclined  to 
think  it  could." 

The  most  advanced  thinkers  on  pedagogics  are  coming  to  agree 
that  the  subject  taught  has  much  less  to  do  with  its  value  as  a  dis- 
ciplinary and  liberalizing  study  than  the  method  of  teaching  it.  Arith- 
metic may  be  so  taught  as  to  afford  a  much  better  training  in  lan- 
guage than  half  of  our  Latin  and  Greek  teaching  affords.  There  is  a 
certain  convertibility  in  the  possible  subjects  in  a  curriculum  with 
regard  to  liberalizing  effects  which  is  often  lost  sight  of,  but  which 
our  best  thinkers  on  the  science  of  education  are  more  and  more  in- 
clined to  emphasize. 

It  has  been  already  remarked  that  it  is  a  dangerous  procedure  to 
apply  concrete  conclusions  in  one  country  to  concrete  conditions  in 
another.  The  quoting  of  German  authority  in  favor  of  a  gymnasium 
course  in  order  to  bolster  up  the  classical  course  of  an  average  American 
college  is  a  good  instance  in  point.  The  German  gymnasium  gives  nine 
hours  a  week  for  five  years,  and  eight  hours  a  week  for  four  years  more, 
to  the  study  of  Latin — i.  e.,  seventy-seven  hours  a  week  for  one  year. 
It  devotes  to  Greek  seven  hours  a  week  for  four  years,  and  six  hours  a 
week  for  two  years  more — i.  e.,  forty  hours  a  week  for  one  year,  or  to 
both  languages  the  equivalent  of  one  hundred  and  seventeen  hours  a 
week  for  one  year.  It  will  be  stating  it  beyond  the  truth  to  put  the 
time  devoted  to  Latin  in  our  average  American  college  up  to  the  close 
of  the  sophomore  year  at  five  hours  a  week  for  six  years — i.  e.,  thirty 
hours  a  week  for  one  year,  and  to  the  Greek  at  five  hours  a  week  for 
five  years — i.  e.,  twenty-five  hours  a  week  for  one  year,  or  to  both 
together  the  equivalent  of  fifty-five  hours  a  week  for  one  year.  The 
German  gymnasium  thus  gives  more  than  twice  as  many  hours  to 
Latin  and  Greek  as  the  average  American  college  course.  Now,  the 
leading  German  authorities  who  favor  a  gymnasium  course  have  re- 
peatedly opposed  lessening  the  amount  of  time  devoted  to  these  two 
subjects,  and  have  expressed  their  opinion  to  the  effect  that  any  con- 
siderable reduction  in  the  number  of  hours  would  be  equivalent  to 
depriving  the  course  of  all  its  value — i.  e.,  so  far  from  approving  our 
classical  curriculum,  they  unite  in  asserting  that  it  is  worth  nothing 
whatever  ! 

A  part  of  President  Porter's  argument  in  the  article  already  re- 
ferred to  proceeds  on  the  assumption  that  the  average  college  boy 
acquires  enough  Latin  and  Greek  to  be  able  to  read  it  easily.  What- 
ever may  have  been  true  in  President  Porter's  college-days,  the  fact 
must  appear  evident  to  any  one  who  has  ever  visited  the  sophomore 
classes  in  Greek  in  our  American  colleges,  that  the  average  boy  does 
not  acquire  ability  to  translate  even  such  an  easy  author  as  Xenophon 


THE   CLASSICAL    QUESTION  IN  GERMANY,       305 

or  Homer  without  difficulty — not  even  in  Yale  College  ;  and  the  boy 
who  takes  up  a  Greek  author  and  reads  him  for  the  pleasure  that 
he  derives  from  the  thought  is  an  avis  rara  indeed.  It  is  the  writer's 
opinion,  based  upon  considerable  investigation  and  comparison  of  notes 
with  Greek  teachers,  both  in  America  and  Germany,  that  it  is  impossi- 
ble for  the  average  boy  who  spends  the  average  amount  of  time  on  his 
Greek  up  to  the  close  of  his  sophomore  year  to  acquire  the  power  of 
reading  it  easily.  It  is  a  universally  admitted  fact  in  Germany  that 
the  gyranasiast,  who  spends  so  much  more  time  and  labor  than  the 
American  college  boy,  never  acquires  this  power;  and  it  is  as  true  of 
the  former  as  it  is  of  the  latter  that  the  last  day  of  his  school-life  is 
the  last  day  of  his  Greek  reading,  with  the  exception  of  those  follow- 
ing a  profession  which  calls  for  a  knowledge  of  the  Greek,  such  as  the 
philologists,  philosophers,  and  clergymen. 

One  other  point  is  worthy  of  notice.  President  Porter  attempts 
to  show  that  the  main  reason  for  unsatisfactory  results  in  Greek  study 
is  the  bad  teaching  of  Greek  which  prevailed  long  ago,  and  which  he 
hints  has  almost  disappeared.  That  the  teaching  of  Greek  is  now 
superior  to  what  it  was  a  generation  ago  we  are  very  ready  to  believe, 
but  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  there  is  any  greater  agreement  among 
teachers  as  to  the  proper  object  of  Greek  study  and  the  advantages  to 
be  derived  from  it.  A  visit  to  several  of  our  leading  colleges  last 
winter,  and  conversation  with  the  professors  and  instructors  in  Greek, 
revealed  to  the  writer  the  very  greatest  differences  of  opinion,  not  only 
among  the  various  colleges,  but  even  among  the  representatives  of  that 
study  within  the  same  college.  It  is  evident  that  the  teachers  who 
believe  that  the  most  important  object  to  be  attained  is  the  ability  to 
read  Greek  at  sight,  and  to  understand  it  without  having  to  translate 
it,  will  pursue  a  very  different  method  from  those  who  see  in  the  "  in- 
cidental training  "  in  grammar,  logic,  philology,  etc.,  the  chief  benefit 
from  Greek  study.  And  yet  the  writer  recently  found  these  two 
opposite  views  held  by  two  men  in  the  same  department  of  one  of  our 
leading  colleges,  the  one  of  whom  had  one  division  of  the  sophomore 
class  and  the  other  the  second  division.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say 
that,  however  much  the  second  may  have  benefited  his  class,  the  first 
did  not  get  his  division  to  read  Greek  at  sight. 

The  writer  does  not  wish  to  be  misunderstood.  He  is  making  no 
attack  on  the  study  of  Greek.  He  remembers  well  the  keen  pleasure 
and,  as  he  thinks,  profit  with  which  he  pursued  the  study  of  Greek 
under  an  exceptionally  able  series  of  teachers,  and  his  viris  iUustrissi- 
mis  summas  gratias  agit,  semper  que  habehit.  But  he  realizes  well  the 
great  importance  of  these  educational  questions,  and  that  many  of 
them  can  never  be  settled  except  by  actual  experiment.  It  is  of  the 
highest  importance  that  all  things  should  be  fairly  tried,  and  that 
held  fast  which  is  good.  It  is  demanded  in  the  interests  of  society 
that  modern  education  have  a  fair  chance  by  the  side  of  classical  edu- 

VOL.  XXIV. — 20 


3o6  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

cation.  That  chance  it  has,  as  yet,  nowhere  had.  Our  colleges,  so 
far  as  they  have  admitted  scientific  students,  have  allowed  them  to 
come  in  with  a  very  inferior  preparation.  The  French  and  German, 
and  for  that  matter  the  English,  too,  in  most  of  our  colleges,  are  mere 
child's  play,  where  they  are  not  broad  and  ridiculous  farces,  the  butt 
of  students  and  professors  alike.  Let  some  of  our  colleges  inaugurate 
the  reform  :  lay  out  a  "  modern  "  course  for  admission  and  for  college 
on  the  same  general  principle  as  the  classical  course — few  subjects, 
but  long-continued  and  detailed  study  in  each  of  them — and  insist  on 
as  thorough  and  vigorous  work  as  they  do  in  their  Latin  and  Greek, 
and  then,  after  a  fair  trial,  compare  results.  The  friends  of  "  mod- 
ern "  education  are  willing  to  abide  by  the  outcome.  In  the  mean 
time  it  will  be  wise  for  the  classicists  to  avoid  quoting  reports  that 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  question,  and  appealing  to  authority 
which,  upon  investigation,  turns  out  to  be  squarely  on  the  other  side 
of  the  point  in  dispute. 


T 


EAELY  COLONISTS  OF  THE   SWISS   LAKES. 

Br  F.  A.  FOEEL. 

HE  depression  of  the  waters  of  the  Lakes  of  Keufchatel,  Morat, 
-A-  and  Bienne,  which  the  Swiss  Confederation  has  been  having  exe- 
cuted during  the  last  ten  years,  has  been  a  most  fortunate  event  for 
archaeologists  ;  and  with  pick  in  hand,  and  on  a  relatively  new  ground, 
they  have  been  able  to  recover  hosts  of  treasures  from  the  buried 
ruins  of  the  lake-villages.  The  few  scattered  relics  which  they  had 
succeeded  in  fishing  up  out  of  the  water  with  tongs  and  drags  have 
been  multiplied  into  immense  proportions  since  the  hunters  have  been 
able  to  work  upon  the  solid  land  that  has  been  reclaimed  from  the 
edges  of  the  favored  lakes.  By  thousands  and  thousands  the  relics 
of  human  industry  have  been  heaped  up  in  the  archaeological  collec- 
tions, and  the  knowledge  of  the  curious  civilization  of  the  early  in- 
habitants of  Switzerland  has  made,  by  the  aid  of  these  facts,  very 
interesting  progress.  We  need  only  cite,  in  proof  of  this,  the  very 
important  memoir  which  Professor  Theophile  Studer  has  recently 
published  in  the  "  Bulletin  "  of  the  Society  of  Naturalists  of  Bern. 
Taking  up,  after  M.  L.  Rtltimeyer,  of  Basel,  the  study  of  the  bones 
found  in  the  arcluTological  deposit  of  the  palafittes  (a  term  designat- 
ing a  wooden  construction  built  on  piles),  and  making  use  of  the  im- 
mense material  collected  from  the  stations  of  the  Lake  of  Bienne,  he 
has  drawn  from  them  most  interesting  details  respecting  the  variations 
of  the  animal  population  during  the  different  periods  of  these  prehis- 
torical  ages,  and  respecting  the  progress  of  the  domestication  of  the 
races  useful  to  man. 


EARLY   COLOJ^ISTS    OF   THE  SWISS  LAKES.      307 

A  comprehensive  account  of  the  present  condition  of  our  knowl- 
edge of  human  industry  in  the  lake  epoch  is  furnished  in  the  book  just 
published  by  Dr.  Victor  Gross  on  "  The  Proto-Helvetians,  or  the  Ear- 
lier Colonists  of  the  Borders  of  the  Lakes  of  Bienne  and  Neufchatel " 


("  Les  L*rotohelvetes,  ou  les  premiers  colons  des  hords  des  lacs  de  Eienne 
etde  N'euchateV^).  The  author,  a  practicing  physician  at  La  Neuve- 
ville,  on  the  shore  of  the  Lake  of  Bienne,  has  had  the  good  fortune  to 
become  possessed  of  products  of  all  the  special  excavations  made  upon 


3o8  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

that  lake,  and  of  a  good  part  of  the  finds  of  the  Lake  of  Neufchatel, 
so  that  he  has  been  able  to  form  a  collection  unequaled  in  its  richness, 
in  the  number  of  the  specimens,  and  in  the  rarity  of  the  pieces,  fre- 
quently unique,  that  he  has  accumulated. 

Wishing  to  give  the  scientific  world  a  share  in  the  enjoyment  of 
these  treasures,  he  has  published  in  a  beautiful  quarto  volume  descrip- 
tions of  the  principal  results  of  his  researches,  illustrated  by  photo- 
graphic plates,  in  thirty-three  of  which  are  represented  more  than  nine 
hundred  and  fifty  of  the  more  important  pieces.  I  do  not  hesitate  to 
style  Dr.  Gross's  the  finest  known  collection  in  prehistoric  archaeology, 
for  while  the  series  in  some  large  museums  may  be  more  numerous 
than  those  of  Dr.  Gross,  the  latter  have  the  superiority  over  all  the 
others  of  relating  to  a  single  civilization,  in  different  ages  of  its  de- 
velopment, and  to  the  same  people  in  all  the  details  of  its  intimate  life 
with  an  incomparable  luxury  of  illustration.  The  ruins  of  each  one 
of  our  lake-villages  may  be  compared  to  a  Pompeii  on  a  small  scale. 
Let  us  suppose  fifty  Pompeiis,  the  destruction  of  which  took  place,  one 
after  another,  during  the  ages  from  the  primitive  times  of  Roman 
history  to  the  end  of  the  decline  of  the  empire,  and  we  may  be  able 
to  calculate  what  treasures  of  documents  we  might  find  in  them  where- 
with to  restore  the  history  of  industry,  of  art,  and  of  civilization  in 
ancient  Italy. 

The  study  of  the  larger  collections  of  Swiss  antiquities  gives  us 
a  very  clear  impression  of  the  wealth  of  the  lacustrine  populations, 
especially  of  the  period  known  as  the  fine  bronze  age.  We  see  in  them 
universally  evidences  of  abundant  resources,  and  in  no  case  of  pov- 
erty. The  inhabitants  of  the  palafittes  had  at  their  disposal  mechani- 
cal means,  probably  simple,  but  sufiicient  to  fix  in  the  ground  the  thou- 
sands and  tens  of  thousands  of  piles  on  which  they  built  their  villages^ 
Having  an  agriculture,  and  raising  cattle,  they  were  only  exceptionally 
obliged  to  have  recourse  for  food-supplies  to  the  more  primitive  art  of 
the  chase.  An  extensive  commerce  brought  them  metals,  amber,  glass 
beads,  and  worked  objects  of  foreign  origin.  A  pure  taste  raised  their 
artisans  to  the  dignity  of  real  artists.  The  reader  who  observes  in  Dr. 
Gross's  plates  the  remarkable  elegance  of  the  designs  of  arms,  of  tools 
and  ornaments  of  bronze,  and  of  potter's  work,  like  those  represented 
in  Fig.  2  (Nos.  1,  3,  4,  and  10),  can  not  deny  that  the  civilization  of 
the  Swiss  lake-dwellers  was  rich  and  flourishing. 

The  mass  of  metal  they  possessed  was  considerable  ;  and,  having 
regard  to  the  innumerable  pices  of  bronze  found  at  some  of  the  sta- 
tions, I  believe  it  will  not  be  wrong  to  assert  that  in  proportion  to  the 
population  they  had  a  weight  of  bronze  at  their  disposal  nearly  equal 
to  the  weight  of  iron,  aside  from  the  heavy  castings  of  the  large  agri- 
cultural machines,  to  be  found  in  any  of  the  most  prosperous  existing 
villages  of  the  country.  A  figure  will  give  an  idea  of  this  abundance 
and  richness.     M.  Gross  has  made  an  account  of  the  bronze  pieces 


EARLY   COLONISTS    OF   THE  SWISS  LAKES.      309 


Fig.  2.— Articles  from  thk  Prehistoric  Collection  of  Dk.  Victor  Gross. 

1.  Bronze  sword-handle  (station  ot  MOrigen). 

2.  Omamonted  ear-drops  (Auvernier). 

3.  Cup  in  hammered  bronze  (Corcelettes). 

4.  Clay  vase,  with  incrustations  from  lamellae  of  tin. 

5.  Comb  of  yew-wood  (Fenil). 

6.  Bronze  ear-drops  (Auvernier). 

'^.  Mold  in  sandstone,  forming  one  of  the  shells  of  a  mold  for  two  knives  and  twenty-seven 
rings  (M5riQ:en). 

8.  Hair-pin  (Esfavayer). 

9,  10.  Bronze  knives  (Auvernier). 
11,  12.  Ear-drops  of  deer-horn. 


310  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

taken  from  the  Lakes  of  Bienne  and  Neufchutel,  and  makes  the  number 
19,600,  more  than  5,000  of  which  are  in  his  own  collection. 

The  wealth  of  the  Proto-Helvetians,  as  Dr.  Gross  happily  calls  them, 
so  manifest  in  the  bronze  age,  was  also  as  real,  though  less  evident, 
in  the  stone  age.  I  come  to  this  conclusion  from  the  presence  in 
the  ruins  of  that  period  of  some  classes  of  objects  that  could  have 
reached  the  country  only  by  means  of  a  very  extensive  commerce. 
Amber  was  brought  to  them  from  the  shores  of  the  Baltic  Sea,  and 
rare  stones  of  very  precious  qualities,  from  which  they  made  their  cut- 
ting-tools, came  to  them  from'still  farther  ;  nephrite,  a  handsome  stone, 
clear,  green,  and  semi-transparent,  was  brought  to  them  from  Turkis- 
tan,  or  Southern  Siberia  ;  gray  jade-stone  came  from  Burmah  ;  and 
chloromelanitey  a  black  stone  with  yellow  streaks,  also  probably  came 
from  Asia,  but  from  beds  that  are  still  unknown.  The  lake  period 
was  of  long  duration,  and  included  the  whole  time  in  which  man  rose 
by  successive  steps  from  the  primitive  stages  of  civilization  in  which  he 
was  not  yet  acquainted  with  metals  to  the  higher  stages,  when  he 
became  acquainted  with  bronze  and  then  with  iron.  Whatever  a  cer- 
tain German  school  may  say  about  it,  the  existence  of  a  bronze  age 
intermediate  between  the  stone  age  and  the,  iron  age  is  demonstrated. 
That  such  a  progressive  and  continuous  development  took  place  is 
proved  with  strong  evidence  from  the  archaeological  study  of  the  prod- 
ucts of  human  industry,  and  appears  definitely  in  the  study  of  the 
bones  of  animals  gathered  in  the  ruins  of  the  lake-stations.  In  this 
respect,  the  conclusions  of  M.  Studer  are  as  affirmative  and  demonstra- 
tive as  were  twenty  years  ago  those  of  M.  Riitimeycr. 

Dr.  Gross  distinguishes  three  successive  periods  in  the  stone  age  : 
A  primitive,  earlier  period,  making  a  poor  showing  of  coarse  potteries 
and  imperfectly  worked  stones,  with  no  nephrite  or  other  stones  of 
foreign  origin.  The  station  of  Chavannes,  near  La  Neuveville,  is  re- 
garded by  him  as  the  type  of  that  remote  age.  A  second  period  ex- 
hibits the  civilization  of  the  stone  age  in  all  its  glory.  The  stone 
instruments  are  finely  cut,  exotic  stones  are  abundant,  and  the  potter's 
art  has  reached  an  advanced  degree  of  perfection.  Locras  and  Latri- 
gen  represent  this  age  on  the  Lake  of  Bienne.  A  third  period  bears 
evidence  of  the  introduction  of  metals.  The  general  character  of  the 
civilization  remains  the  same  as  in  the  preceding  age,  with  the  same 
styles  of  pottery  and  the  same  abundance  of  stone  implements.  But 
the  first  tools  of  metal  have  been  imported.  At  Finels,  on  the  Lake  of 
I>ienne,  we  find  copper  worked  in  a  manner  still  quite  primitive  ;  and 
at  Morigen,  in  the  station  of  Les  Roseaux,  we  have  bronze  in  the  form 
of  very  simple  hatchets.  After  this  came  the  fine  age  of  bronze,  with 
its  magnificent  development  of  civilization  ;  then,  later,  iron  appeared. 

Bronze,  the  metal  chiefly  in  use  in  the  finest  age  of  the  lake  civili- 
zation, is  not  indigenous.  Neither  copper  nor  tin,  the  metals  which 
alloyed  with  each  other  in  proper  proportions  constitute  this  metal,  is 


THE  MORALITY   OF  HAPPINESS,  311 

found  in  the  Swiss  plain  nor  in  the  Jura.  It  is  true  that  copper  min- 
erals exist  in  some  of  the  valleys  of  the  Alps,  but  it  is  very  probable 
that  the  ancient  lake-dwellers  received  the  metal  from  more  distant 
countries  where  the  mines  were  more  easily  worked.  With  respect 
to  tin,  it  is  at  any  rate  certain  that  the  nearest  beds  are  in  Saxony,  in 
Cornwall,  and  in  Spain.  It  has  long  been  debated  whether  these 
metals,  tin,  copper,  and  bronze,  were  brought  to  Switzerland  already 
worked,  or  were  cast  on  the  spot ;  whether  there  was  a  local,  native 
industry,  or  the  arms,  instruments,  and  ornaments  were  brought,  hav- 
ing been  already  wrought  out  in  foreign  lands.  It  is  now  possible  to- 
answer  the  question.  Some  of  the  articles  were  imported  already 
manufactured,  for  they  evidently  exhibit  types  of  foreign  industry.. 
A  superb  vase  of  cast  bronze  and  a  fibula  from  Corcelettes,  on  the 
Lake  of  Neufchatel,  are  preserved  in  the  Museum  of  Lausanne,  the, 
form  and  ornamentation  of  which  are  manifestly  Scandinavian.  Other 
pieces,  more  numerous,  recall  forms  of  the  south  of  France  or  of  Italy.. 
On  the  other  hand,  ingots  or  pigs  of  unworked  metal  are  very  rare  in 
our  finds.  There  was,  however,  also  a  local  industry  ;  and  the  lake- 
dwellers  knew  how  to  cast  and  hammer  bronze  in  their  own  villages.. 
We  have  proof  of  this  in  a  relatively  considerable  number  of  molds 
deposited  in  the  Swiss  museums,  among  others  at  Lausanne,  at  Ge- 
neva, and  in  Dr.  Gross's  collection.  In  the  plates  illustrating  the  last 
collection  are  figured  no  less  than  three  bronze  molds,  two  of  which 
are  double,  eight  clay  valves  or  fragments  of  molds,  and  seventeen 
molds  or  fragments  in  molasse  (Fig.  2,  No.  7).  Sometimes  one  of 
the  stone  molds  served  for  the  casting  of  several  objects  ;  and  the 
seventeen  molds  of  Dr.  Gross  contain  the  matrices  for  seventy-two 
different  pieces.  Besides  these  molds,  castings  of  bronze  hammers, 
anvils,  shears,  and  punches,  complete  the  outfit  of  the  founder,  and 
demonstrate  that  his  industry  was  indeed  practiced  on  the  spot. 
Whether  the  founder  was  a  native,  and  established  where  he  worked, 
or  whether,  like  the  tinkers  of  our  own  days,  he  was  a  foreigner  and  a 
wanderer,  is  a  question  to  which  a  definite  answer  can  not  be  returned. 
— Translated  for  the  Popular  Science  Monthly  from  La  Nature. 


THE  MOEALITY  OF  HAPPIKESS. 

By  THOMAS  FOSTER. 
III. — THE    EVOLUTION    OF    CONDUCT. 

AS  structures  are  evolved,  so  are  the  functions  which  structures 
subserve.  And  as  the  functions  of  the  body  are  evolved,  so 
are  those  combinations  of  bodily  actions  evolved  which  we  include 
under  the  general  term  conduct. 


312  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

We  are  considering  the  functions  of  the  body  when  we  are  in- 
quiring into  such  actions  of  the  various  structures  internal  and  exter- 
nal as  involve  internal  processes,  simple  or  complex.  But,  when  we 
begin  to  consider  combinations  of  actions  externally  manifested,  we 
are  dealing  with  conduct — except  only  in  the  case  of  such  actions  as 
are  independent  of  control. 

But  at  the  outset  of  the  evolution  of  conduct  even  this  distinction 
is  scarcely  to  be  recognized.  Every  external  combination  of  actions 
is  in  the  lower  types  of  animal  life  a  part  of  conduct — at  least  of  such 
conduct  as  is  possible  in  the  lowest  orders  of  creatures.  Evolution  of 
conduct  begins  with  the  gradual  development  of  purpose  where  at  first 
actions  were  random  and  aimless.  The  Amoeba  wanders  from  place 
to  place,  not  by  the  action  of  limbs,  but  by  a  process  which  may  be 
called  diffluence.  In  so  doing  it  may  come  into  the  neighborhood  of 
objects  fit  to  form  its  food  ;  these  it  inwraps,  and  absorbing  what  is 
digestible  rejects  the  rest.  Or  its  wanderings  may  lead  it  into  the 
way  of  some  creature  by  which  it  is  itself  absorbed  and  digested. 
There  may  be  some  higher  law  than  chance  guiding  the  movements 
of  such  creatures  ;  but  so  far  as  can  be  judged  this  is  not  the  case. 
In  other  words  there  is  but  the  suspicion  of  something  like  conduct  in 
the  actions  of  the  Amoeba.  Among  other  creatures  belonging  to  the 
same  kingdom,  but  higher  in  type,  we  find  actions  so  much  better 
adjusted,  that,  though  even  yet  we  can  not  recognize  such  evidence  of 
purpose  as  enables  us  to  describe  their  actions  as  conduct,  we  yet  see 
in  their  adjustment  to  certain  ends  the  development  of  something  akin 
to  conduct.  The  actions  seem  guided  by  what  mimics  purpose  if  it  is 
not  purpose  itself. 

Now,  we  note  that  with  the  improved  adjustment  of  actions  comes 
an  increase  in  the  average  duration  of  life,  or  rather  in  the  proportion 
of  this  average  to  the  length  of  life  possible  among  these  several 
creatures. 

So  when  we  pass  to  higher  and  higher  orders  of  animals,  we  find 
in  every  case  among  the  lower  types  irregular  and  seemingly  purpose- 
less actions,  while  among  the  higher  we  find  actions  better  adjusted 
to  the  surroundings.  And,  again,  we  note  that,  where  the  combination 
of  actions,  or  what  we  may  now  call  the  conduct,  is  not  adjusted  to 
the  environment,  the  creatures'  chances  of  life  are  small,  great  num- 
bers dying  for  each  whose  life  approaches  the  average  duration.  An 
improved  adjustment  of  conduct  to  environment  increases  the  chances 
of  survival,  many  attaining  and  some  passing  the  average  of  longevity 
in  their  particular  type  or  order. 

Now,  structural  development  is  guided  by  the  fitness  or  unfitness 
of  particular  proportions  in  such  and  such  structures  for  the  great  life- 
struggle  in  which  all  animal  life  is  constantly  engaged  ;  and  functional 
development  is  guided  by  the  corresponding  fitness  or  unfitness  of  such 
and  such  functional  activities.     Just  as  certainly  the  development  of 


THE  MORALITY  OF  HAPPINESS,  313 

conduct  in  all  orders  of  living  creatures  is  guided  by  the  fitness  or 
unfitness  of  such  and  such  combinations  of  external  actions  for  the 
constant  life-contest. 

We  might  find  illustrations  of  this  in  every  kingdom,  sub-king- 
dom, order,  and  type,  of  animal  life.  Let  us,  however,  content  our- 
selves by  noting  it  in  man. 

In  the  lower  races  of  man  as  at  present  existing,  and  in  still  greater 
degree  among  the  lower  races  when  the  human  race  as  a  whole  was 
lower,  we  see  that  the  adjustments  of  external  actions  to  obtain  food, 
to  provide  shelter  against  animate  and  inanimate  enemies,  and  other- 
wise to  support  or  to  defend  life,  are  imperfect  and  irregular.  The 
savage  of  the  lowest  type  is  constantly  exposed  to  the  risk  of  losing 
his  life  either  through  hunger  or  cold,  or  through  storm,  or  from  at- 
tacks against  which  he  has  not  made  adequate  provision.  He  neither 
foresees  nor  remembers,  and  his  conduct  is  correspondingly  aimless 
and  irregular.  The  least  provident,  or  rather  the  most  improvident, 
perish  in  greatest  numbers.  Hence  there  is  an  evolution  of  conduct 
from  irregularity  and  aimlessness  by  slow  degrees  toward  the  regular- 
ity and  adaptation  of  aims  to  ends,  seen  in  advancing  civilization. 
The  ill-adjusted  conduct  which  diminishes  the  chances  of  life  dies  out 
in  the  struggle  for  life,  to  make  way  for  the  better-adjusted  conduct 
by  which  the  chances  of  life  are  increased.  The  process  is  as  certain 
in  its  action  as  the  process  of  structural  evolution.  In  either  process 
we  see  multitudinous  individual  exceptions.  Luck  plays  its  part  in 
individual  cases  ;  but  inexorable  law  claims  its  customary  rule  over 
averages.  In  the  long  run  conduct  best  adapted  and  adjusted  to 
environment  is  developed  at  the  expense  of  conduct  less  suitable  to  the 
surroundings. 

With  man,  as  with  all  orders  of  animals,  conduct  which  tends  to 
increase  the  duration  of  life  prevails  over  conduct  having  an  opposite 
tendency.  Wherefore,  remembering  the  ever-varying  conditions  un- 
der which  life  is  passed,  the  evolution  of  conduct  means  not  only  the 
development  of  well-adjusted  actions,  but  the  elaboration  of  conduct 
to  correspond  with  those  diverse  and  multitudinous  conditions. 

To  these  considerations  we  may  add  that  the  evolution  of  conduct 
not  only  tends  necessarily  to  increased  length  of  life  (necessarily,  be- 
cause shortening  of  life  means  the  diminution  of  such  conduct  as 
tends  to  shorten  life),  but  it  results  in  increased  breadth  of  life,  and 
(in  the  highest  animal)  in  increased  depth  of  life  also.  It  is  manifest 
that,  in  the  elaboration  of  activities  by  which  length  of  life  is  increased, 
breadth  of  life  is  increased  jt?ar^joa55^^.  For  these  activities  maybe 
said  to  constitute  breadth  of  life.  Passing  over  the  numerous  illustra- 
tions which  might  be  drawn  from  the  lower  orders  of  animal  life,  we 
recognize  in  man  a  vast  increase  in  the  breadth  of  life  as  we  pass 
from  the  limited  orders  of  activity  constituting  the  life  of  the  savage 
to  the  multiplied  and  complex  activities  involved  in  civilized  life.     In- 


314  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

creased  depth  of  life  we  recognize  only  (but  we  recognize  it  clearly) 
in  the  most  advanced  races  of  that  animal  which  not  only  thinks  and 
reasons  but  reflects. 

We  find,  then,  that  the  evolution  of  conduct  is  not  only  accom- 
panied by  increased  fullness  of  life,  but  is  to  be  estimated  by  such  in- 
crease. We  do  not  say  that  that  conduct  is  good  in  relation  to  the 
individual  which  increases  and  that  conduct  bad  which  diminishes  the 
fullness  of  individual  life  in  the  individual.  We  assert,  for  the  present, 
only  what  observation  shows — that  conduct  of  the  former  kind  is 
favored  (other  things  equal),  and  therefore  developed,  in  the  life- 
struggle,  while  conduct  of  the  latter  sort  tends  to  disappear  as  evolu- 
tion proceeds. 

Thus  far  we  have  only  considered  conduct  in  relation  to  individual 
life.  We  have  still  to  consider  the  evolution  of  conduct  as  related  to 
the  life  of  the  species. 

In  considering  the  evolution  of  structures  and  functions  we  have 
not  only  to  consider  the  influence  of  the  struggle  for  inidvidual  exist- 
ence, but  also  the  effects  of  the  contest  in  which  each  race  as  a  w^hole 
is  engaged — and  to  do  this  we  have  to  consider,  first,  those  circum- 
stances which  affect  the  propagation  of  the  race  ;  secondly,  the  relation 
of  the  individuals  of  the  race  to  their  fellows  ;  thirdly,  the  relations  of 
the  race  as  a  whole  to  other  races.  Something  akin  to  this  must  be 
done  in  considering  the  evolution  of  conduct.  We  have  seen  how 
modes  of  conduct  which  favor  the  continued  existence  of  the  individu- 
al are  developed  at  the  expense  of  modes  of  conduct  having  an  oppo- 
site tendency.  These  last  die  out,  because  the  individuals  of  the  race 
who  act  in  these  ways  die  out.  But  it  is  obvious  that  conduct  will  be 
equally  apt  to  die  out  which  tends  to  prevent  or  limit  the  adequate 
renewal  of  the  race  from  generation  to  generation.  It  is  equally  ob- 
vious that  whatever  conduct  causes  contests  (whether  for  life  or  sub- 
sistence) within  the  race  or  species,  tends  to  the  elimination  of  mem- 
bers of  the  race,  and  so  diminishes  the  chances  of  the  race  in  the 
struggle  for  existence  with  other  races.  Lastly,  the  relations  of  a  race 
to  surrounding  races  are  manifestly  of  importance  in  the  evolution  of 
conduct,  seeing  that  conduct  will  equally  tend  to  be  diminished 
whether  it  is  unfavorable  to  the  existence  of  the  race  in  which  it  is 
prevalent,  or  simply  unfavorable  to  the  separate  existence  of  an  indi- 
vidual member  of  the  race. 

Now,  with  regard  to  conduct  affecting  the  propagation  of  a  race, 
we  find  that,  like  conduct  affecting  individual  life,  it  has  been  devel- 
oped from  what  can  hardly  be  called  conduct  at  all  in  the  lowest 
grades  of  life  to  fully  developed  conduct,  with  elaborate  adaptation  of 
means  to  ends  in  the  highest.  In  the  lowest  forms  of  life,  propagation 
proceeds  by  mere  division  and  subdivision,  not  depending  so  far  as  can 
be  judged  on  any  power  of  controlling  the  process,  which  such  creat- 
ures may  possess.     In  fact,  the  Protozoa  multiply  by  dividing.     We 


THE  MORALITY   OF  HAPPINESS.  315 

have  to  pass  over  many  grades  of  life  before  we  reacli  such  imperfect 
care  for  propagation  of  the  race  as  we  find  among  those  orders  of  fish 
in  which  the  male  keeps  watch  and  ward  over  the  eggs.  Still  higher 
must  we  pass  before  we  find  any  trace  of  aifection  for  the  young,  and 
higher  yet  before  we  see  care  given  to  feed  and  protect  and  keep  the 
young  till  they  are  able  to  provide  for  themselves. 

This  brings  us  in  fact  very  near  to  the  human  race,  which,  in  its 
lowest  races,  is  distinguished  from  other  animals  chiefly  by  the  length 
of  time  during  which  it  feeds,  protects,  and  trains  its  young.  In  the 
higher  human  races  all  these  processes  are  conducted  with  greater  care 
and  elaboration  ;  more  varied  wants  are  considered  and  attended  to, 
more  elaborately  varied  means  are  used  for  the  purpose.  It  is  easily 
seen  how  such  conduct  by  aiding  the  development  of  the  race  aids  the 
development  of  the  conduct  itself  by  which  that  result  is  favored. 
Among  those  members  of  a  race  in  whom  the  proper  race-propagating 
conduct  is  not  adequately  shown,  propagation  proceeds  less  effectively 
— which  is  the  same  as  saying  that,  relatively,  such  conduct  itself  must 
be  diminishing. 

This  conclusion  is  not  inconsistent,  as  at  first  sight  it  might  appear, 
with  the  fact  that  mere  numerical  increase  of  propagation,  though  it 
means  increase  in  quantity  of  life,  is  not  always  or  even  generally  a 
proof  of  the  growth  of  the  race  in  what  may  be  called  race-vitality. 
Here  as  elsewhere  adaptation  of  means  to  ends  has  to  be  considered, 
and  that  kind  of  conduct  by  which  such  adaptation  is  secured  has  the 
best  chances  of  development  in  the  long  run.  Let  us,  for  instance, 
take  an  illustration  from  civilized  life  :  An  early  marriage  between  two 
persons,  careless  alike  of  present  duties  and  future  difiiculties,  seems  at 
first  to  tend  directly  to  the  increase  of  carelessness  and  thoughtless- 
ness ;  for  from  such  a  union  there  will  probably  come  into  existence 
more  than  the  average  number  of  offspring,  repeating  in  greater  or 
less  degree  the  w^eak  characters  of  their  parents  :  the  totality  of  life 
characterized  by  undesirable  qualities  and  conduct  will  thus  be  in- 
creased, and  increased  in  a  greater  ratio  than  the  totality  of  prudent, 
steady,  and  thoughtful  life,  Ly  a  well-considered  union  and  well-judged 
conduct  thereafter.  Yet  in  the  long  run  the  result  proves  usually 
otherwise.  (We  consider  only  average  results.)  The  larger  number  of 
offspring  of  inferior  qualities  receive  less  care  and  inferior  training  ;  so 
that  for  them  there  is  greater  probability  either  of  early  death  or  of  de- 
fective adult  life.  The  parents  suffer  also  in  the  struggle  thus  brought 
on  them,  for  which  they  are  ill-fitted.  A  diminished  amount  of  life  is 
likely  to  result,  and  (taking  the  average  of  many  cases)  probably  does 
result  ;  ^vhile  certainly  there  is  diminished  life-quality.  Hence  results 
a  correspondingly  diminished  amount  and  influence  of  the  inferior 
kind  of  conduct  shown  by  thoughtlessness  or  carelessness  about  life's 
duties.  On  the  other  hand,  the  well-judged  and  not  too  hasty  union 
of  two  care-taking  persons,  though  it  may  add  a  smaller  number  of 


3i6  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

individual  lives  to  the  life  of  the  race,  adds  better  and  more  enduring 
life,  life  more  likely  to  maintain  and  sustain  the  qualities  of  the  par- 
ents, giving  therefore  to  these  qualities  in  the  race  at  once  more  sta- 
bility and  wider  influence.  In  other  words,  the  qualities  best  suited 
for  the  propagation  of  the  race,  and  best  suited  for  the  race,  will  on 
the  average  be  developed,  while  qualities  having  opposite  tendencies 
will  either  be  eliminated,  or  though  they  may  remain  will  occupy  a 
lower  place  and  have  diminished  influence  on  the  fortunes  of  the  race 
— a  circumstance  tending  of  itself  still  further  to  their  eventual  elimi- 
nation. 

But,  within  a  race  and  in  the  relations  of  the  race  to  other  races, 
there  are  causes  which  influence  the  evolution  of  conduct.  Members 
of  a  race  fight  out  the  contest  for  existence  not  alone  but  more  or 
less  in  the  presence  of  their  fellows  and  in  the  presence  of  members  of 
other  races.  Each  individual  in  providing  for  his  own  wants  or  for 
his  own  defense  affects  more  or  less  others,  either  of  his  own  race  or 
of  other  races,  in  their  efforts  to  defend  or  sustain  their  lives.  Very 
often,  as  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  quaintly  puts  it,  "a  successful  adjust- 
ment by  one  creature  involves  an  unsuccessful  adjustment  made  by 
another  creature,  either  of  the  same  kind  or  of  a  different  kind."  The 
lion  and  the  lamb,  for  instance,  already  anticipate  the  millennium  ; 
but  the  lion  adjusts  matters  so  much  more  successfully  than  the  lamb 
as  to  take  the  outside  place  ;  the  lamb  lies  down  with  the  lion,  but — 
inside.  Among  all  races,  herbivorous  as  well  as  carnivorous,  similar 
relations  exist.  The  more  vigorous  get  the  better  food,  food  which 
the  weaker  contend  for  in  vain  or  have  to  resign,  when  obtained,  to 
superior  strength.  Within  one  and  the  same  race  there  is  still  the  same 
law.  The  stronger  monopolize,  if  they  can,  the  feeding-grounds  of 
the  race.  The  weaker,  whether  originally  so,  or  become  so  through 
age  or  disease,  succumb  in  greater  numbers  than  the  stronger  in  the 
struggle  for  existence.  Only,  while  the  death  of  those  weak  through 
age  does  not  affect  the  evolution  of  the  race,  the  greater  mortality 
among  those  originally  weaker  than  the  rest  modifies  the  race-quali- 
ties. 

In  these  contests  conduct  plays  an  important  part.  Unnecessary 
contests  involve  unnecessary  risks.  That  conduct  must  prevail  best 
in  the  long  run,  and  therefore  that  conduct  must  eventually  be  evolved 
and  developed,  by  which  adjustments  for  the  advantage  of  one  creat- 
ure do  not  needlessly  interfere  with  adjustments  for  the  advantage  of 
other  creatures.  If  we  imagine  a  carnivorous  animal  carefully  limit- 
ing his  search  for  animal  food  to  his  requirements,  not  killing  where 
there  w^as  no  occasion,  and  keeping  carefully  all  food  he  had  once 
obtained,  we  see  that  his  chances  in  the  life-struggle  would  be  better 
than  those  of  a  carnivore  of  the  same  race  who  killed  whenever  he 
got  the  chance.  It  would  be  more  the  interest  of  other  creatures  (as 
for  instance  those  who  wanted  the  same  sort  of  food)  to  eliminate 


THE  MORALITY  OF  HAPPINESS,  317 

the  carnivore  of  the  latter  sort,  than  to  remove  the  more  prudent 
member  of  the  race.  In  the  long  run  this  would  tell  even  among  the 
lower  animals.  But,  as  we  approach  the  relations  of  men  to  men  and 
men  to  animals,  we  see  more  obviously  how  conduct  in  which  the  in- 
terests or  the  wants  of  others  are  considered  is  safer  in  the  long  run, 
more  conducive  (in  hundreds  of  ways  more  or  less  complex)  to  pro- 
longed existence,  than  conduct  in  which  those  interests  and  wants  are 
neglected.  Hence  there  will  be  a  tendency,  acting  slowly  but  surely, 
to  the  evolution  of  conduct  of  the  former  kind.  More  of  those  whose 
conduct  is  of  that  character,  or  approaches  that  character,  will  sur- 
vive in  each  generation,  than  of  those  whose  conduct  is  of  an  opposite 
character.  The  difference  may  be  slight,  and  therefore  the  effect  in 
a  single  generation,  or  even  in  several,  may  also  be  slight ;  but  in  the 
long  run  the  law  must  tell.  Conduct  of  the  sort  least  advantageous 
will  tend  to  die  out,  because  those  showing  it  will  have  relatively  infe- 
rior life-chances. 

Mr.  Spencer  seems  to  me  to  leave  his  argument  a  little  incomplete 
just  here.  For,  though  he  shows  that  conduct  avoiding  harm  to 
others,  in  all  races,  must  tend  to  make  the  totality  of  life  larger,  this 
in  reality  is  insufficient.  He  is  dealing  with  the  evolution  of  conduct. 
Now,  to  take  a  concrete  example,  those  of  the  hawk  tribe  who  left 
little  birds  alone,  except  when  they  had  no  other  way  to  keep  them- 
selves alive  but  by  capturing  and  killing  them,  would  help  to  increase 
the  totality  of  life,  by  leaving  more  birds  to  propagate  their  kind  than 
would  be  left  if  a  more  wholesale  slaughter  were  carried  out.  But 
this  of  itself  would  not  tend  to  develop  that  moderation  of  hawk 
character  which  we  have  imagined.  The  creatures  helped  in  the  life- 
struggle  would  not  be  the  hawks  (so  far  as  this  particular  increase  in 
the  totality  of  life  was  concerned),  but  the  small  birds  ;  and  the  only 
kind  of  moderation  or  considerateness  encouraged  would  be  shown  in 
a  lessening  of  that  extreme  diffidence,  that  desire  to  withdraw  them- 
selves wholly  from  hawk  society,  which  we  recognize  among  small 
birds.  But  if  it  be  shown  that  the  more  wildly  rapacious  hawks  stand 
a  greater  chance  of  being  destroyed  than  those  of  a  more  moderate 
character,  then  we  see  that  such  moderation  and  steadiness  of  charac- 
ter are  likely  to  be  developed  and  finally  established  as  a  character- 
istic of  the  more  enduring  races  of  hawks.  And  similarly  in  other 
such  cases. 

It  is,  however,  in  the  development  of  conduct  in  the  higher  races 
only,  that  this  comparatively  elaborate  law  of  evolution  is  clearly  rec- 
ognized. Among  savage  races  we  still  see  apparent  exceptions  to 
the  operation  of  the  rule.  Individuals  and  classes  and  races  distin- 
guished by  ferocity  and  utter  disregard  of  the  "adjustments"  of 
others,  whether  of  their  own  race  or  of  different  races,  seem  to  thrive 
well  enough,  better  even  than  the  more  moderate  and  considerate. 
Forces  really  are  at  work  tending  to  eliminate  the  more  violent  and 


3i8  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

greedy  ;  but  they  are  not  obvious.  As  society  advances,  however, 
even  this  seeming  success  of  the  rapacious  is  found  to  diminish,  though 
as  yet  there  has  been  no  race  or  society  from  which  it  has  been  actu- 
ally eliminated.  Conduct  which  is  imperfect,  conduct  characterized 
by  antagonisms  between  groups  and  antagonisms  between  members 
of  the  same  group,  tends  to  be  more  and  more  reduced  in  amount,  by 
the  failure  or  by  the  elimination  of  those  who  exhibit  such  conduct. 
What  is  regarded  as  gallant  daring  in  one  generation  is  scorned  as 
ferocity  in  a  later  one,  resisted  as  rapacious  wrong-doiug  yet  later, 
and  later  still  is  eliminated  either  by  death  or  nearly  as  effectually 
(when  indirect  as  well  as  direct  consequences  are  considered)  by  im- 
prisonment.* 

As  violence  dies  out,  and  as  war  diminishes — which  usually  is  but 
violence  manifested  on  a  larger  scale — the  kind  of  conduct  toward 
which  processes  of  evolution  appear  to  tend,  "that  perfect  adjustment 
of  acts  to  ends  in  maintaining  individual  life  and  rearing  new  indi- 
viduals, which  is  effected  by  each  without  hindering  others  from  effect- 
ing like  perfect  adjustments,"  will  be  approached.  How  nearly  it  will 
ever  be  attained  by  any  human  race — quien  sahe  f 

One  further  consideration,  and  we  have  done  with  the  evolution 
of  conduct,  the  right  understanding  of  which  is  essential  to  the  scien- 
tific study  of  conduct.  The  members  of  a  society,  while  attending  to 
adjustments  necessary  for  their  wants  or  interests,  may  not  merely 
leave  others  free  to  make  their  adjustments  also,  but  may  help  them 
in  so  doing.  It  is  very  obvious  that  conduct  thus  directed  must  tend 
to  be  developed.  As  Mr.  Spencer  says,  such  conduct  facilitates  the 
making  of  adjustments  by  each,  and  so  increases  the  totality  of  the 
adjustments  made,  and  serves  to  render  the  lives  of  all  more  complete. 
But  besides  this  (as  he  should  also  have  shown,  since  it  is  an  essential 
part  of  the  evolution  argument),  it  tends  to  its  own  increase  :  for, 
being  essentially  mutual,  conduct  of  this  kind  is  a  favorable  factor  in 
the  life-struggle. 

We  have  next  to  consider  what,  seeing  thus  the  laws  according  to 
which  conduct  is  evolved,  we  are  to  regard  as  good  conduct  and  bad 
conduct. 

*  Many  overlook  the  bearing  of  imprisonment  on  the  evolution  of  conduct — its  in- 
fluence (when  long  terms  arc  considered)  in  diminishing  the  numerical  increase  of 
particular  types  of  character,  and  therefore  in  diminishing  the  quantity  of  particular 
forms  of  conduct. 


FEMALE  EDUCATION,  319 


FEMALE  EDUCATIOIS^  FEOM  A  MEDICAL  POINT  OF 

VIEW.* 


AS  the  result  of  my  inquiries  among  pupils  and  teachers  in  the 
advanced  schools  for  young  ladies,  I  find  that  about  five  or  six 
hours  of  actual  school- work,  and  from  two  to  four  hours  of  preparation 
at  home,  may  be  taken  as  the  time  that  is  each  day  occupied  in  educa- 
tion. Many  of  the  ambitious,  clever  girls,  in  order  to  take  high  places 
and  prizes,  work  far  longer  than  the  time  I  have  mentioned  in  prepar- 
ing at  home,  especially  if  the  musical  practicing  is  taken  into  account. 
At  certain  times  of  the  year,  before  examination,  some  of  these  girls  will 
work  twelve  and  fourteen  hours  a  day,  and  take  no  exercise  to  speak 
of,  and  but  little  fresh  air.  For  those  who  attend  the  day-schools  a 
somewhat  solemn  walk  to  and  from  school  is  the  chief  means  the  body 
has  of  keeping  healthy  at  all.  To  satisfy  the  requirements  of  the 
brain,  and  the  blood,  and  the  muscles,  and  the  digestion,  and  the  nu- 
trition, and  the  general  growth,  we  have  a  girl  getting  up  at  seven 
o'clock  in  the  dark  winter  morning,  dressing,  eating  a  hasty  breakfast 
(as  if  that  was  a  secondary  matter  that  was  too  unimportant  to  waste 
much  time  over),  having  a  revise  of  some  special  subject  learned  the 
night  before,  walking  to  school  in  perhaps  thin-soled  boots,  and  doing 
the  most  physiologically  profitable  thing  of  the  day  in  the  chat  and 
gossip  on  the  way.  School  and  lessons  from  nine  o'clock  till  two  or 
three,  or  four  often,  in  questionably  aired,  overheated,  and  dull  class- 
rooms, with  not  a  bright  bit  of  paint  or  color  in  them  to  counteract  the 
sunless  gloom  of  our  Scotch  winter  weather.  Who  ever  saw  a  class- 
room in  a  school  where  taste  had  been  exercised  in  the  decoration  and 
painting  ?  In  my  opinion  our  school-rooms  should  be  made  at  least 
as  nice  as  our  drawing-rooms.  Then  the  walk  home,  a  hurried  dinner, 
a  little  rest,  and  to  work  till  nine  or  ten  o'clock  at  night  in  gas-light. 
That  is  the  sort  of  life,  and  these  are  the  conditions,  under  which  we 
expect  not  only  prodigies  of  learning  in  all  the  sciences,  but  sweet 
tempers  and  sweetly  healthful  bodies  to  be  developed.  That  is  the 
actual  treatment  to  which  thousands  of  our  girls  are  subjected  during 
the  most  momentous  period  of  their  lives,  physiologically  ;  when  the 
growth  of  the  body  is  being  completed,  its  symmetry  and  perfection 
are  being  reached,  when  the  latent  energies  for  a  life's  work  are  being 
or  should  be  accumulating,  and  when  a  certain  amount  of  joy  and  fun 
and  play  is  Nature's  best  aid  to  health  of  body  and  mind. 

There  is  another  class  of  young  women  who  have  even  a  harder  lot 
in  many  cases,  and  these  are  the  pupil-teachers  in  the  board-schools. 

*  The  second  of  two  lectures  delivered  at  the  Philosophical  Institution  of  Edinburgh, 
November,  1882. 


320  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Their  work  is,  in  some  cases,  simply  continuous  all  day,  and  part  of  it 
is  irksome,  uninteresting  drudgery  ;  their  homes  are  often  far  from 
being  cheerful,  and  their  food  far  from  being  very  abundant.  I  know- 
as  a  fact  that  the  lives  of  some  of  our  female  pupil-teachers  are  such 
that  as  melancholy  a  "  Song  of  the  School "  could  be  sung  of  them  as 
Hood's  "  Song  of  the  Shirt." 

In  both  these  cases — the  scholars  in  the  higher  class  of  girls'  schools 
and  the  female  pupil-teachers — the  range  of  subjects  to  be  learned  at 
the  same  time  is  often  enormous.  Six,  seven,  eight,  nine,  and  even 
ten  different  subjects,  all  being  learned  at  once,  is  no  uncommon  thing  ! 
I  am  glad  to  say  that  this  is  being  corrected  in  the  best  schools,  and 
only  four  or  five  subjects  are  allowed  to  be  taught  at  the  same  time. 
This  is  surely  enough. 

If  I  had  a  school  to  construct  on  ideal  principles,  I  should  have  it 
placed  on  the  north  side  of  a  large  space  of  ground.  I  should  have  it 
one  story  only,  and  every  class-room  lofty,  and  with  roof-lights  to  let 
in  as  much  as  possible  of  our  scanty  Scotch  sunlight.  I  should  have 
the  walls  of  the  class-room  painted  in  light,  cheerful,  tasteful  colors,  to 
produce  a  cheering  effect  on  the  minds  of  the  pupils.  I  should  have 
big,  open  fireplaces  to  cheer  and  to  ventilate  the  rooms.  I  should 
have,  as  an  essential  adjunct,  a  great  room,  where  gymnastics,  romp- 
ing, dancing,  and  play  should  all  have  full  scope,  when  the  weather 
did  not  admit  of  the  girls  going  out.  I  should  not  restrain  romping 
and  play,  even  in  girls  of  eighteen,  between  classes.  Girls  between 
thirteen  and  twenty  will  romp  well,  if  they  are  in  health,  and  there  is 
no  pressure  put  on  them  that  it  is  not  the  thing  for  them  to  do.  I 
should  not  have  more  than  four  hours  of  good  hard  work  at  school, 
and  two  of  preparation  at  home.  The  fact  is,  that  our  scholars  lose 
the  benefit  for  their  health  of  the  best  part  of  our  Scotch  winter  days, 
the  forenoon,  when  we  sometimes  have  both  sunshine  and  dryness  in 
the  air.     By  the  time  school  is  over,  the  day  is  done. 

One  of  the  practices  most  energetically  relied  on  in  the  higher  class 
of  girls'  schools  is  that  of  the  competition  of  one  scholar  with  another. 
In  some  of  them  this  competition  is  terrific.  It  extends  to  every  sub- 
ject ;  it  becomes  so  keen  as  to  put  each  girl  who  is  in  the  foremost 
rank  in  a  fever-heat  of  emulation  before  the  examinations.  In  some 
cases  it  overmasters  every  other  feeling  for  the  time  being.  Ko  doubt, 
from  the  schoolmaster's  point  of  view,  it  is  the  very  thing  he  wants. 
In  his  professional  enthusiasm  he  aims  at  the  highest  mental  result. 
He  is  not  professionally  interested  in  the  health  or  the  special  nervous 
constitution  of  his  girls  ;  he  does  not  regard  them  as  each  one  a  medico- 
psychological  entity  and  problem.  I  don't  say  this  by  way  of  re- 
proach. All  good  men  try  to  attain  the  highest  result  in  their  special 
departments.  The  educator  has  no  means  of  knowing  the  constitution 
and  hereditary  weakness  of  his  girls — that  the  mother  of  one  died  of 
consumption,  that  the  father  of  another  w^as  insane,  that  neuralgia  is 


FEMALE  EDUCATION,  321 

hereditary  in  the  family  of  a  third,  that  one  has  been  nervous,  another 
had  convulsions  when  a  baby,  another  has  been  threatened  with  water 
in  the  head,  etc.  His  own  education  an^^  training  have  not  taught 
him  to  notice  or  know  the  meaning  of  narrow  chests,  or  great  thin- 
ness, or  stooping  shoulders,  or  very  big  heads,  or  quick,  jerky  move- 
ments, or  dilated  pupils,  or  want  of  appetite,  or  headaches,  or  irrita- 
bility, or  back-aches,  or  disinclination  to  bodily  exertion.  But  all  these 
things  exist  in  abundance  in  every  big  school,  and  the  girls  handi- 
capped in  that  way  are  set  into  competition  with  those  who  are  strong 
and  free  from  risks.  It  is  the  most  nervous,  excitable,  and  highly 
strung  girls  who  throw  themselves  into  the  school  competition  most 
keenly.  And  they,  of  course,  are  just  the  most  liable  to  be  injured  by 
it.  All  good  observers  say  the  intensity  of  feeling  displayed  in  girls' 
competitions  is  greater  than  among  lads,  and  that  there  is  far  more 
apt  to  arise  a  personal  animus.  Girls  don't  take  a  beating  so  quietly 
as  boys.  Their  moral  constitution,  while  in  some  ways  stronger  than 
that  of  boys,  especially  at  that  age,  suffers  more  from  any  disturbing 
cause.  The  whole  thing  takes  greater  hold  of  them — is  more  real.  It 
is  more  boys'  nature  to  fight  and  forget,  and  take  defeat  calmly. 
Girls,  I  believe,  suffer,  when  the  competition  in  schools  is  too  keen,  in 
their  tenderness  of  feeling  and  in  their  charity.  They  tend  to  attrib- 
ute unfairness  of  motive  to  their  teachers  far  more  than  boys,  just 
because  their  affective  nature  is  and  should  be  stronger  than  their  rea- 
soning power.  A  man's  idea  of  the  perfection  of  feminine  nature  is, 
that  it  always  has  some  self-denial  and  much  generosity  in  it.  Now, 
these  keen  school  competitions  admit  in  theory  of  no  such  notions  of 
self-denial  or  generosity,  though  both  are  common  enough  in  individ- 
ual cases.  An  ideal  woman  should  rejoice  as  much  in  sympathy  with 
the  winner  of  the  first  place  as  if  she  had  won  it  herself.  Men  cer- 
tainly don't,  in  their  hearts,  like  to  see  girls  competing  keenly  with 
each  other  for  anything. 

Young  women  at  adolescence  are  apt  to  have  in  large  degree  the 
feminine  power  of  taking  it  out  of  themselves  for  a  time,  more  than 
they  are  able  to  bear  for  long.  It  is  this  power  which  enables  a  mother 
to  watch  a  sick  child  for  weeks  without  almost  any  sleep,  and  without 
feeling  much  sense  of  fatigue  at  the  time.  Now,  when  this  power  is 
called  up  for  months  for  such  a  purpose  as  school  competition — ^the 
feelings  being  stimulated  by  rivalry  with  others,  and  by  the  enthusi- 
asm of  that  age,  during  a  period  of  life  when  the  body  is  undeveloped, 
and  should  be  rapidly  growing,  and  all  these  functions  and  faculties 
maturing — it  is  perverted  from  the  real  use  that  Nature  meant  it  for, 
and  the  results  can  not  fail  to  be  bad.  At  that  age  girls  are  not  only 
enthusiastic  in  perception  and  reception,  but  they  are  often  very  con*- 
scientious,  and  apply  their  ideas  of  right  and  wrong  to  things  that 
have  no  ethical  relationship.  They  are,  in  fact,  hyper-conscientious, 
and  make  themselves  unhappy  about  school  deficiencies,  for  which 

VOL.  XXIV. — 21 


322  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

they  are  not  in  the  least  responsible.  I  have  known  girls  cry  bitterly 
because  an  accident  or  headache  prevented  them  preparing  their  les- 
sons for  the  morrow,  and  blame  themselves  severely  about  it.  It  is 
not  uncommon  for  our  Scotch  girls,  at  least,  to  think  it  is  some  derelic- 
tion of  duty  and  sin  on  their  part  that  prevents  them  from  attaining  a 
high  place  at  school.  The  whole  process  of  education,  as  it  exists  in 
some  schools,  with  its  competition,  long  hours  of  work,  short  hours  of 
recreation,  enthusiasm  for  work,  and  conscientiousness  in  the  doing  of 
it,  takes  up  all  the  available  energy  of  the  girl.  There  is  little  left  for 
joyous  feeling  and  enjoyment  of  life  for  its  own  sake.  The  sources  of 
vital  energy  in  the  brain  are  not  sufficiently  replenished  by  fresh  air 
and  the  frolic  natural  to  the  age.  Blood  is  not  formed  in  sufficient 
amount,  and  pale  cheeks  and  flabby  muscles  are  the  result.  Nature 
can  not  get  material  and  force  to  build  up  the  form  toward  the  fair 
woman's  ideal,  and,  therefore,  personal  beauty  and  grace  of  movement 
are  not  attained  to  the  extent  they  should  be.  As  for  a  store  of  en- 
ergy being  laid  up,  as  it  should  be  at  that  age,  for  the  future,  for 
woman's  work  of  the  future,  for  motherhood,  for  the  race  of  the 
future,  how  can  it  be,  when  every  available  energy  is  taken  up  in  this 
educative  process  ? 

The  methods  of  education  are  nowadays  made  far  more  pleasant 
for  a  pupil  than  they  were  formerly.  Every  art  and  device  is  now 
adopted  to  make  it  attractive  and  interesting.  That,  no  doubt,  is  in 
the  right  direction,  and  it  has  resulted  from  a  closer  study  of  the  men- 
tal nature  of  pupils.  But  it  is  attended  with  this  danger,  that,  being 
more  attractive,  it  can  be  pushed  further  and  more  hurtfully  to  the 
constitution,  by  the  aid  of  the  pupils,  as  it  were.  Its  very  seductive- 
ness and  interest,  like  the  tempting  courses  of  a  feast,  tend  toward 
dangerous  surfeiting. 

It  must  be  remembered  that,  in  many  respects,  the  female  organism 
is  far  more  delicate  than  that  of  men.  This  is  especially  so  at  adoles- 
cence. The  machine  is  less  tough,  and  breaks  down  at  slighter  causes. 
It  has  more  calls  on  it.  It  needs  more  careful  management.  It  is  not 
steady  in  its  action,  but  irregular.  It  is  not  fitted  for  the  regular 
grind  that  the  man  can  keep  up.  Having  beauty  and  harmony  as  two 
of  its  great  ideal  aims,  its  strength  is  not  so  great.  Having  to  lay  up 
more  for  tlie  future,  it  can't  expend  so  much  in  the  present.  Sensi- 
tiveness always  implies  delicacy,  and  in  many  cases  instability  in 
nature.  Even  suppose  it  is  granted  that  it  was  a  good  thing  for  a 
woman  that  her  brain  should  contain  all  the  book -knowledge  that 
many  modem  educationalists  demand,  this  good  thing  might  be  al- 
together counterbalanced  if  the  labor  of  acquiring  it  stopped  one  inch 
of  growth,  or  diminished  the  joy  and  organic  satisfaction  of  life  one 
iota.  If  the  men  of  the  future  were  to  suffer  and  be  degenerate 
through  it  in  the  faintest  degree,  then  it  would  be  radically  bad. 

There  is  one  most  unaccountable  want  in  very  many  girls'  schools 


FEMALE  EDUCATION.  323 

in  our  cities.  If  boys  need  play,  fresh  air,  games,  muscular  develop- 
ment, I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  girls  need  them  all  to  the 
extent  applicable  to  their  constitution  and  strength  still  more.  For 
boys  will  have  them  to  some  extent.  If  you  don't  give  a  boy  a  play- 
ground he  will  play  on  the  street,  which  is  better  than  no  play.  Now, 
the  exigency  of  public  opinion  will  not  allow  our  young  ladies  to 
amuse  themselves  on  the  streets  ;  and,  if  not,  how  are  they  to  get  the 
fresh  air  and  muscular  exercise  that  are  absolutely  necessary  for  their 
health  and  proper  development  ?  You  can  not  starve  a  girl's  life  of 
these  things  without  doing  her  harm,  any  more  than  you  can  with  im- 
punity keep  her  on  a  short  allowance  of  food.  A  girls'  school  without 
a  play-ground,  a  gymnasium,  or  public  park  near,  I  look  on  as  a  garden 
without  sunshine,  or  a  boat  with  one  oar.  It  is  deficient  and  one- 
sided ;  it  is  a  machine  for  production  without  sufficient  provision  for 
the  renovation  of  wear  and  tear.  Mind  can't  grow  except  by  growth 
of  brain  ;  brain  can't  grow  but  through  good  food,  fresh  air,  work, 
and  rest,  in  proper  proportion.  The  blood  will  not  renew  itself  prop- 
erly in  youth  but  by  brisk  circulation,  and  this  can  only  be  got  by 
exercise  in  the  fresh  air.  The  muscles  won't  grow  and  harden  but  by 
having  plenty  of  good  blood  and  exercise.  The  fat,  that  most  essen- 
tial concomitant  of  female  adolescence,  won't  form  in  the  proper  way, 
except  the  blood  is  rich.  Fat  is  to  the  body  what  fun  is  to  the  mind, 
an  indication  of  spare  power  that  is  boiling  over  and  available  for 
future  use.  I  don't  mean  an  excessive  amount  of  fat ;  I  mean  that 
amount  that  gives  roundness,  plumpness,  and  beauty.  This  little  esti- 
mated substance  is,  with  form,  the  great  source  of  female  beauty. 
Without  it,  form  can  not  make  a  perfect  woman  ;  without  it,  a  young 
woman  can  not  be  said  to  be  really  in  health  ;  without  it,  the  body 
generally  has,  in  most  instances,  too  little  spare  energy  to  resist  and 
to  recover  from  disease.  Therefore,  a  proper  amount  of  fat  should, 
in  its  way,  be  as  much  looked  to  in  a  young  woman  as  intellectual 
power  or  keen  feeling.  The  right  sort  of  fat,  firm  and  smooth,  gives 
the  lines  of  beauty  and  the  idea  of  softness  and  health  to  woman.  But 
to  the  physiologist  its  great  value  and  importance  are  as  an  index  of 
good  nutrition  and  a  reserve  of  spare  material,  not  needed  for  work 
just  now,  but  called  up  in  any  illness.  When  anything  is  both  a 
beauty  and  a  strength,  it  should  not  be  decried  or  spoken  disrespect- 
fully of.  I  knew  a  man — not  a  lunatic — who  always  said  it  was  his 
highest  ambition  to  be  fat.  Certainly  there  are  many  more  foolish 
wishes  for  our  growing  adolescent  girls  than  that  they  should  all  be 
fat.  It  is  just  because  this  seems  to  be  incompatible  with  the  work  in 
some  of  our  modern  city  high-class  schools,  that  I  think  that  work 
must  be  conducted  to  some  extent  on  wrong  principles. 

I  am  no  educationalist,  and  may  be  accused  of  speaking  about 
what  I  am  ignorant  of,  if  I  suggest  that  too  many  things  are  taught 
at  the  same  time,  and  too  little  time  is  taken  for  the  whole  process. 


324  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

Think  of  an  undeveloped  brain  getting  up  book-knowledge  on  ten 
different  subjects  all  the  same  day,  and  this  going  on  day  after  day 
for  years  !  It  is  altogether  contrary  to  the  principles  of  a  sound 
psychology  to  imagine  that  any  sort  of  mental  process,  worthy  of  the 
name  of  thinking,  can  take  place  in  that  brain  while  that  is  going  on. 
The  natural  tendency  of  a  good  brain  at  that  age  to  be  inquisitive 
and  receptive  is  glutted  to  more  than  satiety.  The  natural  process  of 
building  up  a  fabric  of  mental  completeness  by  having  each  new  fact 
and  observation  looked  at  in  different  ways,  and  having  it  suggest 
other  facts  and  ideas,  and  then  settle  down  as  a  part  of  the  regular  fur- 
niture of  the  mind,  can  not  possibly  go  on  where  new  facts  are  shov- 
eled in  by  the  hundred  day  by  day.  The  effect  of  this  is  bad  on 
boys,  but  is  worse  on  girls,  because  it  is  more  alien  to  their  mental 
constitution.  The  effect  on  them  of  this  unnatural  process  is  to  ex- 
haust the  nervous  power  at  the  time,  and  to  leave  the  brain  afterward 
filled  with  useless  things  that  are  soon  forgotten  and  pass  away ;  as 
Goethe  said  about  professional  men  :  they  labor  under  a  great  disad- 
vantage in  not  being  allowed  to  be  ignorant  of  what  is  to  them  use- 
less. The  vital  energies  and  nervous  power  that  had  thus  been  thrown 
away  should  have  gone  toward  a  feminine  equipment  of  a  healthy, 
well-developed  body,  a  mind  built  up  and  stored  with  knowledge  that 
had  a  relation  to  its  own  nature  and  to  the  wants  of  its  future  life, 
affections  not  attenuated  by  scholastic  routine,  and  a  cheerfulness  that 
is  only  compatible  with  good  health.  The  cramming  up  of  the  dry 
facts  of  those  many  subjects  is  in  most  cases  a  weariness  and  pain, 
while  the  intelligent  study  of  one  third  of  them,  selected  on  account 
of  their  fitness  to  the  mental  constitution  of  the  learner,  or  her  prob- 
able requirements  in  future  life,  might  be  a  pleasure  and  a  lasting 
profit.  I  would  strongly  advise  parents  occasionally  to  take  their 
daughters'  night  tasks  and  do  them  themselves.  It  is  far  more  im- 
portant to  extend  female  education  till  after  twenty  years  of  age  than 
male  education. 

While  education  is  going  on,  a  regular  periodic  testing  of  the 
bodily  growth  and  condition  should  also  be  carried  out  in  the  case  of 
every  girl.  Her  rate  of  growth  should  be  marked  by  a  notch  on  a  stick 
every  quarter.  As  regularly  as  the  school  fees  are  paid  her  weight 
should  be  taken,  the  color  of  her  cheeks  and  lips  should  be  looked  at 
and  noted,  her  appetite  and  digestion  should  be  looked  to,  her  habits 
of  activity  or  otherwise  should  be  observed,  her  power  of  sleeping 
should  be  noticed,  the  mode  of  growth  should  be  observed — e.  g., 
whether  her  chest  is  expanding,  whether  her  shoulders  are  sloping  or 
stooping,  whether  she  is  soft  or  firm  in  the  flesh,  etc.  Her  general 
mental  condition,  whether  she  is  frolicsome  or  irritable,  enthusiastic 
or  sluggish,  selfish  and  grudging,  or  not,  is  of  great  moment  as  an  in- 
dex of  the  general  brain-condition.  Of  course,  anything  like  disorder 
of  health,  or  pain,  or  sleeplessness,  or  want  of  appetite,  or  pallor,  or 


FEMALE  EDUCATION.  325 

thinness,  should  be  at  once  attended  to  before  it  goes  too  far.  The 
great  thing  is  to  stop  the  beginnings  of  evil.  If  a  girl  has  grown  a 
couple  of  inches  a  year,  then  depend  upon  it  she  should  not  study 
hard.  Nature  has  enough  to  do  in  such  a  case  to  firm  up  the  body  in 
proportion  to  its  bulk.  You  want  not  only  growth,  but  activity,  grace 
of  movement,  alertness,  strength.  You  won't  have  these  if  the  girl 
goes  on  studying  hard  while  she  is  growing  fast.*  If  growth  and  in- 
crease in  weight  stop  too  soon,  a  wise  parent  will  send  off  her  daughter 
to  the  country  to  run  to  grass  for  a  time,  to  see  if  mental  inactivity 
will  restore  the  body-growth.  If  she  is  getting  thin,  let  her  live  out 
in  the  open  air,  instead  of  in  a  school,  till  her  appetite  becomes  raven- 
ous, and  she  puts  on  flesh. 

There  are  three  considerations  that  ought  certainly  to  determine 
the  mode,  kind,  and  amount  of  the  education  given  to  any  youth  or 
maiden.  These  are — 1.  The  hereditary  constitution  of  the  brain,  in- 
cluding both  its  strong  and  weak  points  ;  2.  The  actual  ascertainable 
mental  and  bodily  qualities  and  capacities  and  special  tendencies  of 
the  child  ;  and,  3.  The  purposes  in  life  that  he  or  she  is  destined  to 
accomplish.  It  is  owing  to  our  backward  physiological  knowledge 
alone  that  the  two  former  have  not  hitherto  been  taken  into  account, 
as  they  ought  to  have  been,  by  doctors,  parents,  and  teachers.  In  re- 
gard to  heredity,  when  we  know  its  laws  more  fully  in  human  beings, 
we  shall  be  able,  by  influences  brought  to  bear  on  development  and  by 
appropriate  conditions  of  life,  greatly  to  counteract  weak  points,  and 
to  make  strong  ones  available  for  the  purposes  of  life.  We  are  now 
able  to  do  so  to  a  considerable  extent  in  the  animal  kingdom.  Man 
has  for  his  own  purposes  developed  breeds  of  carrier-pigeons,  race- 
horses, pointer-dogs,  etc.  We  shall  not  be  able  to  control  the  heredity 
of  human  beings  as  we  can  that  of  the  lower  animals,  but  we  can  apply 
conditions  of  life  in  a  scientific  manner  for  our  aims.  And,  even  in 
regard  to  the  mode  in  which  marriages  are  arranged,  a  medico-psy- 
chologist can  not  for  a  moment  admit  that  young  persons  of  either 
sex  fall  in  love  and  assort  themselves  on  no  scientific  principles.  The 
sympathies  and  affinities  of  sex  are  just  as  much  subject  to  law  as  any 
other  part  of  nature.  We  doctors  have  much  occasion  to  know  that 
persons  of  a  nervous  heredity  and  disposition  are  extremely  apt  to  fall 
in  love  with  and  marry  each  other.  The  way  in  which  nervousness  of 
all  sorts  is  thus  increased  is  extraordinary.  The  educators  do  their 
best  to  foster  this  tendency  in  the  maidens  by  brain-forcing.  The 
brilliancy  of  the  results  at  the  time  are  certainly  very  tempting. 

*  On  October  1st  I  weighed  and  measured  three  children  of  one  family,  two  boys  and  a 
girl,  on  their  return  to  school  after  the  holidays,  and  on  November  30th  I  again  did  so. 
The  boys  had  each  gained  four  pounds  in  weight  and  grown  half  an  inch,  the  girl  had 
neither  gained  nor  grown.  The  boys  had  had  lots  of  play  in  the  open  air  between  les- 
sons, the  girl  had  been  five  hours  each  day  continuously  in  school.  The  boys'  class- 
rooms had  been  built  for  a  school,  the  girl's  class-rooms  were  in  a  small  private  house. 


326  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

It  may  be  that  it  will  be  for  the  advantage  of  the  world  deliber- 
ately to  develop  diJffereDt  kinds  of  men  and  women  in  the  future. 
We  may  get  better  general  results  by  having  brain  specialties  fostered. 
We  may  thus  have  some  families  of  special  aesthetic  power,  some  of 
mechanical  genius,  and  some  of  enduring  muscular  work,  just  as  we 
have  pointers,  greyhounds,  and  sheep-dogs.  But  even  then  it  would 
be  more  than  ever  necessary  to  see  that  the  special  strong  point  did 
not  override  and  interfere  with  the  general  nutritive  power  and  vital 
energy.  In  training  a  greyhound,  however  anxious  the  trainer  is  to 
get  speed,  he  takes  care  that  the  dog  is  very  well  nourished  while  he 
grows,  and  he  never  develops  his  speed  till  the  growth  is  nearly  done, 
and  the  bones  are  set.  He  doesn't  all  the  time  he  is  growing  run  the 
animal  every  day.  He  knows  that  would  spoil  the  general  strength, 
and  shorten  the  period  of  greatest  activity. 

The  development  of  special  strong  points  during  the  process  of  the 
education  of  children  I  believe  to  be  of  vast  importance  to  the  race, 
but  it  must  be  done  in  accordance  with  Nature's  general  laws  that  gov- 
ern the  development  of  the  organism  as  a  whole.  The  special  educa- 
tion must  be  accompanied  by  the  general  development.  It  must  not 
be  pushed  to  the  extent  that  it  absorbs  energy  needed  for  other  pur- 
poses. I  can  imagine  no  more  interesting  or  important  problem  in 
education  than  the  successful  cultivation  of  specialties.  It  is  quite 
certain  that  as  yet  it  has  not  been  solved  or  even  studied  to  any  ex- 
tent. If  you  hear  of  a  young  lady  now  who  is  very  musical,  you 
usually  find  she  has  so  much  music  added  to  the  grammar  and  the 
French  and  German.  It  is  as  important  in  education  to  know  what 
things  to  omit  as  to  know  what  things  to  press.  It  is  enough  to  make 
one  despair  of  the  inherent  reasonableness  of  human  nature  to  think 
of  the  amount  of  time  and  toil  that  are  given  in  Edinburgh  to  the 
learning  of  things  for  which  there  is  no  inherent  capacity  in  the  learn- 
ers ;  things  that  go  against  the  intellectual  grain,  that  are  learned 
poorly  and  with  much  difficulty,  against  Nature  ;  and  are  forgotten  at 
once,  in  accordance  with  Nature's  laws.  Think  of  the  girls  who  toil 
at  music,  who  have  no  inherent  musical  capacity  ;  of  the  time  that  is 
taken  in  committing  to  memory  rules  of  grammar,  and  doing  parsing, 
the  real  meaning  of  which  the  girls'  brains  could  not  comprehend,  if 
they  lived  till  they  were  ninety  ;  of  the  labor  and  sorrow  given  to  ac- 
quire languages,  by  girls  whom  Nature  meant  only  to  speak  their 
mother-tongue  ;  of  the  futile  attempts  to  take  those  past  the  rule  of 
three,  whom  Nature  intended  to  stop  at  simple  division.  The  sad  thing 
is  that  we  all  know  each  of  those  girls  could  do  something  or  other 
very  well  and  to  some  purpose  in  after-life,  if  we  could  only  hit  on 
what  it  is. 

I  don't  want  to  frighten  any  one  unduly  by  the  list  of  bodily  and 
mental  diseases  and  defects  that  are  in  some  cases  attributable  to  wrong 
methods  of  education  that  I  am  about  to  refer  to.     I  would  beg  every 


FEMALE  EDUCATION.  327 

one  who  hears  me  to  keep  in  mind  that  the  worst  of  such  things  are 
the  exception.  No  process  of  attempted  educational  stimulation  will 
do  much  harm  to  very  many  brains,  fortunately  as  I  think.  Their  in- 
herent stability — which,  by-the-way,  parents  and  teachers  will  igno- 
rantly  call  stupidity  or  want  of  application — sometimes  preserves  them 
from  being  forced  into  work  inconsistent  with  their  bent  and  capacity. 
Who  does  not  know  dozens  of  fine  girls — capable,  practical,  intelligent, 
affectionate,  lively — who  never  could  be  made  scholars  of,  and  yet  who 
know  more  that  will  be  useful  to  them  than  some  of  the  first  prize- 
women  ?  They  never  ran  any  risk  of  suffering  from  over-education, 
their  only  risk  was  badly  ventilated  school-rooms  and  want  of  scope 
for  play.  It  is  very  difficult,  I  know,  to  treat  of  the  professional  as- 
pect of  a  question  popularly  without  producing  misconceptions.  If  a 
case  of  consumption  from  ill-ventilated  school-rooms  is  referred  to, 
many  people  jump  to  the  conclusion  that  all  girls  are  in  danger  of  con- 
sumption. Nothing  could  be  more  absurd.  The  fact  is  that,  if  we 
and  our  families  were  thoroughly  healthy  in  original  constitution,  the 
educationalists  and  their  present  over-enthusiastic  methods  would  not 
hurt  our  daughters  so  very  much,  perhaps,  at  least  permanently.  Na- 
ture would  call  a  halt  with  sufficient  distinctness  before  much  harm 
was  done,  and  then  the  wondrous  recuperative  power  of  that  time  of 
life  would  soon  put  matters  right  again.  It  is  because  few  persons 
nowadays  have  faultless  constitutions,  and  few  families  are  altogether 
free  from  tendencies  to  some  disease  or  other,  that  one  needs  to  be 
now  more  careful  of  the  constitutions  of  the  mothers  of  the  next  gen- 
eration. 

The  first  bodily  defect  to  which  I  shall  refer,  as  the  result  of  over- 
stimulation of  brain,  is  what  we  doctors  call  ancemia,  or  in  other  words 
bloodlessness.  The  girls  look  pale  about  the  lips,  and  have  no  rosy 
cheeks.  This  is  manifestly  most  common  in  school-girls.  Any  one 
can  see  it. 

The  next  faulty  bodily  condition  that  may  be  .caused  by  wrong 
methods  of  education  is  that  of  stunted  growth.  I  have  seen  girls,  the 
daughters  of  well-grown  parents,  who  simply  stopped  growing  too 
soon.  They  are  more  or  less  dwarfish  specimens  of  their  kind,  this  be- 
ing caused,  as  I  believe,  by  the  vital  and  nervous  force  being  appro- 
priated by  the  mental  part  of  the  brain  in  learning  its  tasks,  and  by  the 
conditions  of  life  in  the  school-rooms  not  being  good,  the  air  bad,  in- 
sufficient play-hours,  no  play-ground,  no  play-room,  no  walking  in  the 
fresh  air  and  sunshine.  I  have  seen  other  girls  who  grew  tall  enough, 
but  wouldn't  fatten.  They  remained  thin  and  scrawny.  Now,  this  is 
not  what  a  woman  should  be  at  any  age  if  it  can  be  helped. 

The  next  condition  sometimes  produced  is  best  described  by  the 
word  nervousness.  That  is  a  condition  of  mind  and  body  in  which 
there  is  want  of  stability  and  fixity,  undue  excitability,  bodily  restless- 
ness, want  of  solidity  and  calmness  of  constitution,  ungrounded  fears. 


328  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

deficient  power  of  self-control,  over-sensitiveness  in  all  directions,  and 
a  very  great  many  other  unpleasant  things,  far  too  numerous  to  men- 
tion here.  This  nervousness  is  commonly  hereditary,  but  may  be 
greatly  aggravated  or  counteracted  by  the  conditions  of  life,  especially 
in  youth.  Such  a  constitution  is  a  great  curse  to  a  woman,  and  ren- 
ders her  liable  to  many  diseases.  It  means  a  brain  wanting  in  reserve 
or  surplus  energy.  Such  a  brain  is  like  a  galvanic  battery  that  does 
not  work  steadily,  but  gives  out  too  much  power  at  one  time,  then  sud- 
denly is  exhausted,  and  is  always  needing  replenishing.  There  can  be 
but  little  doubt  that  the  tendency  of  our  modem  life  is  toward  the  de- 
velopment of  the  nervous  type  of  constitution,  or  diathesis.  American 
physicians  and  socialists  are  unanimous  that  this  constitution  is  very 
common  in  their  country.  I  think  there  can  be  little  doubt  that,  if  we 
wish  our  descendants  to  multiply  and  cover  the  earth,  we  should  try  by 
all  means  and  counteract  this  tendency  to  the  nervous  constitution  in  a 
morbid  degree.  It  is  most  hereditary  in  all  its  forms.  There  are  few 
families  among  the  educated  classes  nowadays  free  from  some  taint 
of  it,  and  it  is  easily  increased.  In  the  families  that  are  now  free  there 
is  much  risk  of  its  being  developed  in  the  period  of  adolescence  in  the 
girls,  through  the  present  system  of  education.  All  our  modern  ways 
of  looking  at  life  help  to  develop  nerves  in  a  bad  sense.  The  ideal  of 
man  and  woman  has  changed  from  strength  to  culture,  from  body  to 
brain.  The  great  brawny-muscled  man,  who  knows  nothing  of  sick- 
ness, but  has  few  ideas,  is  looked  down  on  ;  the  rosy  mother  of  a  dozen 
healthy  children,  who  has  no  taste  for  books,  is  little  thought  of.  It 
may  be  that  the  time  will  come  when  such  people  will  be  more  highly 
appreciated.  Out  of  the  nervous  diathesis  may  arise  all  the  forms  of 
nervous  disease,  when  their  exciting  causes  are  put  in  operation. 

Strongly  connected  with  nervousness  is  the  tendency  to  suffer 
from  pain  without  any  actual  disease  being  present  to  account  for 
it  ;  that  is,  to  be  the  subject  of  headaches  and  neuralgias.  Head- 
ache is  the  most  common  thing  suffered  by  school-girls,  and  originated 
by  the  conditions  of  school-life.  Dr.  Truchler  found  that  in  Darm- 
stadt, Paris,  and  Nuremburg,  one  third  of  the  pupils  in  the  schools 
suffered  more  or  less  from  headaches.  I  think  we  should  find  this 
proportion  in  our  advanced  girls'  schools  in  Edinburgh.  He  concludes 
that  it  is  caused  by  the  intellectual  exertion,  combined  with  bad  air, 
with  the  annoyances  and  excitements  and  worries,  the  wasting  and 
rasping  anxieties  of  school-life.  Nothing  is  so  terrible  as  severe  neu- 
ralgia, and  beyond  a  doubt  girls  acquire  it  often  enough  by  the  condi- 
tions of  school-life.  Headaches  in  a  school-girl  usually  mean  exhausted 
nerve-power  through  overwork,  over-excitement,  over-anxiety,  or  bad 
air.  Rest,  a  good  laugh,  or  a  country  walk,  will  usually  cure  it  readily 
enough  to  begin  with.  But  to  become  subject  to  headaches  is  a  very 
serious  matter,  and  all  such  nervous  diseases  have  a  nasty  tendency  to 
recur,  to  become  periodic,  to  be  set  up  by  the  same  causes,  to  become 


FEMALE  EDUCATION.  329 

an  organic  habit  of  the  body.  For  any  woman  to  become  liable  to 
severe  neuralgia  is  a  most  terrible  thing.  It  means  that  while  it  lasts 
life  is  not  worth  having.  It  paralyzes  the  power  to  work,  it  deprives 
her  of  the  power  to  enjoy  anything,  it  tends  toward  irritability  of 
temper,  it  tempts  to  the  use  of  narcotics  and  stimulants. 

There  is  but  little  doubt  that  a  tendency  to  take  stimulants  to  ex- 
cess, a  morbid  craving  for  alcohol,  or  drugs  that  have  something  like 
the  same  effect,  goes  with  the  nervousness  engendered  by  school-life. 
A  healthy  brain  in  a  healthy  body  should  have  no  inordinate  craving 
for  stimulants.  Some  of  the  worst  examples  I  have  seen  of  a  craving 
for  stimulants  or  opium,  having  become  uncontrollable  and  a  real  dis- 
ease, have  been  in  our  highly  -  educated  ladies.  Tea  sometimes  is 
craved  for,  and  taken  to  excess  in  such  cases. 

The  most  important  effect  of  all  I  can  not  very  well  enter  on  in 
detail,  for  it  relates  to  woman's  highest  function,  that  of  motherhood. 
But  that  this  is  affected,  and  most  seriously,  by  over-education  in  bad 
methods  and  under  bad  conditions,  no  physician  will  deny.  If  the 
end  of  mind-culture  is  to  be  that  its  victim  is  to  suffer  in  a  more  ter- 
rible way  from  mother  Eve's  primal  curse,  and  is  to  have  fewer  off- 
spring, and  those  she  has  are  to  be  of  a  puny  kind,  the  risk  will  be 
recognized  by  all  thoughtful  persons  as  too  severe  to  be  deliberately 
run  for  our  daughters.  Perfect  health  is  a  priceless  blessing  to  all, 
but  it  means  even  more  to  women  than  to  men.  The  cheerfulness  and 
vivacity  that  are  their  special  characteristic,  seem  to  exist  not  for 
themselves  alone,  but  for  their  families  as  well,  and  those  are,  gen- 
erally speaking,  wanting  if  the  health  is  bad.  Woman  is  gifted  with 
the  power  not  only  of  bearing  her  own  share  of  ills,  but  of  helping  to 
bear  those  of  others.  She  can't  do  so  in  the  same  degree  if  she  is  not 
in  health.  She  is  a  plant  more  difficult  to  rear  than  man  in  our  state 
of  society.  More  care  has  to  be  taken  of  her  to  mature  and  consoli- 
date all  her  organs  and  functions.  Once  fully  formed  as  a  woman, 
she  can  then  stand  much,  but  she  is  specially  liable  to  the  effects  of 
adverse  conditions  during  her  development.  The  full  bloom  of  her 
perfection  as  the  tender  mother,  the  never-tiring  nurse  of  a  large  fam- 
ily of  children,  can  not  be  attained  if  she  has  been  stunted  in  her  full 
development  in  any  way.  "Whether  she  is  an  actual  mother  or  not, 
she  is  infinitely  the  better  for  having  the  full  capacity  of  motherhood. 
Be  she  teacher,  scholar,  or  lady  of  fortune,  she  will  be  happier  and  do 
her  work  far  better,  if  she  has  all  the  qualities  of  motherhood.  They 
influence  body  and  mind  ;  any  process  of  education  that  lessens  them 
deprives  the  world  of  means  of  happiness.  It  stunts  the  woman  and 
robs  the  world.  No  intellectual  results,  no  culture,  no  mental  eleva- 
tion, can  make  up  to  the  world  for  the  loss  of  any  perceptible  degree 
of  motherhood  ;  and,  as  an  actual  fact,  physicians  find  that  over-edu- 
cation by  bad  methods  and  under  bad  conditions  has  this  effect. 

The  first  appearance  of  the  conditions  called  hysteria  is  usually 


330  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

coincident  with  adolescence,  and  is  undoubtedly  caused  in  many  in- 
stances by  subtile  disturbances  of  the  health,  due  to  prolonged  school- 
hours.  This  is  a  most  troublesome  disease,  and  most  varied  in  its 
manifestations.  In  nothing  is  the  connection  between  mind  and 
body,  between  function  and  feeling,  better  seen  than  in  certain  hys- 
terical conditions.  You  have  a  splendidly  educated  girl  according 
to  the  modern  standard,  with  a  physique  that  seems  very  fairly  de- 
veloped, just  showing  by  certain  subtile  indications  that  the  mental 
portion  of  the  brain  has  been  made  too  dominant.  You  have  this 
girl  prostrated  in  what  seems  the  most  mysterious  way  by  hysteria, 
in  one  of  its  hundred  forms.  You  can't  actually  say  what  is  wrong, 
but  you  know  that,  if  she  had  been  brought  up  in  the  country,  with 
moderate  schooling,  and  four  or  five  hours  a  day  in  the  open  air,  there 
would  not  have  occurred  anything  of  the  kind.  It  may  result  from 
idleness  just  as  it  does  from  over-brain- work,  the  one  being  as  much 
contrary  to  the  laws  of  nature  as  the  other.  It  is  an  illustration  of 
the  fact  that  you  may  have  effects  produced  by  wrong  methods  of 
education  that  are  not  to  be  detected  till  they  break  out  in  actual 
disease.  If  the  seeds  of  disease  or  the  conditions  that  tend  to  it  are 
laid  by  any  system  of  training,  it  is  nearly  as  bad  as  actual  visible 
disease.  Sometimes  it  is  said  about  the  girls  in  a  school,  "  Just  look 
at  them,  are  they  not  fairly  healthy  for  town  girls  who  are  working 
hard  ?  "  But  one  of  the  dangers  is  that  we  may  not  be  able  to  see 
the  beginnings  of  evil,  and  only  by  sad  experience  afterward  find  that 
they  were  there. 

The  last  kinds  of  disease  to  which  I  shall  refer  as  being  a  direct  or 
indirect  result,  in  some  cases,  of  over-study  under  bad  conditions,  are 
inflammation  of  the  brain  and  its  membranes,  and  insanity — the  for- 
mer of  which  all  physicians  have  often  enough  seen  to  be  the  direct 
result  of  over-study  ;  while  the  latter  may  be  regarded,  in  its  essential 
nature,  as  the  acme  of  all  nervous  diseases.  In  it,  that  highest  portion 
of  the  brain  that  ministers  directly  to  mind  is  disordered,  that  very 
portion  that  in  over-education  has  been  forced  and  crammed  with 
book-knowledge.  Mental  disease  is  not  common  till  toward  the  end 
of  the  period  of  adolescence,  but  the  conditions  that  lead  up  to  it  are 
common  enough  before  then.  The  mere  acquiring  knowledge  seldom 
causes  insanity.  Its  causes  in  youth  are  all  the  conditions  of  life  that 
accompany  over-education,  as  well  as  the  brain  -  forcing  itself,  the 
want  of  fresh  air,  the  poor  bodily  development,  the  poverty  of  blood, 
tlie  deranged  undeveloped  bodily  functions.  Insanity  in  early  youth 
always  arises  out  of  some  nervous  weakness  in  ancestry.  It  may  not 
be  mental  disease  itself — for  a  tendency  to  neuralgia  or  drunkenness, 
or  mere  nervousness  in  ancestors,  may  become  insanity  in  the  off- 
spring, if  wrong  conditions  of  life  are  in  operation.  But  it  is  often 
just  the  children  of  highly  nervous  parents — perhaps  subject  to  "  nerv- 
ous depression" — who  are  quick,  precocious,  and  educable  in  book- 


FEMALE  EDUCATION.  331 

knowledge  to  a  very  high  degree.  They  get  pushed  to  their  bent, 
and  with  all  this  they  have  little  craving  for  fresh  air  and  romping. 
They  are  often  over-conscientious  and  most  receptive.  In  fact,  they 
are  the  very  young  women  that  delight  the  heart  of  the  teacher,  and 
sometimes  carry  off  all  the  prizes  at  the  end  of  a  school  session.  The 
treatment  of  the  teacher  and  the  physician  would  be  exactly  opposite 
for  such  cases.  The  physician  would  take  such  brains  to  put  them  to 
grass  for  two  or  three  generations — would  scarcely  educate  them  at 
all  in  the  ordinary  sense — would  send  them  to  grow  up  almost  unin- 
structed  in  the  country,  cultivating  blood,  bone,  muscle,  and  doing 
mechanical  work  alone.  That  would  be  the  only  salvation  for  such 
brains.  But  then  we  should  perhaps  miss  having  a  genius  once  in  a 
century.  We  should  have  our  Chattertons  working  as  joiners  in  the 
country,  instead  of  writing  poetry  and  committing  suicide  in  town 
garrets.  I  could  adduce  many  lamentable  examples,  from  my  own 
experience,  of  most  brilliant  school  careers  ending  in  insanity.  If  I 
had  written  down  the  fierce  apostrophe  of  a  young  lady  of  twenty  on 
her  entry  into  the  asylum  at  Morningside,  at  the  end  of  a  school  career 
of  unexampled  success,  the  reading  of  it  would  do  more  to  frighten 
the  ambitious  parents  of  such  children  from  hastening  their  daughters 
forward  at  school  too  fast  than  all  the  scientific  protests  we  doctors 
can  make.  She  was  well  aware  of  the  cause  of  her  illness,  and  with 
passionate  eloquence  enumerated  the  consequences  of  her  losing  her 
reason. 

It  is  not  very  long  since  a  pupil-teacher,  who  had  been  working  all 
winter  about  ten  hours  a  day  in  teaching  and  preparation,  and  had 
taken  no  exercise  or  fresh  air  at  all,  after  suffering  for  a  while  from 
headaches  and  confusion  of  mind,  threw  herself  into  a  pond.  She 
told  me  afterward  that  the  harder  she  worked  the  more  confused  she 
got,  then  she  got  depressed,  and  then  lost  her  self-control. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  too  hard  school- work  in  young  women 
during  the  adolescent  period  tends  to  bring  out  hereditary,  nervous, 
and  other  weaknesses.  The  great  natural  protection  against  these  is 
sound  health  and  general  bodily  vigor  in  a  frame  that  has  been  brought 
carefully  to  full  maturity,  harmonious  and  healthy  in  all  its  functions. 
This  law  is  found  to  prevail  in  regard  to  nervous  hereditary  weak- 
nesses, that  the  stronger  and  more  direct  the  tendency,  the  earlier  in 
life  such  weakness  is  apt  to  show  itself.  If  we  can  postpone  it,  we 
can  frequently  avert  it  altogether. 

Of  the  chief  purely  mental  results  of  a  brain-education  higher  than 
the  whole  organization  can  bear,  one  is  unquestionably  a  certain  change 
in  the  natural  mental  type  of  woman.  I  shall  be  asked,  of  course.  What 
is  the  natural  female  psychical  type  ?  Is  it  to  be  found  in  the  unedu- 
cated women  of  the  East,  or  among  the  uncultivated  classes  of  the  West  ? 
Without  going  into  argument,  I  may  say  that  I  should  be  willing  to 
take  the  general  character  of  womanliness  pervading  all  the  various 


332  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

types  of  young  women  created  for  us  by  the  writers  of  genius,  to  whom 
I  referred  in  my  first  lecture.  That  type  is  physiologically,  as  well  as 
psychologically,  true  to  nature.  It  is  absolutely  necessary  as  a  com- 
plement to  the  masculine  type  of  mind.  Both  are  incomplete  by  them- 
selves. The  world  can  not  do  without  them  both  ;  they  correspond 
to  the  bodily  organization  of  each  sex.  Now,  if  the  education  process 
for  the  female  is  to  be  just  on  the  lines  of  that  for  the  male,  if  the 
mold  into  which  the  brain  of  each  is  to  fit  is  to  be  the  same  type — and 
there  is  no  question  of  emasculating  the  male  type — then,  undoubt- 
edly, in  the  result,  we  must  expect  to  find  a  change  in  the  female  type 
of  mind.  Very  many  competent  observers  say  that  this  is  actually 
very  apparent  in  some  of  the  school-girls  of  the  present  day.  The  un- 
ceasing grind  at  book-knowledge,  from  thirteen  to  twenty,  has  actually 
warped  the  woman's  nature,  and  stunted  some  of  her  most  character- 
istic qualities.  She  is,  no  doubt,  cultured,  but  then  she  is  unsympa- 
thetic ;  learned,  but  not  self-denying.  The  nameless  graces  and 
charms  of  manner  have  not  been  evoked  as  much  as  they  might  have 
been.  Softness  is  deficient.  It  takes  much  to  alter  the  female  type 
of  mind,  but  a  few  generations  of  masculine  education  will  go  far  to 
make  some  change.  If  the  main  aims  and  ambitions  of  many  women 
are  other  than  to  be  loved,  admired,  helped,  and  helpful,  to  be  good 
wives  and  mothers  with  quiverfuls  of  children,  to  be  self-sacrificing, 
and  to  be  the  centers  of  home-life,  then  those  women  will  have  under- 
gone a  change  from  the  present  feminine  type  of  mind.  But  we  must 
comfort  ourselves  with  Lord  Bacon's  reflection,  that  "  Nature  is  often 
hidden,  sometimes  overcome,  seldom  extinguished." 

American  experience  in  the  education  of  young  women  has  been 
very  instructive.  The  natural  intelligence,  the  form  of  government, 
and  the  stimulating  climate,  have  all  united  in  making  the  standard  of 
education  very  high  for  women  as  well  as  for  young  men.  The  na- 
tional hurry  has  tended  to  make  them  do  much  in  as  short  a  time  as 
possible  too.  In  the  Eastern  States — especially  Massachusetts — the 
schools  for  girls  have  for  many  years  been  most  highly  elaborated. 
At  first  the  effects  were  not  much  noticed,  or  they  were  attributed  to 
the  climate,  or  to  the  hurry  of  life,  or  to  the  national  fondness  for 
pastry  ;  but  soon  the  American  physicians  sounded  the  alarm  about 
the  way  the  New  England  girls  were  being  educated.  They  pointed 
out  that  during  education  a  high  pressure  was  kept  up  in  girls  that  no 
constitutions  could  stand  without  risk.  They  pointed  to  the  thinness 
and  the  nervousness  of  American  young  women.  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  directed  attention  to  the  "  American  female  constitution, 
which  collapses  just  in  the  middle  third  of  life,  and  comes  out  vulcan- 
ized India-rubber,  if  it  happens  to  live  through  the  period  when  health 
and  strength  are  most  wanted."  It  was  shown  how  small  the  fami- 
lies of  educated  American  native-born  women  were,  as  compared  with 
those  of  their  German  and  English  sisters,  and  with  the  Irish  living 


FEMALE  EDUCATION.  333 

among  themselves.  Dr.  Clarke,  in  his  most  instructive  book,  "  Sex  in 
Education  ;  or,  a  Fair  Chance  for  Girls,"  pointed  out  to  the  Ameri- 
can people  the  risks  of  forcing  young  women's  brains,  and  the  actual 
consequences  that  American  physicians  found  to  have  resulted  from 
that  process.  After  pointing  out  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  girls  in 
American  schools  work  seven  or  eight  hours  a  day,  he  says  :  "  Ex- 
perience teaches  that  a  healthy  and  growing  boy  may  spend  six  hours 
of  force  daily  on  his  studies,  and  leave  sufficient  margin  for  physical 
growth.  A  girl  can  not  spend  more  than  four,  or,  in  occasional  in- 
stances, five  hours  of  force  daily  upon  her  studies,  and  leave  sufficient 
margin  for  the  general  physical  growth  that  she  must  make  in  common 
with  a  boy,  and  also  for  her  own  development."  In  Dr.  Beard's  book 
on  "  American  Nervousness  :  its  Causes  and  Consequences,"  he  says 
that,  as  the  result  of  a  large  number  of  circulars  sent  to  schools,  the 
replies  were  sufficient  to  clearly  show  that  "  nearly  everything  about 
the  conduct  of  the  schools  was  wrong,  unphysiological  and  unpsycho- 
logical,  and  that  they  were  conducted  so  as  to  make  very  sad  and  sor- 
rowing the  lives  of  those  who  were  forced  to  attend  them.  It  was 
clear  that  the  teachers  and  managers  of  these  schools  knew  nothing  of 
and  cared  nothing  for  those  matters  relating  to  education  that  are  of 
the  highest  importance,  and  that  the  routine  of  the  schools  was  such 
as  would  have  been  devised  by  some  evil  one  who  wished  to  take  ven- 
geance on  the  race  and  the  nation.  .  .  .  Everything  pushed  in  an  un- 
scientific and  distressing  manner,  nature  violated  at  every  step,  endless 
reciting  and  lecturing  and  striving  to  be  first — such  are  the  female 
schools  of  America  at  this  hour.  The  first  signs  of  ascension  as  of 
declension  in  nations  are  seen  in  women.  As  the  foliage  of  delicate 
plants  first  shows  the  early  warmth  of  spring  and  the  earliest  frosts  of 
autumn,  so  the  impressible,  susceptive  organization  of  woman  appreci- 
ates and  exhibits  far  sooner  than  that  of  man  the  manifestation  of 
national  progress  or  decay." 

It  must  be  distinctly  understood  that  my  facts  and  arguments  only 
apply  to  the  young  woman  of  average  type  and  of  average  strength. 
There  are  plenty  of  individual  examples,  where  there  is  naturally  so 
much  brain  and  strength  that  a  very  high  kind  of  general  masculine 
education  can  be  given  from  thirteen  to  twenty  without  impairing 
the  development.  In  such  brains  there  is  room  for  much  learning 
and  much  affection  and  many  charms.  The  reasoning  power,  the 
muscles,  the  fat,  and  the  affections  may  be  all  equally  developed  in 
them. 

It  may  be  too,  I  am  not  prepared  to  deny  it,  that  an  education  may 
be  good  for  the  individual  in  many  cases,  opening  up  sources  of  intel- 
lectual happiness,  that  is  bad  for  the  race.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
is  some  truth  in  Beard's  aphorism,  that  "  ignorance  is  power  as  well  as 
joy  "  to  many  men  and  women. 

From  a  scientific  point  of  view,  I  am  well  aware  that  the  weak 


334  "^HE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

point  of  my  argument  is,  that  it  is  not  founded  on  any  basis  of  collated 
statistical  facts.  I  have  said  to  you,  "  I  and  many  other  physicians 
and  physiologists  have  seen  many  undoubted  instances  of  girls  being 
hurt  by  over-education  under  bad  conditions,"  but  we  can  not  say  that 
out  of  every  hundred  girls  such  a  percentage  do  suffer.  We  have  not 
the  facts  to  enable  us  to  do  so.  I  hope  such  facts  will  be  recorded  in 
the  future,  and  may  be  all  the  more  likely  to  be  observed  and  recorded 
through  attention  being  directed  to  the  matter.  I  am  well  aware,  too, 
that  teachers  are  not  most  to  blame  for  any  bad  results  that  are  to 
be  attributed  to  the  present  system  of  over-educating  girls.  Parents 
and  the  spirit  of  the  time  are  more  culpable  than  teachers.  The  lat- 
ter are  the  public's  servants,  and  must  do  the  public's  bidding.  They 
are  expected  to  work  "  The  Code  "  energetically,  to  earn  large  grants, 
to  make  bricks  without  much  straw  in  many  cases,  to  turn  out  omnis- 
cient governesses  and  teachers  in  a  few  short  sessions.  Parents  cry 
out  to  them  about  their  children,  "  They  are  idle,"  if  the  whole  evening 
is  not  taken  up  with  lesson-learning,  or  if  the  animal  spirits  are  too 
high  or  the  holidays  too  long.  I  could  tell  some  sad  tales  of  brain 
break-down  in  overworked  teachers,  male  and  female,  if  that  were  not 
beyond  the  scope  of  this  lecture. 

I  went  last  July  to  see  the  examination  and  distribution  of  prizes  in 
a  very  large  city  school  for  young  ladies.  While  the  young  girls  there 
were  very  many  of  them  fresh  in  complexion  and  plump,  I  must  say 
that  the  majority  of  the  girls  above  thirteen  seemed  to  me  jaded,  and 
pale,  and  unduly  thin.  I  did  not  see  a  dozen  pairs  of  rosy  cheeks  in  a 
hundred  of  them.  To  my  eye,  many  of  them  bore  very  evident  signs 
of  over-brain-work  and  deficient  physical  energy.  They  didn't  look 
joyous  and  full  of  animal  glee,  as  girls  at  that  age  should  look.  Like 
Dr.  John  Brown's  terrier,  "  life  was  too  full  of  seriousness  "  to  them. 
Two  Sundays  after,  I  was  in  a  country  kirk  in  the  far  north,  where 
modern  educational  systems  are  as  yet  unknown,  and  I  contrasted  the 
appearance  of  the  farmers'  daughters  there  with  that  of  the  prize-win- 
ners in  the  city  school.  The  difference  was  absolutely  astounding.  I 
only  wish  I  could  convey  the  impression  I  received  in  both  cases  from 
a  critical  doctor's  survey  of  both  sets  of  girls.  If  the  one  set  exem- 
plified health,  robustness,  organic  happiness,  strength,  resistive  power 
against  disease,  and  potential  motherhood,  then,  beyond  a  doubt,  the 
other  set  did  not  fully  do  so.  The  question  of  the  future  is.  How  can 
we  get,  or  how  much  can  we  get  of,  the  intelligence  and  book-culture 
of  the  latter,  combined  with  the  health  of  the  former  ?  The  health 
we  must  have,  for  it  is  requisite  for  the  life  of  the  race  ;  the  culture 
we  must  have  in  such  degree  as  is  consistent  with  the  health. 


THE  CONTROL    OF  CIRCUMSTANCES.  335 

THE  C0:N'TK0L  of  CIECUMSTAI!^CES. 

By  WILLIAM  A.  EDDY. 

IN  a  previous  article,  we  noticed  that  even  circumstances  which 
seem  to  result  in  accumulations  involving  vast  lapses  of  time  are 
seen  to  be  temporary  when  considered  with  relation  to  very  great 
and  to  us  inconceivable  periods.  The  stability  is  apparent  only,  and 
is  due  to  our  limited  grasp  of  duration.  The  study  of  averages  is 
valuable  as  showing  the  proportion  of  control  attainable  through 
knowledge  of  the  limit  of  variation  in  certain  kinds  of  events.  It 
would  require  something  like  omnipresent  intelligence  to  cope  with 
the  enormous  variability  in  all  events,  so  that  were  it  not  for  the  per- 
ception of  identity,  repetition,  the  law  of  probability,  we  would  be  as 
completely  helpless  in  regard  to  circumstances  as  many  claim  we  are. 
In  extending  this  question  of  averages,  demonstrating  the  illusion  of 
chance,  we  see  that  the  appliances  of  science  and  intelligence  must 
lessen  helplessness  and  misery  with  every  coming  century,  although, 
owing  to  limitation  of  the  individual,  the  control  can  never  be  any- 
thing like  complete.  It  is  important  that  we  form  right  ideas  of  the 
control  possible,  so  that  we  be  neither  like  Don  Quixote,  who  thought 
his  power  almost  without  limit,  nor  like  a  fatalist  who  resigns  himself 
to  the  current  of  events.  In  the  history  of  progress,  we  see  that  dur- 
ing centuries  some  suffering  might  have  been  escaped  by  a  more  com- 
plete knowledge  of  causes,  as  well  as  by  better  intellectual  training 
resulting  in  more  foresight.  The  delayed  relief  w^as  and  is  due  to 
crude  methods  of  scientific  thought  and  experiment,  lack  of  that  in- 
sight or  flash  of  analogy  by  which  all  great  truths  are  discovered. 
The  power  to  group  and  combine  complex  results,  shown  by  the  most 
advanced  minds  when  working  under  favorable  conditions,  is  hardly 
sufiicient  for  even  a  vague  understanding  of  the  development  of  dis- 
eased conditions.  The  mind  is  led  step  by  step  toward  the  truth,  by 
means  of  scientific  experiments.  At  last,  Pasteur  and  others  disclose 
the  laws  which  account  for  some  kinds  of  progressive  destruction  in 
the  movements  of  organic  or  inorganic  particles. 

As  we  begin  to  comprehend  vaguely  the  laws  of  events,  and  the 
importance  of  action  as  an  element  of  modifying  power — as  we  stand 
back  and  include  a  great  number  of  incidents  in  our  generalization — 
we  see  more  relation  between  action  and  result.  The  direct  impor- 
tance of  objective  action,  its  immediate  interest  for  us,  is  in  consider- 
ing the  proportion  of  control  which  we  can  exert.  This  is  one  of  the 
most  complicated  problems,  because  special  thwartings  conceal  the 
control  when  we  look  from  the  "near  point  of  view  of  daily  life." 
Several  years  of  experience  are  required  to  demonstrate  the  propor- 
tion of  truth  in  the  well-known  business  maxim  that  it  is  better  to 


336  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

avoid  joining  fortunes  with  an  unlucky  man.  Much  of  the  misfortune 
is  in  the  man's  quality  ;  for  we  say  of  the  successful  man  that,  if  a 
given  project  fails,  he  still  has  something  in  reserve.  He  has  fore- 
seen and  provided  for  failure,  and  has  great  power  of  readjusting  his 
vocation  in  an  emergency.  Besides  an  accumulation  of  money,  which 
he  has  thrown  up  as  an  embankment  between  himself  and  disaster,  he 
has  an  even  stronger  reserve  force  in  his  knowledge  of  human  nature, 
his  address,  and  his  strength  of  character.  In  this  sense  the  average 
indicates  that  prolonged  effort  results  in  control.  He  reaches  a  point 
in  after-years  when  the  special  event  conforms  to  his  effort  easily. 

But  we  must  not  overlook  the  conditions  that  limit  success.  There 
is  a  margin  of  uncertainty  in  the  fact  that  the  successful  man  is  seen 
to  suffer  from  temporary  calamities,  which  clearly  are  not  due  to  his 
action  or  inaction.  We  find  an  outward  influence  completely  beyond 
his  control.  The  fact  that  it  can  be  conquered  by  perseverance  and 
knowledge  does  not  lessen  its  irresistible  force  in  the  present.  The 
outer  forces,  largely  social  but  not  less  powerful  than  those  of  organi- 
zation and  physical  law,  do  not  respond  to  his  efforts — seem  arrayed 
against  him,  or  turn  unexpectedly  in  his  favor.  It  thus  appears  that 
the  question  of  control  might  easily  result  in  endless  debate,  because 
each  side — the  triumph  of  circumstances  or  of  human  will  and  perse- 
verance— includes  part  of  the  truth.  While  admitting  that  the  tend- 
ency is  persistently  in  favor  of  effort,  we  yet  find  a  positive  conclu- 
sion impossible  to  hold.  The  control,  even  under  favorable  condi- 
tions, is  incomplete.  It  is  true  we  can  not  express  this  with  even 
relative  accuracy,  yet  a  rough  idea  of  the  truth  may  be  given  by  a 
statement  of  arithmetical  proportion  as  applied  to  a  large  number  of 
men  having  successful  qualities — such  as  knowledge  of  human  nature 
and  perseverance.  The  proportion  of  control  will  seem  much  greater 
if  we  consider  the  effect  upon  a  given  calling  or  condition  toward 
which  the  effort  tends.  When  a  person  starts  in  life  with  one  object 
— say,  that  of  making  money — and  uses  every  available  means  to  ac- 
complish his  purpose,  saving  and  constantly  watching  the  public  wants 
with  the  intention  of  supplying  them,  working  night  and  day  at  a 
sacrifice  of  social  recreation,  the  average,  we  may  say,  is  as  high  as 
ninety  per  cent  that  he  w^ill  succeed.  Many  will  put  the  possibility 
of  failure  at  much  less  than  ten  per  cent  ;  but  if  the  question  bo  care- 
fully considered,  it  will  be  admitted  that  sickness  and  other  causes 
may  make  inroads  upon  prosperity,  so  that  of  a  hundred  persons  with 
such  qualities,  ten  might  fail  after  a  given  lapse  of  time,  owing  to  con- 
ditions beyond  their  control. 

While  noticing  the  proportion  of  failure  which  may  result  in  spite 
of  prolonged  effort,  we  must  not  omit  the  immense  differences  due 
to  the  qualities  with  which  men  are  born.  This  is  the  most  important 
of  all  the  conditions  considered.  After  deducting  a  large  number  of 
exceptions,  we  would  doubtless  still  find  the  balance  heavily  in  favor 


THE  CONTROL    OF  CIRCUMSTANCES,  337 

of  the  children  of  efficient  parents.  It  therefore  follows  that,  although 
we  can  not  trace  the  control  absolutely  to  effort  in  the  individual,  we 
can  still  find  a  part  of  the  difference  accounted  for  in  the  efforts  of  a 
line  of  ancestors,  or  in  parents  whose  special  aptitudes,  perhaps  at- 
tained directly  by  work,  are  united  with  magnifying  effect  in  one  of 
their  children.*  If  we  go  back  of  the  effective  qualities  of  men,  we 
encounter  the  unfathomable  fact  of  the  persistence  of  force  ;  for  the 
most  important  characteristic  of  these  effective  qualities  is  a  certain 
mechanical  motive  power.  It  may  be  possible  to  definitely  separate 
the  force  in  men  into  the  presence  or  absence  of  different  kinds  of  it 
in  a  line  of  ancestors,  but  ultimately  we  are  obliged  to  say  that  the 
first  impulse  took  place  for  the  same  reason  that  the  earth  persists  in 
its  course  round  the  sun,  or  for  the  same  reason  that  motion  appears 
to  be  an  inevitable  attribute  of  matter.  Of  course  this  is  not  account- 
ing for  it.  It  is  simply  reducing  the  question  to  a  point  of  fact  be- 
yond which  further  investigation  is  apparently  useless.  In  estimating 
our  power  of  control,  the  right  method  is  to  start  with  the  qualities 
existing,  or  latent,  and  then  proceed  to  their  effects.  We  may  say, 
with  Herbert  Spencer,  that  special  forms  of  thought-force  were  built  up 
through  processes  of  action  and  adjustment,  but,  as  involved  or  noticed 
in  his  conclusions,  this  only  dissolves  the  existing  special  manifestations 
of  force  into  a  general  but  at  the  same  time  unaccountable  force. 

While  the  enormous  magnitudes  and  forces  in  nature  remind  us 
of  our  helplessness,  it  is  yet  clear  that  the  tendency  to  master  distant 
facts  is  constantly  stimulated  by  natural  phenomena.  We  ought  not 
to  be  discouraged  by  the  fact  that  exceptional  events  are  not  always 
classified  or  reduced  to  order  by  us — their  connection  is  often  lost, 
owing  to  our  limited  grasp  of  duration — nor  by  the  truth  that  as  nat- 
ural phenomena  recede  from  us  we  are  more  conscious  of  problems 
beyond  the  circumstances  or  surroundings  which  we  partly  control. 
Many  apparent  disconnections  gradually  lead  us  away  from  the  series 
close  at  hand.  The  heavenly  bodies,  for  example,  manifest  so  much 
variation  in  movement  and  brightness,  that  men  are  led  to  undertake 
increasingly  difficult  or  more  delicate  tasks  of  calculation,  as  in  esti- 
mating the  distances  of  a  Centauri,  Sirius,  Vega,  and  other  stars. 
Another  result  is,  that  attempts  are  made  to  form  at  least  a  theoretical 
idea  of  the  physical  conditions  of  suns  and  planets  through  knowledge 
attained  by  means  of  the  spectroscope.  The  conclusions  thus  reached 
are  necessarily  imperfect  because  based  upon  fragmentary  data,  but 
the  mental  tendency  to  inquire  is  with  scientific  minds  inevitable,  be- 
cause there  are  always  appearing,  with  every  increase  of  telescopic 
power,  other  stars  beyond  those  last  discovered. 

It  thus  appears  that  while  the  high  aims  of  Plato  and  Aristotle  find 

*  A  certain  artist  seems  to  have  inherited  his  father's  habit  of  keen  observation  and 
his  mother's  mechanical  ingenuity.     Very  often,  however,  these  characteristics  can  not 
be  definitely  traced  back. 
VOL.  XXIV. — 22 


338  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

justification  in  the  idea  that  effort  is  taught  by  nature,  even  when  a 
definite  result  is  invisible,  yet  the  teachings  of  physical  causation  show 
that  it  is  vain  to  expect  an  escape  from  some  material  trammels.  We 
see  the  vibration  of  two  apparently  opposing  social  forces,  in  which 
the  high  and  more  intelligent  force  is  slowly  gaining  the  ascendency 
by  a  process  of  adaptation,  so  that  the  physical  force  is  becoming  a 
source  of  power  to  men  instead  of  fear.  Emerson's  conclusion,  like 
that  of  Kant,  is  two-sided — that  the  principle  of  mind  is  manifested  to 
us  through  material  action.  This  holds  true  aside  from  Kant's  "  Forms 
of  Thought "  on  one  hand,  or  Herbert  Spencer's  relations  between  par- 
ticles on  the  other.  We  can  not  have  the  unalloyed  mind-power  or 
control  usually  wished  for,  because  our  demands  are  unreasonable  in 
the  sense  that  we  would  dispense  with  the  necessary  and  lower  condi- 
tions upon  which  the  higher  depend,  and  thus  thrust  out  causation, 
which  is  the  principle  of  combination  or  order  by  which  error  and 
absurdity  could  be  escaped  if  the  relations  between  events  were  com- 
pletely mastered.  This  mastery  of  physical  power  represents  an  ideal 
condition  in  which  the  mind  is  no  longer  enslaved  by  forces  that  seem 
material  or  mechanical. 

In  closing  with  a  general  view  of  this  subject,  we  encounter  the  fol- 
lowing contradiction  :  During  a  long  period  we  see  that  fortunes  and 
reputations  grow  by  means  of  industry,  and  that  a  high  percentage  of 
the  men  having  these  industrious  qualities  accomplish  their  purpose. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  obvious  that  many  of  the  physiological  phe- 
nomena of  the  human  body,  the  varying  limitation  of  thought  in 
individuals,  and  especialy  the  universe  of  matter,  are  not  appreciably 
influenced  by  our  actions  or  ideas.  The  idea  of  possible  control  nar- 
rows from  a  solar  system  to  a  planet,  to  a  particular  part  of  planetary 
surface,  to  a  special  series,  of  effects,  and  to  special  kinds  of  callings. 
The  arguer  can  truthfully  claim  that  we  have  no  control,  and  hold  his 
position  by  referring  to  the  material  universe  and  the  development  of 
mankind  ;  but  particular  kinds  of  effort  when  so  considered  undermine 
his  argument  as  applied  to  immediate  results  of  actions.  In  arguing 
on  the  other  side,  he  can  maintain  as  truthfully,  to  put  the  same  idea 
in  different  form,  that  the  control  is  almost  complete,  but  he  must 
apply  his  argument  to  special  and  restricted  conditions. 

It  has  been  denied  that  we  can  trace  with  certainty  any  manifesta- 
tion of  law  in  circumstances  ;  that  there  is  a  fatal  error  in  conclusions 
regarding  the  inevitableness  of  causation  or  law  ;  that  there  is  no  per- 
ceptible law,  because  everything  shows  a  margin  of  variation  which 
may  reach  inconceivable  results  in  the  course  of  ages.  Law,  as  under- 
stood by  a  member  of  the  Theosophical  Society,  means  the  exact  repe- 
tition of  previous  conditions,  owing  to  vast  averages  and  inconceivably 
great  lapses  of  time.*     The  argument  as  to  whether  phenomena  are 

*  This  definition  of  law  was  advanced  by  one  of  the  younger  members  of  the  society. 
It  may  not  fairly  represent  the  views  of  all  the  members. 


THE  CONTROL    OF  CIRCUMSTANCES.  339 

exactly  repeated  is  apparently  of  no  consequence,  as  long  as  average 
results  are  known.  The  notion  of  infinite  variation,  as  thus  implied, 
is  defective  because  the  identity  underlying  the  variation  is  omitted. 
It  is  fair  to  assume  that  identity  will  keep  pace  with  variation,  and  that 
the  margin  of  variation  must  always  involve  continuity,  or  a  further 
illustration  of  the  order  or  law  manifested  by  the  phenomena  con- 
sidered. The  history  of  science  shows  that  the  new  relations  do  not 
render  absurd  the  verified  conclusions  of  reason,  though  much  is  added 
that  has  to  be  classified  and  as  far  as  possible  reduced  to  a  reasonable 
basis.  In  fact,  the  variations  are  seen  to  verify  the  known  sequences 
instead  of  lessening  their  certainty.  We  may  therefore  assume  that 
vast,  far-reaching  forces,  or  forms  of  force  now  unknown,  will  never 
even  seem  to  interfere  with  the  obvious  and  seemingly  necessary  laws 
manifested  by  known  phenomena.  Such  interference  of  unknown  laws 
would  be,  as  far  as  we  could  perceive,  a  break  in  continuity,  or  causa- 
tion, and  the  inflow  of  obvious  absurdity.  From  this  point  starts  the 
root  of  superstition  ;  for  persons  without  perception  of  the  causation 
underlying  all  action  endow  the  unknown  forces  with  power  to  pro- 
duce effects  at  variance  with  the  simplest  forms  of  sequence,  the  dis- 
turbance of  which  would  at  once  render  void  the  human  intellect.  Are 
we  to  believe  that  gloves  were  sent  from  Bombay  to  London  in  an  in- 
stant, thus  setting  aside  one  of  the  first  laws  of  matter  learned  in 
childhood  ?  If  such  monstrous  phenomena  occur,  then  it  is  useless  to 
think  that  we  can  trace  method  in  circumstances. 

All  the  evidence  so  far  collected  indicates  that  actions  and  results 
are  related,  and  we  are  thus  encouraged  by  the  thought  that  no  work 
is  wasted — that  it  must  stand  to  the  credit  of  the  worker.  When  the 
effect  upon  others  is  not  discernible,  we  can  be  sure  that  the  advantage 
still  exists  as  latent  force  of  character.  The  value  of  work  remains 
good  in  spite  of  vicissitudes.  This  may  seem  trite,  but  we  must  re- 
member that  the  relation  between  work  and  effect  is  constantly  ob- 
served in  a  partial  light,  so  that  people  are  likely  to  be  either  fatalists 
like  Micawber,  or  to  look  upon  a  special  failure  as  inexcusable  and  as 
a  certain  indication  of  quality.  It  has  been  the  object  of  this  outline 
of  so  complicated  a  question  to  modify  these  opposing  views,  to  en- 
courage effort,  to  emphasize  the  rational  perception  of  the  continuity 
or  order  pervading  events,  and  to  put  aside  as  far  as  possible  the  fear- 
ful possibilities  with  which  some  endow  the  mysterious  power  every- 
where manifested  in  nature.  As  long  as  we  feel  conscious  that  the 
unknowable  reality  can  never  involve  anything  irrational,  ill-fitting  the 
harmony  and  grandeur  of  the  sidereal  universe,  we  feel  that  ideas  may 
lessen  the  burdens  of  men,  widen  their  thought,  and  teach  them  that 
these  persistent  effects  following  causes  may  be  depended  upon  with 
entire  trust.  Meantime  the  progress  of  men  in  intelligence,  toward  a 
certain  degree  of  happiness,  continues.  One  of  the  principal  factors  of 
this  advancement  is  that  all  should  sincerely  express  personal  convic- 


340  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

tion.  The  decline  of  intelligence  and  of  our  power  to  control  circum- 
stances may  be  conceived  as  beginning  when  old  ideas  are  advocated 
merely  because  the  first  impression  is  that  they  are  plausible,  and  par- 
ticularly when  certain  books,  purely  intellectual,  are  avoided  merely 
because  the  reader  fears  to  find  something  unanswerable  and  convinc- 
ing. By  all  means  let  us  have  free  trade  in  ideas,  from  the  theory  of 
materialization  advanced  by  Robert  Dale  Owen  at  one  extreme  to  the 
scientific  exactness  of  Herbert  Spencer  at  the  other.  Let  there  be  no 
protection  of  ideas,  and  let  each  one  maintain  its  hold  by  virtue  of  its 
truth  and  power.  Owing  to  the  varying  tendencies  and  views  of  men, 
the  truth  overlooked  by  one  may  be  seen  by  another,  so  that  if  we  en- 
courage the  expression  of  peculiar  combinations  or  combining  powers 
in  minds,  much  suffering  arising  from  our  lack  of  knowledge  m^ay  be 
escaped.  Those  who  do  not  realize  the  value  of  ideas  ought  to  reflect 
that,  largely  owing  to  our  want  of  ingenuity  and  perception,  we  are 
still  in  the  main  at  the  mercy  of  particles  in  ways  which  could  be 
spared  us  if  we  knew  or  had  discovered  more,  or  had  more  control  of 
the  onward  march  of  the  closely  knit  network  of  events  and  influences 
that  make  up  our  short  lives.  Lack  of  observation  in  a  trifling  mat- 
ter, or  short-sighted  heed  to  the  convenience  of  the  present  hour,  may 
restrict  the  possible  development  of  the  finest  powers,  and  so  the  de- 
velopment of  intelligence,  by  widening  these  limits,  indirectly  as  well 
as  directly,  may  add  to  the  power  of  men  in  a  steadily  increasing  pro- 
portion. Those  who  do  not  see  the  helping  power  of  science,  or  at 
least  the  promise  of  it,  ought  to  remember  that  every  omission  to  use 
the  best  intelligence  in  themselves,  or  to  encourage  it  in  others,  results 
in  a  continuance  of  the  amount  of  pain  and  disappointment  now  exist- 
ing, which  can  only  be  lessened  by  the  general  development  of  intel- 
ligence, and  by  the  use  of  the  increasingly  difficult  and  more  subtile 
researches  of  men  of  science. 


EELIGIOUS  EETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT.^ 

Br  HEEBERT  SPENCER. 

"TTNLIKE  the  ordinary  consciousness,  the  religious  consciousness  is 
^  concerned  with  that  which  lies  beyond  the  sphere  of  sense.  A 
brute  thinks  only  of  things  which  can  be  touched,  seen,  heard,  tasted, 
etc.  ;  and  the  like  is  true  of  the  untaught  child,  the  deaf-mute,  and 
the  lowest  savage.     But  the  developing  man  has  thoughts  about  ex- 

*  This  article  will  eventually  form  the  closing  chapter  of  "  Ecclesiastical  Institutions  " 
—Part  VI  of  "  The  Principles  of  Sociology."  The  statements  concerning  matters  of  fact 
in  the  first  part  of  it  are  based  on  the  contents  of  preceding  chapters.  Evidence  for  near- 
ly all  of  them,  however,  may  also  be  found  in  Part  I  of  "  The  Principles  of  Sociology," 
already  published. 


RELIGIOUS  RETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT.       341 

istences  which  he  regards  as  usually  inaudible,  intangible,  invisible  ; 
and  yet  which  he  regards  as  operative  upon  him.  What  suggests  this 
notion  of  agencies  transcending  perception  ?  How  do  these  ideas  con- 
cerning the  supernatural  evolve  out  of  ideas  concerning  the  natural  ? 
The  transition  can  not  be  sudden ;  and  an  account  of  the  genesis  of 
religion  must  begin  by  describing  the  steps  through  which  the  transi- 
tion takes  place. 

The  ghost- theory  exhibits  these  steps  quite  clearly.  We  are  shown 
that  the  mental  differentiation  of  invisible  and  intangible  beings  from 
visible  and  tangible  beings  progresses  slowly  and  unobtrusively.  In 
the  fact  that  the  other-self,  supposed  to  wander  in  dreams,  is  believed 
to  have  actually  done  and  seen  whatever  was  dreamed,  in  the  fact  that 
the  other-self  when  going  away  at  death,  but  expected  presently  to  re- 
turn, is  conceived  as  a  double  equally  material  with  the  original,  we 
see  that  the  supernatural  agent  in  its  primitive  form  diverges  very  little 
from  the  natural  agent — is  simply  the  original  man  with  some  add- 
ed powers  of  going  about  secretly  and  doing  good  or  evil.  And  the 
fact  that,  when  the  double  of  the  dead  man  ceases  to  be  dreamed  about 
by  those  who  knew  him,  his  non-appearance  in  dreams  is  held  to  im- 
ply that  he  is  finally  dead,  shows  that  these  earliest  supernatural  agents 
have  but  a  temporary  existence  :  the  first  tendencies  to  a  permanent 
consciousness  of  the  supernatural  prove  abortive. 

In  many  cases  no  higher  degree  of  differentiation  is  reached.  The 
ghost-population,  recruited  by  deaths  on  the  one  side,  but  on  the  other 
side  losing  its  members  as  they  cease  to  be  recollected  and  dreamed 
about,  does  not  increase  ;  and  no  individuals  included  in  it  come  to  be 
recognized  through  successive  generations  as  established  supernatural 
powers.  Thus  the  Unkulunkulu,  or  old-old  one,  of  the  Zooloos,  the 
father  of  the  race,  is  regarded  as  finally  or  completely  dead,  and 
there  is  propitiation  only  of  ghosts  of  more  recent  date.  But  where 
circumstances  favor  the  continuance  of  sacrifices  at  graves,  witnessed 
by  members  of  each  new  generation  who  are  told  about  the  dead  and 
transmit  the  tradition,  there  eventually  arises  the  conception  of  a  per- 
manently-existing ghost  or  spirit.  A  more  marked  contrast  in  thought 
between  supernatural  beings  and  natural  beings  is  thus  established. 
There  simultaneously  results  a  great  increase  in  the  number  of  these 
supposed  supernatural  beings,  since  the  aggregate  of  them  is  now 
continually  added  to  ;  and  there  is  a  strengthening  tendency  to  think 
of  them  as  everywhere  around,  and  as  causing  all  unusual  occur- 
rences. 

Differences  among  the  ascribed  powers  of  ghosts  soon  arise.  They 
naturally  follow  from  the  observed  differences  among  the  powers  of 
the  living  individuals.  Hence  it  results  that  while  the  propitiations 
of  ordinary  ghosts  are  made  only  by  their  descendants,  it  comes  occa- 
sionally to  be  thought  prudent  to  propitiate  also  the  ghosts  of  the 
more  dreaded  individuals,  even  though  they  have  no  claims  of  blood. 


342  TEE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Quite  early  there  thus  begin  those  grades  of  supernatural  beings  which 
eventually  become  so  strongly  marked. 

Habitual  wars,  which  more  than  all  other  causes  initiate  these  first 
differentiations,  go  on  to  initiate  further  and  more  decided  ones.  For, 
with  those  compoundings  of  small  social  aggregates  into  greater  ones, 
and  recompounding  of  these  into  still  greater,  which  war  effects,  there, 
of  course,  with  the  multiplying  gradations  of  power  among  living 
men,  arises  the  conception  of  multiplying  gradations  of  power  among 
their  ghosts.  Thus  in  course  of  time  are  formed  the  conceptions  of 
the  great  ghosts  or  gods,  the  more  numerous  secondary  ghosts,  or 
demi-gods,  and  so  on  downward — a  pantheon  :  there  being  still,  how- 
ever, no  essential  distinction  of  kind  ;  as  we  see  in  the  calling  of  or- 
dinary ghosts  manes-^0^%  by  the  Romans  and  elohim  by  the  Hebrews. 
Moreover,  repeating  as  the  other  life  in  the  other  world  does,  the  life 
in  this  world,  in  its  needs,  occupations,  and  social  organization,  there 
arises  not  only  a  differentiation  of  grades  among  supernatural  beings 
in  respect  of  their  powers,  but  also  in  respect  of  their  characters  and 
kinds  of  activity.  There  come  to  be  local  gods,  and  gods  reigning 
over  this  or  that  order  of  phenomena  ;  there  come  to  be  good  and 
evil  spirits  of  various  qualities  ;  and  where  there  has  been  by  con- 
quest a  superposing  of  societies  one  upon  another,  each  having  its 
own  system  of  ghost-derived  beliefs,  there  results  an  involved  com- 
bination of  such  beliefs,  constituting  a  mythology. 

Of  course,  ghosts  primarily  being  doubles  like  the  originals  in  all 
things,  and  gods  (when  not  the  living  members  of  a  conquering  race) 
being  doubles  of  the  more  powerful  men,  it  results  that  they,  too, 
are  originally  no  less  human  than  ordinary  ghosts  in  their  physical 
characters,  their  passions,  and  their  intelligences.  Like  the  doubles 
of  the  ordinary  dead,  they  are  supposed  to  consume  the  flesh,  blood, 
bread,  wine,  given  to  them  :  at  first  literally,  and  later  in  a  more 
spiritual  way  by  consuming  the  essences  of  them.  They  not  only  ap- 
pear as  visible  and  tangible  persons,  but  they  enter  into  conflicts  with 
men,  are  wounded,  suffer  pain  :  the  sole  distinction  being  that  they 
have  miraculous  powers  of  healing  and  consequent  immortality. 
Here,  indeed,  there  needs  a  qualification  ;  for  not  only  do  various  peo- 
ples hold  that  the  gods  die  a  first  death  (as  naturally  happens  where 
they  are  the  members  of  a  conquering  race,  called  gods  because  of 
their  superiority),  but,  as  in  the  case  of  Pan,  it  is  supposed,  even 
among  the  cultured,  that  there  is  a  second  and  final  death  of  a  god, 
like  that  second  and  final  death  of  a  ghost  supposed  among  existing 
savages.  With  advancing  civilization  the  divergence  of  the  supernat- 
ural being  from  the  natural  being  becomes  more  decided.  There  is 
nothing  to  check  the  gradual  dematerialization  of  the  ghost  and  of 
the  god  ;  and  this  dematerialization  is  insensibly  furthered  in  the  ef- 
fort to  reach  consistent  ideas  of  supernatural  action  :  the  god  ceases 
to  be  tangible,  and  later  he  ceases  to  be  visible  or  audible.     Along 


RELIGIOUS  RETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT.       343 

with  this  differentiation  of  physical  attributes  from  those  of  humanity 
there  goes  on  more  slowly  the  differentiation  of  mental  attributes. 
The  god  of  the  savage,  represented  as  having  intelligence  scarcely  if 
at  all  greater  than  that  of  the  living  man,  is  deluded  with  ease. 
Even  the  gods  of  the  semi-civilized  are  deceived,  make  mistakes,  re- 
pent of  their  plans  ;  and  only  in  course  of  time  does  there  arise  the 
conception  of  unlimited  vision  and  universal  knowledge.  The  emo- 
tional nature  simultaneously  undergoes  a  parallel  transformation. 
The  grosser  passions,  originally  conspicuous  and  carefully  ministered 
to  by  devotees,  gradually  fade,  leaving  only  the  passions  less  related 
to  corporal  satisfactions  ;  and  eventually  these,  too,  become  partially 
dehumanized. 

These  ascribed  characters  of  deities  are  continually  adapted  and  re- 
adapted  to  the  needs  of  the  social  state.  During  the  militant  phase  of 
activity,  the  chief  god  is  conceived  as  holding  insubordination  the 
greatest  crime,  as  implacable  in  anger,  as  merciless  in  punishment ; 
and  any  alleged  attributes  of  a  milder  kind  occupy  but  small  space  in 
the  social  consciousness.  But,  where  militancy  declines  and  the  harsh 
despotic  form  of  government  appropriate  to  it  is  gradually  qualified 
by  the  form  appropriate  to  industrialism,  the  foreground  of  the  reli- 
gious consciousness  is  increasingly  filled  with  those  ascribed  traits  of 
the  divine  nature  which  are  congruous  with  the  ethics  of  peace  :  di- 
vine love,  divine  forgiveness,  divine  mercy,  are  now  the  characteristics 
enlarged  upon. 

To  perceive  clearly  the  effects  of  mental  progress  and  changing 
social  life,  thus  stated  in  the  abstract,  we  must  glance  at  them  in  the 
concrete.  If,  without  foregone  conclusions,  we  contemplate  the  tra- 
ditions, records,  and  monuments,  of  the  Egyptians,  we  see  that  out  of 
their  primitive  ideas  of  gods,  brute  or  human,  there  were  evolved 
spiritualized  ideas  of  gods,  and  finally  of  a  god  ;  until  the  priesthoods 
of  later  times,  repudiating  the  earlier  ideas,  described  them  as  corrup- 
tions :  being  swayed  by  the  universal  tendency  to  regard  the  first  state 
as  the  highest — a  tendency  traceable  down  to  the  theories  of  existing 
theologians  and  mythologists.  Again,  if,  putting  aside  speculations, 
and  not  asking  what  historical  value  the  "  Iliad  "  may  have,  we  take 
it  simply  as  indicating  the  early  Greek  notion  of  Zeus,  and  compare 
this  with  the  notion  contained  in  the  Platonic  dialogues,  we  see  that 
Greek  civilization  had  greatly  modified  (in  the  better  minds,  at  least) 
the  purely  anthropomorphic  conception  of  him  :  the  lower  human  at- 
tributes being  dropped  and  the  higher  ones  transfigured.  Similarly, 
if  we  contrast  the  Hebrew  God  described  in  primitive  traditions,  man- 
like in  appearance,  appetites,  and  emotions,  with  the  Hebrew  God  as 
characterized  by  the  prophets,  there  is  shown  a  widening  range  of 
power  along  with  a  nature  increasingly  remote  from  that  of  man.. 
And,  on  passing  to  the  conceptions  of  him  which  are  now  entertained, 
we  are  made  aware  of  an  extreme  transfiguration.     By  a  convenienti 


344  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

obliviousness,  a  deity  who  in  early  times  is  represented  as  hardening 
men's  hearts  so  that  they  may  commit  punishable  acts,  and  as  employ- 
ing a  lying  spirit  to  deceive  them,  comes  to  be  mostly  thought  of  as 
an  embodiment  of  virtues  transcending  the  highest  we  can  imagine. 

Thus,  recognizing  the  fact  that  in  the  primitive  human  mind  there 
exists  neither  religious  idea  nor  religious  sentiment,  we  find  that,  in 
the  course  of  social  evolution  and  the  evolution  of  intelligence  accom- 
panying it,  there  are  generated  both  the  ideas  and  sentiments  which 
we  distinguish  as  religious,  and  that,  through  a  process  of  causation 
clearly  traceable,  they  traverse  those  stages  which  have  brought  them, 
among  civilized  races,  to  their  present  forms. 

And  now  what  may  we  infer  will  be  the  evolution  of  religious 
ideas  and  sentiments  throughout  the  future?  On  the  one  hand,  it 
is  irrational  to  suppose  that  the  changes  which  have  brought  the 
religious  consciousness  to  its  present  form  will  suddenly  cease.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  irrational  to  suppose  that  the  religious  conscious- 
ness, naturally  generated  as  we  have  seen,  will  disappear  and  leave  an 
unfilled  gap.  Manifestly  it  must  undergo  further  changes  ;  and,  how- 
ever much  changed,  it  must  continue  to  exist.  What,  then,  are  the 
transformations  to  be  expected  ?  If  we  reduce  the  process  above  de- 
lineated to  its  lowest  terms,  we  shall  see  our  way  to  an  answer. 

As  pointed  out  in  "  First  Principles,"  §  96,  Evolution  is  throughout 
its  course  habitually  modified  by  that  Dissolution  which  eventually 
undoes  it :  the  changes  which  become  manifest  being  usually  but  the 
differential  results  of  opposing  tendencies  toward  integration  and  dis- 
integration. Rightly  to  understand  the  genesis  and  decay  of  religious 
systems,  and  the  probable  future  of  those  now  existing,  we  must  take 
this  truth  into  account.  During  those  earlier  changes  by  which  there 
is  created  a  hierarchy  of  gods,  demi-gods,  manes-gods,  and  spirits  of 
various  kinds  and  ranks.  Evolution  goes  on  with  but  little  qualification. 
The  consolidated  mythology  produced,  while  growing  in  the  mass  of 
supernatural  beings  composing  it,  assumes  increased  definiteness  in  the 
arrangement  of  its  parts  and  the  attributes  of  its  members.  But  the 
antagonist  Dissolution  eventually  gains  predominance.  The  spreading 
recognition  of  natural  causation  conflicts  with  this  mythological  evo- 
lution, and  insensibly  weakens  those  of  its  beliefs  which  are  most  at 
variance  with  advancing  knowledge.  Demons  and  the  secondary  di- 
vinities presiding  over  divisions  of  Nature  become  less  thought  of  as 
the  phenomena  ascribed  to  them  are  more  commonly  observed  to  follow 
a  constant  order,  and  hence  these  minor  components  of  the  mythology 
slowly  dissolve  away.  At  the  same  time,  with  growing  supremacy 
of  the  great  god  heading  the  hierarchy,  there  goes  increasing  ascrip- 
tion to  him  of  actions  which  were  before  distributed  among  numerous 
supernatural  beings  :  there  is  integration  of  power.  While  in  propor- 
tion as  there  arises  the  consequent  conception  of  an  omnipotent  and 


RELIGIOUS  RETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT.       345 

omnipresent  deity,  there  is  a  gradual  fading  of  his  alleged  human  at- 
tributes :  dissolution  begins  to  affect  the  supreme  personality  in  re- 
spect of  ascribed  form  and  nature. 

Already,  as  we  have  seen,  this  process  has  in  the  more  advanced 
societies,  and  especially  among  their  higher  members,  gone  to  the  ex- 
tent of  merging  all  minor  supernatural  powers  in  one  supernatural 
power  ;  and  already  this  one  supernatural  power  has,  by  what  Mr. 
Fiske  aptly  calls  deanthropomorphization,  lost  the  grosser  attributes 
of  humanity.  If  things  hereafter  are  to  follow  the  same  general  course 
as  heretofore,  we  must  infer  that  this  dropping  of  human  attributes 
will  continue.  Let  us  ask  what  positive  changes  are  hence  to  be  ex- 
pected. 

Two  factors  must  unite  in  producing  them.  There  is  the  develop- 
ment of  those  higher  sentiments  which  no  longer  tolerate  the  ascrip- 
tion of  inferior  sentiments  to  a  divinity  ;  and  there  is  the  intellectual 
development  which  causes  dissatisfaction  with  the  crude  interpreta- 
tions previously  accepted.  Of  course,  in  pointing  out  the  effects  of 
these  factors,  I  must  name  some  which  are  familiar  ;  but  it  is  needful 
to  glance  at  these  along  with  others. 

The  cruelty  of  a  Feejeean  god,  w^ho,  represented  as  devouring  the 
souls  of  the  dead,  may  be  supposed  to  inflict  torture  during  the  pro- 
cess, is  small  compared  with  the  cruelty  of  a  god  who  condemns  men 
to  tortures  which  are  eternal  ;  and  the  ascription  of  this  cruelty,  though 
habitual  in  ecclesiastical  formulas,  occasionally  occurring  in  sermons, 
and  still  sometimes  pictorially  illustrated,  is  becoming  so  intolerable 
to  the  better-natured  that,  while  some  theologians  distinctly  deny  it, 
others  quietly  drop  it  out  of  their  teachings.  Clearly,  this  change 
can  not  cease  until  the  beliefs  in  hell  and  damnation  disappear.  Dis- 
appearance of  them  will  be  aided  by  an  increasing  repugnance  to  in- 
justice. The  visiting  on  Adam's  descendants,  through  hundreds  of 
generations,  dreadful  penalties  for  a  small  transgression  which  they 
did  not  commit  ;  the  damning  of  all  men  who  do  not  avail  themselves 
of  an  alleged  mode  of  obtaining  forgiveness,  which  most  men  have 
never  heard  of  ;  and  the  effecting  a  reconciliation  by  sacrifice  of  one 
who  was  perfectly  innocent — are  modes  of  action  which,  ascribed  to  a 
human  ruler,  would  call  forth  expressions  of  abhorrence  ;  and  the 
ascription  of  them  to  the  Ultimate  Cause  of  things,  even  now  felt  to 
be  full  of  difficulties,  must  become  impossible.  So,  too,  must  die  out 
the  belief  that  a  Power  present  in  innumerable  worlds  throughout  in- 
finite space,  and  who  during  millions  of  years  of  the  earth's  earlier 
existence  needed  no  honoring  by  its  inhabitants,  should  be  seized  with 
a  craving  for  praise,  and,  having  created  mankind,  should  be  angry 
with  them  if  they  do  not  perpetually  tell  him  how  great  he  is.  Men 
will  by-and-by  refuse  to  imply  a  trait  of  character  which  is  the  reverse 
of  worshipful. 


346  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Similarly  with  the  logical  incongruities  more  and  more  conspicuous 
to  growing  intelligence.  Passing  over  the  familiar  difficulties  that 
sundiy  of  the  implied  divine  traits  are  in  contradiction  with  the  divine 
attributes  otherwise  ascribed — that  a  god  who  repents  of  what  he  has 
done  must  be  lacking  either  in  power  or  in  foresight ;  that  his  anger 
presupposes  an  occurrence  which  has  been  contrary  to  intention,  and 
so  indicates  defect  of  means — we  come  to  the  deeper  difficulty  that 
such  emotions,  in  common  with  all  emotions,  can  exist  only  in  a  con- 
sciousness which  is  limited.  Every  emotion  has  its  antecedent  ideas, 
and  antecedent  ideas  are  habitually  supposed  to  occur  in  God  :  he  is 
represented  as  seeing  and  hearing  this  or  the  other,  and  as  being  emo- 
tionally affected  thereby.  That  is  to  say,  the  conception  of  a  divinity 
possessing  these  traits  of  character  necessarily  continues  anthropo- 
morphic ;  not  only  in  the  sense  that  the  emotions  ascribed  are  like 
those  of  human  beings,  but  also  in  the  sense  that  they  form  parts  of  a 
consciousness  which,  like  the  human  consciousness,  is  formed  of  suc- 
cessive states.  And  such  a  conception  of  the  divine  consciousness  is 
irreconcilable  both  with  the  unchangeableness  otherwise  alleged  and 
with  the  omniscience  otherwise  alleged.  For  a  consciousness  consti- 
tuted of  ideas  and  feelings  caused  by  objects  and  occurrences  can 
not  be  simultaneously  occupied  with  all  objects  and  all  occurrences 
throughout  the  universe.  To  believe  in  a  divine  consciousness,  men 
must  refrain  from  thinking  what  is  meant  by  consciousness — must 
stop  short  with  verbal  propositions  ;  and  propositions  which  they  are 
debaiTed  from  rendering  into  thoughts  will  more  and  more  fail  to  sat- 
isfy them.  Of  course,  like  difficulties  present  themselves  when  the  will 
of  God  is  spoken  of.  So  long  as  we  refrain  from  giving  a  definite 
meaning  to  the  word  will,  we  may  say  that  it  is  possessed  by  the  Cause 
of  All  Things,  as  readily  as  we  may  say  that  love  of  approbation 
is  possessed  by  a  circle  ;  but,  when  from  the  words  we  pass  to  the 
thoughts  they  stand  for,  we  find  that  we  can  no  more  unite  in  con- 
sciousness the  terms  of  the  one  proposition  than  we  can  those  of  the 
other.  Whoever  conceives  any  other  will  than  his  own  must  do  so  in 
terms  of  his  own  will,  which  is  the  sole  will  directly  known  to  him — 
all  other  wills  being  only  inferred.  But  will,  as  each  is  conscious  of  it, 
presupposes  a  motive — a  prompting  desire  of  some  kind  :  absolute  in- 
difference excludes  the  conception  of  will.  Moreover,  will,  as  imply- 
ing a  prompting  desire,  connotes  some  end  contemplated  as  one  to  be 
achieved,  and  ceases  with  the  achievement  of  it  :  some  other  will,  re- 
ferring so  some  other  end,  taking  its  place.  That  is  to  say,  will,  like 
emotion,  necessarily  supposes  a  series  of  states  of  consciousness.  The 
conception  of  a  divine  will,  derived  from  that  of  the  human  will,  in- 
volves, like  it,  localization  in  space  and  time  :  the  willing  of  each  end, 
excluding  from  consciousness  for  an  interval  the  willing  of  other 
ends,  and  therefore  being  inconsistent  with  that  omnipresent  activity 
which  simultaneously  works  out  an  infinity  of  ends.     It  is  the  same 


RELIGIOUS  RETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT,       347 

with  the  ascription  of  intelligence.  Not  to  dwell  on  the  seriality  and 
limitation  implied  as  before,  we  may  note  that  intelligence,  as  alone 
conceivable  by  us,  presupposes  existences  independent  of  it  and  object- 
ive to  it.  It  is  carried  on  in  terms  of  changes  primarily  wrought  by 
alien  activities — the  impressions  generated  by  things  beyond  conscious- 
ness, and  the  ideas  derived  from  such  impressions.  '  To  speak  of  an 
intelligence  which  exists  in  the  absence  of  all  such  alien  activities  is 
to  use  a  meaningless  word.  If,  to  the  corollary  that  the  First  Cause, 
considered  as  intelligent,  must  be  continually  affected  by  independent 
objective  activities,  it  is  replied  that  these  have  become  such  by  act 
of  creation,  and  were  previously  included  in  the  First  Cause,  then  the 
reply  is  that  in  such  case  the  First  Cause  could,  before  this  creation, 
have  had  nothing  to  generate  in  it  such  changes  as  those  constituting 
what  we  call  intelligence,  and  must  therefore  have  been  unintelligent 
at  the  time  wben  intelligence  was  most  called  for.  Hence  it  is  clear 
that  the  intelligence  ascribed  answers  in  no  respect  to  that  which  we 
know  by  the  name.  It  is  intelligence  out  of  which  all  the  characters 
constituting  it  have  vanished. 

These  and  other  difficulties,  some  of  which  are  often  discussed  but 
never  disposed  of,  must  force  men  hereafter  to  drop  the  higher  an- 
thropomorphic characters  given  to  the  First  Cause,  as  they  have  long 
since  dropped  the  lower.  The  conception  which  has  been  enlarging 
from  the  beginning  must  go  on  enlarging,  until,  by  disappearance  of 
its  limits,  it  becomes  a  consciousness  which  transcends  the  forms  of 
distinct  thought,  though  it  forever  remains  a  consciousness. 

"  But  how  can  such  a  final  consciousness  of  the  Unknowable,  thus 
tacitly  alleged  to  be  true,  be  reached  by  successive  modifications  of  a 
conception  which  was  utterly  untrue  ?  The  ghost-theory  of  the  savage 
is  baseless.  The  material  double  of  a  dead  man  in  which  he  believes 
never  had  any  existence.  And  if  by  gradual  dematerialization  of 
this  double  was  produced  the  conception  of  the  supernatural  agent 
in  general — if  the  conception  of  a  deity,  formed  by  the  dropping  of 
some  human  attributes  and  transfiguration  of  others,  resulted  from  con- 
tinuance of  this  process — is  not  the  developed  and  purified  conception 
reached  by  pushing  the  process  to  its  limit  a  fiction  also?  Surely, 
if  the  primitive  belief  was  absolutely  false,  all  derived  beliefs  must  be 
absolutely  false." 

This  objection  looks  fatal  ;  and  it  would  be  fatal  were  its  premise 
valid.  Unexpected  as  it  will  be  to  most  readers,  the  answer  here  to 
be  made  is  that  at  the  outset  a  germ  of  truth  was  contained  in  the 
primitive  conception — the  truth,  namely,  that  the  power  which  mani- 
fests itself  in  consciousness  is  but  a  differently-conditioned  form  of  the 
power  which  manifests  itself  beyond  consciousness. 

Every  voluntary  act  yields  to  the  primitive  man  proof  of  a  source 
of  energy  within  him.     Not  that  he  thinks  about  his  internal  expe- 


348  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

riences  ;  but  in  these  experiences  this  notion  lies  latent.  When  pro- 
ducing motion  in  his  limbs,  and  through  them  motion  in  other  things, 
he  is  aware  of  the  accompanying  feeling  of  effort.  And  this  sense 
of  effort  which  is  the  antecedent  of  changes  directly  produced  by 
him  becomes  the  conceived  antecedent  of  changes  not  produced  by 
him — furnishes  him  with  a  term  of  thought  by  which  to  represent  the 
genesis  of  these  objective  changes.  At  first  this  idea  of  muscular 
force  as  anteceding  unusual  events  around  him  carries  with  it  the 
whole  assemblage  of  associated  ideas.  He  thinks  of  the  implied  effort 
as  an  effort  exercised  by  a  being  wholly  like  himself.  In  course  of 
time  these  doubles  of  the  dead,  supposed  to  be  workers  of  all  but  the 
most  familiar  changes,  are  modified  in  conception.  Besides  becoming 
less  grossly  material,  some  of  them  are  developed  into  larger  person- 
alities presiding  over  classes  of  phenomena  which,  being  comparatively 
regular  in  their  order,  foster  the  idea  of  beings  who,  while  far  more 
powerful  than  men,  are  less  variable  in  their  modes  of  action.  So 
that  the  idea  of  force  as  exercised  by  such  beings  comes  to  be  less 
associated  with  the  idea  of  a  human  ghost.  Further  advances,  by 
which  minor  supernatural  agents  become  merged  in  one  general  agent, 
and  by  which  the  personality  of  this  general  agent  is  rendered  vague 
while  becoming  widely  extended,  tend  still  further  to  dissociate  the 
notion  of  objective  force  from  the  force  known  as  such  in  conscioiis- 
ness  ;  and  the  dissociation  reaches  its  extreme  in  the  thoughts  of  the 
man  of  science,  who  interprets  in  terms  of  force  not  only  the  visible 
changes  of  sensible  bodies,  but  all  physical  changes  whatever,  even  up 
to  the  undulations  of  the  ethereal  medium.  Nevertheless,  this  force 
(be  it  force  under  that  statical  form  by  which  matter  resists,  or  under 
that  dynamical  form  distinguished  as  energy)  is  to  the  last  thought 
of  in  terms  of  that  internal  energy  which  he  is  conscious  of  as  muscu- 
lar effort.  He  is  compelled  to  symbolize  objective  force  in  terms  of 
subjective  force,  from  lack  of  any  other  symbol. 

See  now  the  implications.  That  internal  energy  which  in  the  ex- 
periences of  the  primitive  man  was  always  the  immediate  antecedent 
of  changes  wrought  by  him — that  energy  which,  when  interpreting 
external  changes,  he  thought  of  along  with  those  attributes  of  a  human 
personality  connected  with  it  in  himself — is  the  same  energy  which, 
freed  from  anthropomorphic  accompaniments,  is  now  figured  as  the 
cause  of  all  external  phenomena.  The  last  stage  reached  is  recognition 
of  the  truth  that  force  as  it  exists  beyond  consciousness  can  not  be 
like  what  we  know  as  force  within  consciousness  ;  and  that  yet,  as 
either  is  capable  of  generating  the  other,  they  must  be  different  modes 
of  the  same.  Consequently,  the  final  outcome  of  that  speculation  com- 
menced by  the  primitive  man  is,  that  the  Power  manifested  through- 
out the  universe  distinguished  as  material  is  the  same  Power  which 
in  ourselves  wells  up  under  the  form  of  consciousness. 

It  is  untrue,  then,  that  the  foregoing  argument  proposes  to  evolve 


RELIGIOUS  RETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT.       349 

a  true  belief  from  a  belief  which  was  wholly  false.  Contrariwise,  the 
ultimate  form  of  the  religious  consciousness  is  the  final  development 
of  a  consciousness  which  at  the  outset  contained  a  germ  of  truth  ob- 
scured by  multitudinous  errors. 

Those  who  think  that  science  is  dissipating  religious  beliefs  and 
sentiments  seem  unaware  that  whatever  of  mystery  is  taken  from  the 
old  interpretation  is  added  to  the  new.  Or,  rather,  we  may  say  that 
transference  from  the  one  to  the  other  is  accompanied  by  increase  ; 
since,  for  an  explanation  which  has  a  seeming  feasibility,  it  substitutes 
an  explanation  which,  carrying  us  back  only  a  certain  distance,  there 
leaves  us  in  presence  of  the  avowedly  inexplicable. 

Under  one  of  its  aspects  scientific  progress  is  a  gradual  transfigura- 
tion of  Nature.  "Where  ordinary  perception  saw  perfect  simplicity  it 
reveals  great  complexity  ;  where  there  seemed  absolute  inertness  it 
discloses  intense  activity  ;  and  in  what  appears  mere  vacancy  it  finds 
•  a  marvelous  play  of  forces.  Each  generation  of  physicists  discovers, 
in  so-called  "  brute  matter,"  powers  which,  but  a  few  years  before,  the 
most  instructed  physicists  would  have  thought  incredible  ;  as  instance 
the  ability  of  a  mere  iron  plate  to  take  up  the  complicated  aerial  vibra- 
tions produced  by  articulate  speech,  which,  all  translated  into  multitu- 
dinous and  varied  electric  pulses,  are  retranslated  a  thousand  miles 
off  by  another  iron  plate  and  again  heard  as  articulate  speech.  When 
the  explorer  of  Nature  sees  that,  quiescent  as  they  appear,  surrounding 
solid  bodies  are  thus  sensitive  to  forces  which  are  infinitesimal  in  their 
amounts — when  the  spectroscope  proves  to  him  that  molecules  on  the 
earth  pulsate  in  harmony  with  molecules  in  the  stars — when  there  is 
forced  on  him  the  inference  that  every  point  in  space  thrills  with  an 
infinity  of  vibrations  passing  through  it  in  all  directions — the  concep- 
tion to  which  he  tends  is  much  less  that  of  a  universe  of  dead  matter 
than  that  of  a  universe  everywhere  alive  :  alive,  if  not  in  the  restricted 
sense,  still  in  a  general  sense. 

This  transfiguration,  which  the  inquiries  of  physicists  continually 
increase,  is  aided  by  that  other  transfiguration  resulting  from  meta- 
physical inquiries.  Subjective  analysis  compels  us  to  admit  that  our 
scientific  interpretations  of  the  phenomena  which  objects  present  are 
expressed  in  terms  of  our  own  variously-combined  sensations  and  ideas 
— are  expressed,  that  is,  in  elements  belonging  to  consciousness,  which 
are  but  symbols  of  the  something  beyond  consciousness.  Though 
analysis  afterward  reinstates  our  primitive  beliefs,  to  the  extent  of 
showing  that  behind  every  group  of  phenomenal  manifestations  there 
is  always  a  nexus,  which  is  the  reality  that  remains  fixed  amid  appear- 
ances which  are  variable,  yet  we  are  shown  that  this  nexus  of  reality 
is  forever  inaccessible  to  consciousness.  And  when,  once  more,  we 
remember  that  the  activities  constituting  consciousness,  being  rigorous- 
ly bounded,  can  not  bring  in  among  themselves  the  activities  beyond 


350  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

the  bounds,  whicli  therefore  seem  unconscious,  though  production  of 
either  by  the  other  seems  to  imply  that  they  are  of  the  same  essential 
nature,  this  necessity  we  are  under  to  think  of  the  external  energy  in 
terms  of  the  internal  energy  gives  rather  a  spiritualistic  than  a  ma- 
terialistic aspect  to  the  universe  ;  further  thought,  however,  obliging 
us  to  recognize  the  truth  that  a  conception  given  in  phenomenal  mani- 
festations of  this  ultimate  energy  can  in  no  wise  show  us  what  it  is. 

While  the  beliefs  to  which  analytic  science  thus  leads  are  such  aa 
do  not  destroy  the  object-matter  of  religion,  but  simply  transfigure  it, 
science  under  its  concrete  forms  enlarges  the  sphere  for  religious  senti- 
ment. From  the  very  beginning  the  progress  of  knowledge  has  been 
accompanied  by  an  increasing  capacity  for  wonder.  Among  savages, 
the  lowest  are  the  least  surprised  when  shown  remarkable  products  of 
civilized  art,  astonishing  the  traveler  by  their  indifference.  And  so 
little  of  the  marvelous  do  they  perceive  in  the  grandest  phenomena 
of  Nature  that  any  inquiries  concerning  them  they  regard  as  childish 
trifling.  This  contrast  in  mental  attitude  between  the  lowest  human 
beings  and  the  higher  human  beings  around  us  is  paralleled  by  the 
contrasts  among  the  grades  of  these  higher  human  beings  themselves. 
It  is  not  the  rustic,  nor  the  artisan,  nor  the  trader,  who  sees  something 
more  than  a  mere  matter  of  course  in  the  hatching  of  a  chick  ;  but  it 
is  the  biologist,  who,  pushing  to  the  uttermost  his  analysis  of  vital  phe- 
nomena, reaches  his  greatest  perplexity  when  a  speck  of  protoplasm 
under  the  microscope  shows  him  life  in  its  simplest  form,  and  makes 
him  feel  that  however  he  formulates  its  processes  the  actual  play  of 
forces  remains  unimaginable.  Neither  in  the  ordinary  tourist  nor  in 
the  deer-stalker  climbing  the  mountains  above  him  does  a  Highland 
glen  rouse  ideas  beyond  those  of  sport  or  of  the  picturesque  ;  but  it 
may,  and  often  does,  in  the  geologist.  He,  observing  that  the  glacier- 
rounded  rock  he  sits  on  has  lost  by  weathering  but  half  an  inch  of  its 
surface  since  a  time  far  more  remote  than  the  beginnings  of  human 
civilization,  and  then  trying  to  conceive  the  slow  denudation  which 
has  cut  out  the  whole  valley,  has  thoughts  of  time  and  of  power  to 
which  they  are  strangers — thoughts  which,  already  utterly  inadequate 
to  their  objects,  he  feels  to  be  still  more  futile  on  noting  the  contorted 
beds  of  gneiss  around,  which  tell  him  of  a  time,  immeasurably  more 
remote,  when  far  beneath  the  earth's  surface  they  were  in  a  half- 
melted  state,  and  again  tell  him  of  a  time,  immensely  exceeding  this 
in  remoteness,  when  their  components  were  sand  and  mud  on  the  shores 
of  an  ancient  sea.  Nor  is  it  in  the  primitive  peoples  who  supposed  that 
the  heavens  rested  on  the  mountain-tops,  any  more  than  in  the  modern 
inheritors  of  their  cosmogony  who  repeat  that  "the  heavens  declare 
the  glory  of  God,"  that  we  find  the  largest  conceptions  of  the  universe 
or  the  greatest  amount  of  wonder  excited  by  contemplation  of  it. 
Rather,  it  is  in  the  astronomer,  who  sees  in  the  sun  a  mass  so  vast 
that  even  into  one  of  his  spots  our  earth  might  be  plunged  without 


THE  IQTJANODON,  351 

touching  its  edges  ;  and  who  by  every  finer  telescope  is  shown  an  in- 
creased multitude  of  such  suns,  many  of  them  far  larger. 

Hereafter  as  heretofore,  higher  faculty  and  deeper  insight  will  raise 
rather  than  lower  this  sentiment.  At  present  the  most  powerful  and 
most  instructed  intellect  has  neither  the  knowledge  nor  the  capacity 
required  for  symbolizing  in  thought  the  totality  of  things.  Occupied 
with  one  or  other  division  of  Nature,  the  man  of  science  usually  does 
not  know  enough  of  the  other  divisions  even  to  rudely  conceive  the 
extent  and  complexity  of  their  phenomena  ;  and,  supposing  him  to 
have  adequate  knowledge  of  each,  yet  he  is  unable  to  think  of  them 
as  a  whole.  Wider  and  more  complex  intellect  may  hereafter  help 
him  to  form  a  vague  consciousness  of  them  in  their  totality.  We  may 
say  that  just  as  an  undeveloped  musical  faculty,  able  only  to  appreciate 
a  simple  melody,  can  not  grasp  the  variously-entangled  passages  and 
harmonies  of  a  symphony,  which  in  the  minds  of  composer  and  con- 
ductor are  unified  into  involved  musical  effects  awakening  far  greater 
feeling  than  is  possible  to  the  musically  uncultured,  so,  by  future 
more  evolved  intelligences,  the  course  of  things  now  apprehensible 
only  in  parts  may  be  apprehensible  all  together,  with  an  accompanying 
feeling  as  much  beyond  that  of  the  present  cultured  man  as  his  feel- 
ing is  beyond  that  of  the  savage. 

And  this  feeling  is  not  likely  to  be  decreased  but  increased  by  that 
analysis  of  knowledge  which,  while  forcing  him  to  agnosticism,  yet  con- 
tinually prompts  him  to  imagine  some  solution  of  the  Great  Enigma 
which  he  knows  can  not  be  solved.  Especially  must  this  be  so  when 
he  remembers  that  the  very  notions,  beginning  and  end,  cause  and 
purpose,  are  relative  notions  belonging  to  human  thought,  which  are 
probably  inapplicable  to  the  ultimate  reality  transcending  human 
thought,  and  when,  though  suspecting  that  explanation  is  a  word 
without  meaning  when  applied  to  this  ultimate  reality,  he  yet  feels 
compelled  to  think  there  must  be  an  explanation. 

But,  amid  the  mysteries  which  become  the  more  mysterious  the 
more  they  are  thought  about,  there  will  remain  the  one  absolute  cer- 
tainty, that  he  is  ever  in  presence  of  an  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy, 
from  which  all  things  proceed. 


THE  IGUAISTODOK 

THE  iguanodon  was  discovered  by  Dr.  Mantell,  in  the  Weald  en  of 
England,  in  1822,  and  has  since  figured  in  geological  books  as 
one  of  the  largest  and  most  remarkable  of  the  animals  whose  former 
existence  is  revealed  in  the  fossil  beds  of  past  ages.  It  is  described 
in  the  second  edition  of  Dana's  "  Geology  "  as  "  an  herbivorous  dino- 
saur of  the  Wealden.     It  was  thirty  feet  long,  and  of  great  bulk,  and 


352 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


had  the  habit  of  a  hippopotamus.  The  femur,  or  thigh-bone,  in  a 
large  individual,  was  about  thirty-three  inches  long,  and  the  humerus 
nineteen  inches.  The  teeth  were  flat,  and  had  a  serrated  cutting  edge 
like  the  teeth  of  the  iguana  ;  and  hence  the  name,  signifying  iguana- 
like  teeth  ;  many  of  them,  from  old  animals,  are  worn  off  short."  Le 
Conte's  "  Geology  "  also  says  that  "  the  animal  takes  its  name  from  the 
form  of  its  teeth,  which  are  much  like  those  of  the  iguana,  a  living 
herbivorous  reptile,  although  in  other  respects  there  is  little  affinity." 
Figs.  1  and  2  show  respectively  the  tooth  of  an  iguanodon,  and  a  sec- 
tion of  the  jaw  of  the  iguana,  for  comparison. 


Fig.  1.— Tooth  op  an  Iquakodon. 


Fio.  2.— Section  op  Jaw  op  an  Iquaka.    (After  Buckland.) 

Le  Conte  adds  :  "  But  the  difference  in  size  between  the  living  and 
the  extinct  reptile  is  enormous.  The  iguana  is  from  four  to  six  feet 
long  ;  the  iguanodon  was  certainly  thirty  feet,  perhaps  fifty  or  sixty 
feet  long,  and  of  bulk  several  times  greater  than  that  of  an  elephant. 
A  thigh-bone  has  been  found  fifty-six  inches  long,  twenty-two  inches 
in  circumference  at  the  shaft,  and  forty-two  inches  at  the  condyle. 
Its  habits  are  supposed  to  have  been  something  like  those  of  a  hippo- 
potamus. Like  this  animal,  it  wallowed  in  the  mud,  and  fed  on  the 
rank  herbage  of  marshy  grounds."  The  article  "  Iguanodon,"  in  the 
"  American  Cyclopaedia,"  in  the  course  of  its  technical  description  of 
the  bones  of  the  animal  that  had  been  identified,  suggests  that  the 


THE  IGUANOBON,  353 

thighs  "  must  have  supported  the  heavy  body  in  a  manner  like  that 
of  the  large  pachyderms,"  and  states  that  the  animal  stood  higher  on 
its  legs  than  any  existing  saurian,  and  was  terrestrial  in  its  habits. 
Dr.  Mantell  was  of  the  opinion  that  the  iguanodon  had  a  nasal  integu- 
mental  horn.  We  reproduce  in  Fig.  3  a  picture  of  the  reptile  restored, 
according  to  the  ideas  prevailing  among  geologists  ten  years  ago,  in 
contrast  with  a  view  of  the  actual  skeleton  set  up  in  the  museum  at 
Brussels,  as  an  illustration  of  the  danger  of  making  too  hasty  general- 
izations from  too  few  or  too  imperfectly  understood  data. 


Fig.  3.— Iguanodon. 

A  new  and  very  considerable  deposit  of  remains  of  iguanodons, 
from  one  of  the  nearly  complete  skeletons  of  which  the  present  re- 
construction of  the  animal  has  been  made,  was  discovered  in  1878  at 
the  coal-mines  of  Bernissart,  between  Mons  and  Tournay,  in  Belgium, 
close  to  the  French  frontier.  They  occur  there,  like  the  English  fos- 
sils, in  the  Wealden  or  lower  cretaceous  strata,  or  morts-terrains  (dead 
layers),  as  the  workmen  call  them,  that  overlie  the  coal-beds,  and  which 
have  to  be  penetrated  for  about  twelve  hundred  feet  before  the  coal 
is  reached.  The  discovery  was  made  by  M.  Fag^s,  director-general 
of  the  Bernissart  Mining  Company,  and  specimens  of  the  bones  were 
sent  to  Professor  P.  J.  Van  Beneden,  who  identified  them  as  belong- 
ing to  the  iguanodon.  The  task  of  removing  the  fossils  was  attended 
with  much  difficulty,  for  they  were  charged  with  iron  pyrites,  the  de- 
composition of  which  caused  them  to  crumble  as  soon  as  they  were 
exposed  to  the  air.  It  was  undertaken  and  accomplished  successfully 
by  M.  Depauw,  superintendent  of  the  workshops  of  the  museum  at 
Brussels.  He  adopted  the  habits  of  the  miners,  and  spent  three 
years  in  the  excavations,  personally  superintending  the  removal  of 
every  specimen.  By  subjecting  them  to  a  gelatine-bath  and  envelop- 
ing every  piece,  previous  to  removal,  with  a  casing  of  plaster,  he  got 
them  all  out  whole.  The  remains  were  then  again  examined  by  Pro- 
voL.  XXIV. — 23 


354  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

fessor  Dupont,  director  of  the  museum,  and  again  shown  to  be  those 
of  the  iguanodon. 

For  the  past  two  years  the  bones  have  been  under  the  steady  in- 
vestigation of  M.  L.  Dollo,  a  former  pupil  of  Professor  Giard,  of 
Lille,  who  has  published  four  papers  giving  accounts  of  his  observa- 
tions, and  is  expected,  when  he  gets  through  with  his  work,  to  publish 
an  exhaustive  treatise  on  the  subject.  He  thinks  he  has  the  skeletons, 
or  parts  of  them,  of  twenty-three  individuals,  two  of  which  belong  to 
Mantell's  species  {Iguanodon  Mantelli),  and  twenty-one  to  the  species 
Iguanodon  Bernissartensis.  One  of  the  specimens  has  been  restored 
and  mounted  by  M.  Depauw,  and  set  up  in  a  glass  chamber  in  the 
court  of  the  museum.  It  is  nearly  complete,  only  a  few  phalanges 
and  other  minor  details  being  wanting,  while,  on  account  of  the  im- 
possibility of  detaching  the  bones,  most  of  them  have  been  mounted 
still  joined  to  one  another,  and  fastened  to  the  matrix  as  they  were 
taken  from  the  mine.  The  figure  has,  of  course,  for  this  reason  a 
little  stiffness,  but  not  enough  to  attract  the  attention  of  the  merely 
casual  observer,  and  stands,  in  the  natural  attitude  of  progression  of 
the  animal  on  land,  erect  on  its  hind-limbs,  with  the  top  of  its  snout 
fourteen  feet  two  inches  from  the  ground,  and  covering,  from  the  tip 
of  the  tail  to  a  point  immediately  under  the  tip  of  the  snout,  a  length 
of  twenty-three  feet  nine  inches. 

The  iguanodon  belongs  to  the  sub-class  of  dinosaurians  and  the 
order  Ornitliopoda^  or  bird-footed.  Among  the  special  characteristics 
of  the  family  of  the  iguanodons  are  a  single  row  of  teeth,  three  func- 
tional digits  on  the  foot,  and  two  symmetrical  sternal  plates.  The 
last,  which  Professor  Marsh,  from  his  studies  of  specimens  in  the  Brit- 
ish Museum,  regarded  as  clavicles,  and  traced  in  them  a  point  of  struct- 
ural resemblance  with  birds,  are  declared  by  M.  Dollo,  from  speci- 
mens at  Bernissart,  in  which  they  are  preserved  in  their  natural  rela- 
tions, to  be  sternal,  while  no  clavicles  are  found.  There  are,  how- 
ever, says  Mr.  H.  N.  Moseley,  in  "  Nature,"  abundance  of  other  points 
in  the  skeleton  of  the  iguanodon  "in  which  the  remarkable  resem- 
blances between  the  Ornithopoda  and  birds  indicated  by  Professor 
Huxley,  more  than  twelve  years  ago,  are  borne  out  in  a  most  remark- 
able manner.  .  .  .  First  of  all,  there  seems  to  be  little  doubt  possible 
that  the  iguanodons  walked,  as  he  pointed  out,  on  their  hind-limbs 
erect,  like  birds,  in  somewhat  the  attitude  of  the  accompanying  figure 
(see  Fig.  4).  Several  different  lines  of  coincidence,  as  M.  Dollo  points 
out,  tend  to  prove  this.  Firstly,  the  remarkable  resemblances  be- 
tween the  structure  of  the  pelvis  and  the  posterior  limbs  of  birds,  and 
the  corresponding  parts  in  the  iguanodons.  The  points  of  resem- 
blance of  the  ilium  and  ischium,  pointed  out  by  Professor  Huxley,  are 
fully  confirmed  by  the  Bernissart  specimens.  .  .  .  The  actual  pubis 
is  very  large  in  the  iguanodon,  as  will  be  seen  in  the  figure,  and  pro- 
jects forward  and  outward,  forming  an  obtuse  angle  with  the  post- 


THE  IGUANODON.  355 

pubis.  .  .  .  The  post-pubis  is  long  and  slender,  and  directed  backward 
alongside  the  ischium,  as  in  birds,  for  a  considerable  distance  beyond 
the  ischial  tuberosity.  .  .  .  M.  DoUo  is  inclined  to  follow  Professor 
Marsh  in  identifying  the  dinosaurian  pubis  with  the  pectineal  process 
of  birds,  a  conclusion  which  receives  most  interesting  support  in  the 
valuable  memoir  recently  published  by  Miss  Alice  Johnson,  of  Cam- 
bridge, on  "  The  Development  of  the  Pelvic  Girdle  in  the  Chick,"  in 
which  it  is  shown  that  in  the  embryo  fowl  the  cartilaginous  represent- 
ative of  the  pectineal  process  is  at  first  much  larger  and  more  promi- 
nent in  proportion  to  the  dimensions  of  the  pelvis  than  subsequently, 
and  becomes  gradually  reduced  as  development  proceeds.  The  pecul- 
iar form  of  the  pelvis  is,  no  doubt,  directly  connected  with  the  mus- 
cular arrangements  concerned  in  the  erect  posture,  originated  probably 
in  the  dinosaurians  and  transmitted  to  birds,  in  which  it  has  been 
improved  upon  by  the  elimination,  almost  complete,  of  the  original 
pubis  through  disuse." 

The  fore-limbs  are  considerably  shorter  than  the  hinder  ones,  and 
are  massive  and  strong  ;  and  this  difference  in  structure  is  cited  as 
further  though  not  conclusive  evidence  of  the  animal's  having  main- 
tained an  erect  position.  As  further  evidence  in  the  same  direction, 
and  of  the  approach  of  the  type  of  structure  to  that  of  birds,  are 
mentioned  the  reduction  of  the  volume  of  the  head  and  thorax  as 
compared  with  that  of  reptiles  and  the  position  of  a  large  mass  of  the 
viscera  behind  the  hip-joint,  as  in  birds,  whereby,  with  the  aid  of  the 
long  tail,  the  balancing  of  the  head  and  fore-part  of  the  body  was  more 
easily  secured.  The  dorsal  spines  of  the  vertebrae  are  connected  with 
a  set  of  ossified  ligaments  binding  the  whole  dorso-lumbar  region  into 
a  rigid  mass — another  peculiarity  in  which  the  structure  is  strikingly 
like  that  of  birds.  The  fore-limbs  of  the  animal  have  five  and  the 
hind-limbs  four  claws,  or  toes,  leaving  a  three-toed  track.  Here,  again, 
is  another  and  probably  the  most  decisive  proof  that  the  iguanodon 
walked  on  its  hind-limbs  only.  The  feet  have  been  compared  by  M. 
Dollo  with  the  tridactyl  Wealden  foot-prints — which  the  iguanodon 
only  among  known  Wealden  dinosaurians  could  have  made — and  have 
been  found  to  fit  accurately.  "  If  the  animal  had  walked  on  all-fours," 
Mr.  Moseley  remarks,  "it  is  impossible  but  that  pentadactyl  im- 
pressions should  have  occurred  with  the  tridactyl,  but  such  is  not  the 
case.  Long  series  of  the  tridactyl  prints  are  found  without  a  trace  of 
pentadactyl  marks.  The  arrangement  of  the  tridactyl  tracks  shows 
that  the  iguanodon  walked  on  its  hind-feet,  and  did  not  spring, 
like  a  kangaroo,  with  the  aid  of  its  tail.  This  merely  dragged  lightly 
behind,  and  has  left  no  impression  in  connection  with  the  foot-tracks." 
The  first  finger,  or  thumb,  constitutes  a  large  horny  spur,  the  remains 
of  which  when  first  found  were  supposed  to  be  the  nose-horns  of 
Mantell's  ideal.  According  to  M.  Dollo's  description,  the  head  is  rela- 
tively small,  and  very  much  compressed  from  side  to  side.     The  nos- 


356 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


trils  are  spacious,  and  chambered  in  their  anterior  region  ;  the  orbits 
are  of  moderate  size  and  elongated  along  the  vertical.  The  temporal 
fossa  is  limited  above  and  below  by  a  bony  arch,  a  disposition  which 
is  otherwise  found  among  living  lizards  only  in  the  Hatteria.     The 


FiQ.  4.— Iguanodon  Bernissartensis.— (At  the  Brnseels  Royal  Museum  of  Natural  History.  Re- 
stored and  mounted  by  M.  L.  P.  Depauw.) 

Head  :  a,  left  noptril ;  b.  left  orbit ;  c,  left  temporal  fossa.  Vertebral  column :  d,  cervical  region  ; 
e.  dorso-jumbar  retzion  ;  f,  sacral  region :  gr,  caudal  region ;  h.  left  scapula ;  t,  left  coracoid ; 
k.  left  humerus:  I,  left  uina;  m,  left  radius  ;  n,  sternum  ;  o,  left  ilium  ;  p,  left  pubis  ;  g,  left 
post-pnbis;  r,  left  ischium  :  *,  left  femur;  Meft  tibia;  w.  left  fibula;  r,  tliird  trochanter.  I,  II, 
III.  IV,  V,  digits;  X,  diagrammatic  transverse  section  of  the  body  between  the  fore  and  mud 
limbs. 


DEFECTIVE  EYE-SIGHT.  357 

distal  extremities  of  both  jaws  are  without  teeth ;  while  there  are 
ninety-two  teeth  in  the  hinder  parts  of  the  jaws,  and  these,  as  with 
other  reptiles,  were  replaced  by  new  ones  as  fast  as  they  wore  out. 
The  skin  was  smooth,  or  covered  only  with  epidermic  scales.  Some 
observers  believe  they  have  found  in  the  foot-prints  evidences  that  a 
slight  web  existed  between  the  toes.  M.  Dollo  has  drawn  a  conjectural 
outline  of  the  body  of  the  iguanodon,  which  is  represented  in  our  large 
cut.  Leaving  out  the  long  tail,  its  general  shape  is  that  of  a  duck. 
The  sectional  view,  represented  by  X  in  the  cut,  indicates  that  the 
animal  was  relatively  very  narrow  and  sharp-keeled,  like  a  clipper-ship. 
The  tail,  shaped  like  that  of  a  crocodile,  was  probably  a  powerful 
swimming  organ,  like  that  of  the  duck.  The  neck  was  comparatively 
slender  and  capable  of  very  free  movements.  The  animal  was  an  in- 
habitant of  marshes — so  far  as  is  known,  of  fresh-water  marshes  only 
— and  probably  fed  largely  on  ferns,  abundance  of  which  were  found 
with  the  Bernissart  specimens. 

A  multitude  of  other  treasures  besides  the  iguanodons  were  found 
at  Bernissart,  and  are  awaiting  careful  examination.  Among  them 
are  crocodiles,  in  which  two  new  genera  have  been  defined  ;  turtles, 
which  have  given  one  new  genus  ;  and  "  a  vast  quantity  of  fishes." 


DEFECTIVE    EYE-SIGHT. 

By  SAMUEL  YORKE  AT  LEE. 

DETERIORATION  of  the  eye  has  been,  for  many  years,  a  topic 
of  complaint — not  only  in  the  United  States,  but  in  Europe.  In 
Germany,  after  a  careful  examination  of  the  pupils  in  a  public  school, 
a  surgeon  has  reported  that  the  proportion  of  normal-sighted  children 
is  gradually  less  as  the  ages  of  the  subjects  advance  :  being  thirty- 
six  per  cent  in  the  primary  classes  to  ninety  per  cent  in  the  highest 
classes.  Another  German  investigator  reports  that,  from  an  examina- 
tion embracing  ten  thousand  children,  it  was  found  that  the  number 
of  short-sighted  in  the  elementary  classes  was  from  five  to  eleven  per 
cent ;  in  the  higher  school  for  girls,  the  proportion  was  from  ten  to 
twenty-four  per  cent ;  in  the  Realschulen,  it  was  between  twenty  and 
forty  per  cent ;  in  the  gymnasia,  between  thirty  and  fifty  per  cent ; 
and  in  the  highest  classes  of  all,  between  thirty-five  and  eighty-eight 
per  cent.  In  an  examination  of  six  hundred  students  of  theology 
at  Tubingen,  it  was  found  that  seventy-nine  per  cent  suffered  from 
myopia. 

Similar  examinations  made  in  the  schools  of  France  and  of  Eng- 
land exhibit  similar  results,  showing  that  the  organ  of  sight  grows 
weaker  as  the  term  of  study  grows  longer.     In  the  United  States, 


358  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

examination  proves  the  same  facts.  In  Philadelphia,  a  committee  of 
physicians  of  the  Medical  Society  examined,  with  the  ophthalmoscope, 
the  eyes  of  four  thousand  children  in  the  public  schools,  and  their 
report  exhibits  similar  conclusions.  In  San  Francisco,  the  Depart- 
ment Superintendent  of  the  Public  Schools  asserts  that,  of  the  pupils 
who  enter  the  public  schools  at  the  eighth  grade,  and  work  their  way 
up  to  the  high-school,  fully  forty  per  cent  are  afflicted  with  one  or 
another  form  of  myopia.  Dr.  Agnew  shows,  in  a  recent  report  on  the 
progress  of  near-sightedness  in  this  country,  that  "our  school-rooms 
are  the  factors  most  directly  influential  in  the  gradual  and  increasing 
development  of  a  race  of  spectacle-using  people."  Dr.  Derby,  Dr. 
Seguin,  and  many  other  scientific  philanthropic  gentlemen,  have  ut- 
tered similar  opinions.  Professor  Calhoun,  of  the  Atlanta  Medical 
College,  says,  on  this  subject,  that  in  the  interior  of  the  eye  there  is 
an  elastic  muscle,  called  the  ciliary  muscle  (circumscribing  that  aper- 
ture through  which  light  is  conveyed  to  the  retina),  by  which  the 
sight  is  graduated  to  different  distances.  In  a  normal  eye,  the  con- 
tractions and  expansions  of  this  muscle  are  not  noticed  by  us  ;  but  in 
a  near-sighted  or  over-sighted  eye  these  changes  are  violent  and  some- 
times painful ;  and,  eventually,  the  action  of  this  muscle  is  spasmodic 
and  so  weakened  that  the  sight  is  permanently  injured.  Near-sighted- 
ness, he  remarks,  seldom  begins  until  the  sixth  year,  when  children 
commence  using  the  eye  on  school-books.  There  are  records  of  the 
examinations  of  the  eyes  of  forty-five  thousand  school-children,  of  all 
ages  and  grades,  white  and  colored,  and  it  has  been  proved  that  near- 
sightedness increases,  from  class  to  class,  until,  in  the  highest  grades, 
it  has  actually  been  developed  in  as  many  as  sixty  or  seventy  per  cent 
of  all  the  scholars.  I  saw,  lately,  in  the  "  Baltimore  Sun,"  that  a  stu- 
dious little  girl  in  a  public  school  in  that  city  was  struck  with  blind- 
ness at  her  desk,  just  after  finishing  her  reading-lesson. 

The  causes  to  which  this  deterioration  of  eye-sight  has  been  attrib- 
uted are  alleged  to  be  cross-lights  from  opposite  windows,  light  shin- 
ing directly  on  the  face,  insufficient  light,  small  types,  and  to  the 
position  of  the  desk,  forcing  the  scholar  to  bend  over  and  bring  the 
eyes  too  close  to  the  book  or  writing-paper,  etc. 

But,  were  all  these  defects  remedied,  the  integrity  of  the  eye  would 
not  be  restored  nor  its  deterioration  prevented.  The  chief  causes  of 
the  evil  would  still  remain.  These  are  the  colors  of  the  paper  and  ink. 
White  paper  and  black  ink  are  ruining  the  eye-sight  of  all  reading 
nations.  The  "rays  of  the  sun,"  says  Lord  Bacon,  "are  reflected  by  a 
white  body,  and  are  absorbed  by  a  black  one."  No  one  dissents  from 
this  opinion  ;  but,  despite  these  indications  of  nature  and  of  philoso- 
phy, we  print  our  books  and  write  our  letters  in  direct  opposition  to 
the  suggestions  of  optical  science. 

"When  we  read  a  book  printed  in  the  existing  mode,  we  do  not  see 
the  letters,  which,  being  black,  are  non-reflective.     The  shapes  reach 


DEFECTIVE  EYE-SIGHT.  359 

the  retina,  but  they  are  not  received  by  a  spontaneous,  direct  action  of 
that  organ.  The  white  surface  of  the  paper  is  reflected,  but  the  let- 
ters are  detected  only  by  a  discriminative  effort  of  the  optic  nerves. 
This  effort  annoys  the  nerves,  and,  when  long  continued,  exhausts  their 
susceptibility.  The  human  eye  can  not  long  sustain  the  broad  glare  of 
a  white  surface  without  injury.  The  author  of  "  Spanish  Vistas,"  in 
"  Harper's  Magazine,"  says  of  Cartagena  that  "  blind  people  seem  to  be 
numerous  there,  a  fact  which  may  be  owing  to  the  excessive  dazzle  of 
the  sunlight  and  the  absence  of  verdure."  Mr.  Seward,  in  his  tour 
around  the  world,  observed  that  "  in  Egypt  ophthalmia  is  universal," 
attributing  it  to  the  same  "  excessive  dazzle  "  of  the  wide  areas  of 
white  sand  ;  and  the  British  soldiers,  in  the  late  campaign  in  that 
country,  exhibited  symptoms  of  the  same  disease.  In  the  Smithsonian 
Report  for  1877  it  is  stated,  in  a  paper  on  "  Color-Blindness,"  that 
"  M.  Chevreul  has  produced  14,420  distinguishable  tints  of  the  ele- 
mentary colors,  from  which  the  paper-manufacturers  could  select  col- 
ors more  agreeable  to  the  eye  than  the  dazzling  white,  so  weakening 
and  lacerating  to  the  nerves  of  that  delicate  organ."  We  know,  too, 
that  the  Esquimaux,  wandering  over  their  snowy  plains,  and  the  Arabs, 
roving  over  their  sandy  deserts,  are  afflicted  with  inflammation  of  the 
eyes,  which  often  results  in  blindness.  I  once  rode  for  hours  over  a 
Western  snow-covered  prairie,  and  experienced  the  wearisome  and  irri- 
tating glare  ;  and,  had  my  ride  been  continued  longer,  I  might  have 
found  myself  in  the  condition  of  the  gentleman  described  in  the 
"  Cheyenne  (Wyoming  Territory)  Leader,"  of  April  17th  ult.,  as  fol- 
lows :  "  Ex-Governor  John  W.  Hoyt  was  brought  home  in  yesterday's 
coach  from  the  north  suffering  from  snow-blindness.  He  left  Cheyenne 
on  Thursday,  and  on  Friday  traveled  all  day  over  the  snow  while  the 
sun  shone  brightly  upon  it.  The  Governor  suffered  greatly  from  pain 
in  the  eyes  in  the  evening,  and  at  length  became  totally  blind.  He 
has  not  been  able  to  use  his  eye-sight  since.  His  physician.  Dr.  Gray, 
expresses  the  belief  that  the  Governor  will  recover  his  sight,  but 
must  be  kept  in  a  dark  room  for  a  week."  Lieutenant  Danenhower, 
who  lost  the  use  of  one  of  his  eyes  from  the  reflection  of  light  from 
ice  and  snow  in  the  Arctic  Expedition  of  1881,  is  a  notable  illustration 
of  this  subject. 

From  all  these  authorities  and  instances  it  does  not  seem  unrea- 
sonable to  substitute  some  other  than  the  universal  color  of  our  paper. 
What  color  shall  it  be  ?  Nature  and  science  declare  that  it  should  be 
green.  Green  grass  covers  the  ground,  and  green  leaves  are  our  cano- 
py, and  no  color  is  so  grateful  to  the  eye.  Plutarch  said,  in  Demosthe- 
nes, "it  is  universally  acknowledged  that  we  are  not  to  abandon  the 
unhappy  to  their  sorrows,  but  to  endeavor  to  console  them  by  rational 
discourses,  or  by  turning  their  attention  to  more  agreeable  objects — in 
the  same  manner  as  we  desire  those  who  have  weak  eyes  to  turn  them 
from  bright  or  dazzling  colors  to  green  or  to  others  of  a  softer  kind." 


360  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

And,  in  his  life  of  Pericles,  he  says  that  "  green  is  best  suited  to  the 
eye  by  its  beauty  and  agreeableness,  and  at  the  same  time  it  refreshes 
and  strengthens  the  sight."  From  an  old  anonymous  volume  entitled 
"  The  Gentleman  and  Lady  instructed,"  published  in  London  in  1759, 
I  extract  the  following  :  "  Some  authors  argue  for  a  providence,  from 
the  earth  being  covered  with  green  rather  than  with  any  other  color, 
as  being  such  a  right  mixture  of  light  and  shade  that  it  comforts  and 
strengthens  instead  of  weakening  or  grieving  the  eye,  and  they  ex- 
plain it  in  this  manner  :  All  colors  that  are  more  luminous  than  green 
overpower  and  dissipate  the  animal  spirits  which  are  employed  in  the 
sight  ;  whereas  those  that  are  more  obscure  do  not  sufficiently  exer- 
cise the  animal  spirits  ;  but  the  rays  which  produce  in  us  the  idea  of 
green  fall  upon  the  eye  in  such  a  due  proportion  that  they  give  the 
animal  spirits  their  proper  play,  and,  by  keeping  up  the  struggle  in  a 
just  balance,  excite  a  very  pleasing  and  agreeable  sensation.  But," 
says  the  author,  "be  the  cause  what  it  will,  we  know  that  its  effect  is 
certain."  Richerand,  the  celebrated  French  physiologist,  says,  in  his 
chapter  on  "  Sensations  "  :  "  Green  is  the  softest  of  colors,  the  most  per- 
manently grateful ;  that  which  least  fatigues  the  eyes,  and  on  which 
they  will  the  longest  and  most  willingly  repose.  Accordingly,  Nature 
has  been  profuse  of  green  in  the  coloring  of  all  plants,  and  she  has,  in 
some  sort,  dyed  of  this  color  the  greater  part  of  the  surface  of  the 
globe."  Dr.  Thomas  Dick,  in  his  work  "  On  the  Improvement  of  So- 
ciety by  the  Diffusion  of  Knowledge,"  remarks,  page  206,  section  6 : 
"  As  the  eye  is  constructed  of  the  most  delicate  substances,  and  is  one 
of  the  most  admirable  pieces  of  mechanism  connected  with  our  frame, 
so  the  Creator  has  arranged  the  world  in  such  a  manner  as  to  afford  it 
the  most  varied  and  delightful  gratification.  By  means  of  the  solar 
light,  which  is  exactly  adapted  to  the  structure  of  this  organ,  thou- 
sands of  objects  of  diversified  beauty  and  sublimity  are  presented  to 
the  view.  It  opens  before  us  the  mountains,  the  vales,  the  woods,  the 
lawns,  the  brooks  and  rivers,  the  fertile  plains  and  flowery  fields, 
adorned  with  every  hue,  the  expanse  of  ocean,  and  the  glories  of  the 
firmament ;  and,  as  the  eye  would  be  dazzled  were  a  deep  red  color 
or  a  brilliant  white  to  be  spread  over  the  face  of  Nature,  the  Divine 
Goodness  has  clothed  the  heavens  with  hlue^  and  the  earth  with  green 
— the  two  colors  which  are  the  least  fatiguing  and  the  most  pleasing 
to  the  organs  of  sight  ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  one  of  these  colors  is 
diversified  by  a  thousand  delicate  shades,  which  produce  a  delightful 
variety  on  the  landscape  of  the  world." 

Dr.  Phene,  in  a  paper  read  recently  by  him  before  a  scientific  so- 
ciety in  Edinburgh,  advised  the  planting  of  trees  in  cities  ;  among  the 
beneficial  results  of  which  he  mentions  "  the  relief  to  the  optic  nerve 
through  the  eye  resting  on  objects  of  a  green  color,  and  that,  as  the 
power  of  sight  is  strengthened  and  sustained  by  green  glasses,  a  similar 
advantage  would  be  gained  by  the  presence  of  the  green  foliage  in  the 


THE   CHEMISTRY   OF   COOKERY,  361 

streets."  And,  finally,  that  profound  philosopher,  Swedenborg,  says 
in  his  "  True  Christian  Religion  " :  "  What  would  color  be  if  only  white 
were  given  and  no  black  ?  The  quality  of  the  intermediate  colors, 
from  any  other  source,  is  but  imperfect.  What  is  sense  without  rela- 
tion ?  and  what  is  relation  but  things  opposite  ?  Is  not  the  sight  of 
the  eye  darkened  by  white  alone,  and  enlivened  by  green,  a  color  in- 
wardly deriving  something  from  black  ?  " 

These  authorities  and  facts  are  entitled  to  serious  consideration. 
They  are  all  demonstrative  of  the  positive  injury,  laceration,  and  de- 
struction of  the  sight  by  the  reflective  dazzle  of  white  ;  and  to  what 
else  can  we  attribute  the  steadily  increasing  myopia  of  the  children 
in  our  schools  ?  Why  not  reform  it  altogether  ?  Let  our  books  be 
printed  on  green  paper,  and  let  our  printers  use  red,  yellow,  or  white 
ink  for  the  noxious  black.  The  reform  would  be  revolutionary,  and 
the  interests  of  the  trade  would  be  at  first  hostile  to  the  change.  For 
thousands  of  years,  from  papyrus  to  superfine  glittering  note-paper, 
our  eyes  have  been  exposed  to  the  deleterious  influences  of  black  and 
white.  The  change  to  green,  yellow,  and  red,  or  to  some  other  agree- 
able reflective  tints,  is  eventually  certain  to  take  place.  Science  and 
common  sense  will  compel  it.  The  substitution  can  not,  probably,  be 
sudden  nor  immediate,  for  the  stationery  world  must  be  turned  up- 
side down  in  the  process  :  old  school-books,  blank-books,  and  writing- 
books  and  inks,  must  be  displaced  ;  and  publishers  and  paper-manufac- 
turers will  have  to  adapt  their  measures  to  the  new  dispensation.  But, 
when  it  is  consummated,  everybody  will  rejoice,  except  the  spectacle- 
makers.  The  eyes  of  the  scholar  and  of  the  student  will  no  longer  be 
wearied  with  the  myopian  contrast  of  black  and  white,  but  strength- 
ened and  refreshed  by  congenial  colors  ;  and  to  pore  over  the  pages  of 
a  book  would  be  no  more  fatiguing  to  the  eyes  than  gazing  on  a  ver- 
dant prairie  decorated  with  variously  tinted  flowers. 


THE  CHEMISTRY  OF  COOKERY. 

By  W.  MATTIEU  WILLIAMS. 
XX. 

IN  my  last  I  described  generally  the  diffusion  of  liquids,  and  the  ac- 
tions to  which  the  names  of  endosmosis  and  exosmosis  have  been 
given.  It  is  easily  seen  that  in  extracting  the  juices  of  meat  by  im- 
mersion in  water  the  work  is  done  by  these  two  agencies.  This  is  the 
case,  whether  the  extraction  is  effected  by  maceration  (immersion  in 
cold  water)  or  by  stewing. 

Some  of  these  juices,  as  already  explained,  exist  between  the  fibers 
of  the  meat,  others  are  within  those  fibers  or  cells,  enveloped  in  the 


362  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

sheath  or  cell-membrane.  It  is  evident  that  the  loose  or  free  juices 
will  be  extracted  by  simple  diffusion  ;  those  enveloped  in  membranes 
by  exosmosis  through  the  membrane.  The  result  must  be  the  same  in 
both  cases  :  the  meat  will  be  permeated  by  the  water,  and  the  sur- 
rounding water  will  be  permeated  by  the  juices  that  originally  existed 
within  the  meat.  As  the  rate  of  diffusion — other  conditions  being 
equal — is  proportionate  to  the  extent  of  the  surfaces  of  the  diverse 
liquids  that  are  exposed  to  each  other,  and,  as  the  rate  of  osmosis  is 
similarly  proportioned  to  the  exposure  of  membrane,  it  is  evident  that 
the  cutting-up  of  the  meat  will  assist  the  extraction  of  its  juices  by  the 
creation  of  fresh  surfaces  ;  hence  the  well-known  advantage  of  minc- 
ing in  the  making  of  beef -tea. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  the  condition  of  lean  meat  that  has  thus 
been  minced  and  exposed  for  a  few  hours  to  these  actions  by  immer- 
sion in  cold  water.  On  removing  and  straining  such  minced  meat  it 
will  be  found  to  have  lost  its  color,  and  if  it  is  now  cooked  it  is  insipid, 
and  even  nauseous  if  eaten  in  any  quantity.  It  has  been  given  to  dogs 
and  cats  and  pigs  ;  these,  after  eating  a  little,  refuse  to  take  more, 
and,  when  supplied  with  this  juiceless  meat  alone,  they  languish,  be- 
come emaciated,  and  die  of  starvation  if  the  experiment  is  continued. 
Experiments  of  this  kind  contributed  to  the  fallacious  conclusions  de- 
scribed in  Ko.  6  of  this  series.  Although  the  meat  from  which  the 
juices  are  thus  completely  extracted  is  quite  worthless  alone,  and  meat 
from  which  they  are  partially  extracted  is  nearly  worthless  alone, 
either  of  them  becomes  valuable  when  eaten  with  the  juices.  The 
stewed  beef  of  the  Frenchman  would  deserve  the  contempt  bestowed 
upon  it  by  the  prejudiced  Englishman  if  it  were  eaten  as  the  English- 
man eats  his  roast  beef  ;  but  when  preceded  by  a  potage  containing 
the  juices  of  the  beef  it  is  quite  as  nutritious  as  if  roasted,  and  more 
easily  digested. 

Graham  found  that  increase  of  temperature  increased  the  rate  of 
diffusion  of  liquids,  and  in  accordance  with  this  the  extraction  of  the 
juices  of  meat  is  effected  more  rapidly  by  warm  than  by  cold  water, 
but  there  is  a  limit  to  this  advantage,  as  will  be  easily  understood  by 
referring  back  to  No.  3,  in  which  are  described  the  conditions  of  coagu- 
lation of  one  of  these  juices — viz.,  the  albumen,  which  at  the  tem- 
perature of  134°  Fahr.  begins  to  show  signs  of  losing  its  fluidity  ;  at 
160°  becomes  a  semi-opaque  jelly  ;  and  at  the  boiling-point  of  water 
is  a  rather  tough  solid,  which,  if  kept  at  this  temperature,  shrinks,  and 
becomes  harder  and  harder,  tougher  and  tougher,  till  it  attains  a  con- 
sistence comparable  to  that  of  horn  tempered  with  gutta-percha. 

I  have  spoken  of  beef -tea,  or  Extractum  Carnis  (Liebig's  Extract 
of  Meat),  as  an  extreme  case  of  extracting  the  juices  of  meat,  and 
must  now  explain  the  difference  between  this  and  the  juices  of  an  or- 
dinary stew.  Supposing  the  juices  of  the  meat  to  be  extracted  by 
maceration  in  cold  water,  and  the  broth  thus  obtained  to  be  heated  in 


THE   CHEMISTRY   OF  COOKERY,  363 

order  to  alter  its  raw  flavor,  a  scum  will  be  seen  to  rise  upon  the  sur- 
face ;  this  is  carefully  removed  in  the  manufacture  of  Liebig's  extract 
or  the  preparation  of  beef -tea  for  an  invalid,  but  in  thus  skimming  we 
remove  a  highly-nutritious  constituent — viz.,  the  albumen  which  has 
coagulated  during  the  heating.  The  pure  beef -tea,  or  Extractum  Car- 
nis,  contains  only  the  creatine,  creatinine,  the  soluble  phosphates,  the 
lactic  acid,  and  other  non-coagulable  saline  constituents,  that  are 
rather  stimulating  than  nutritious,  and  which,  properly  speaking,  are 
not  digested  at  all — i.  e.,  they  are  not  converted  into  chyme  in  the 
stomach,  do  not  pass  through  the  pylorus  into  the  duodenum,  etc.,  but, 
instead  of  this,  their  dilute  solution  passes,  like  the  water  we  drink, 
directly  into  the  blood  by  endosmosis  through  the  delicate  membrane 
of  that  marvelous  network  of  microscopic  blood-vessels  which  is  spread 
over  the  surface  of  every  one  of  the  myriads  of  little  upstanding  fila- 
ments which,  by  their  aggregation,  constitute  the  villous  or  velvet  coat 
of  the  stomach.  In  some  states  of  prostration,  where  the  blood  is  in- 
sufficiently supplied  with  these  juices,  this  endosmosis  is  like  pouring 
new  life  into  the  body,  but  it  is  not  what  is  required  for  the  normal 
sustenance  of  the  healthy  body. 

For  ordinary  food,  all  the  nutritious  constituents  should  be  re- 
tained, either  in  the  meat  itself,  or  in  its  liquid  surrounding.  Regard- 
ing it  theoretically,  I  should  demand  the  retention  of  the  albumen  in 
the  meat,  and  insist  upon  its  remaining  there  in  the  condition  of  tender 
semi-solidity,  corresponding  to  the  white  of  an  egg  when  perfectly 
cooked,  as  described  in  No.  4.  Also  that  the  gelatine  and  fibrine  be 
softened  by  sufficient  digestion  in  hot  water,  and  that  the  saline  juices 
(those  constituting  beef-tea)  be  partiall]/ extrsicted.  I  say  "  partial- 
ly," because  their  complete  extraction,  as  in  the  case  of  the  macerated 
mince-meat,  would  too  completely  rob  the  meat  of  its  sapidity.  How, 
then,  may  these  theoretical  desiderata  be  attained  ? 

It  is  evident  from  the  principles  already  expounded  that  cold  ex- 
traction takes  out  the  albumen,  therefore  this  must  be  avoided  ;  also 
that  boiling  water  will  harden  the  albumen  to  leathery  consistence. 
This  may  be  shown  experimentally  by  subjecting  an  ordinary  beef- 
steak to  the  action  of  boiling  water  for  about  half  an  hour.  It  will 
come  out  in  the  abominable  condition  too  often  obtained  by  English 
cooks  when  they  make  an  attempt  at  stewing — an  unknown  art  to  the 
majority  of  them.  Such  an  ill-used  morsel  defies  the  efforts  of  or- 
dinary human  jaws,  and  is  curiously  curled  and  distorted.  This  tough- 
ening and  curling  is  a  result  of  the  coagulation,  hardening,  and  shrink- 
age of  the  albumen,  as  described  in  No.  3. 

It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  in  stewing,  neither  cold  water  nor 
boiling  water  should  be  used,  but  water  at  the  temperature  at  which 
albumen  just  begins  to  coagulate— i.  e.,  about  134°,  or  between  this 
and  160°  as  the  extreme.  But  here  we  encounter  a  serious  difficulty. 
How  is  the  unscientific  cook  to  determine  and  maintain  this  tempera- 


364  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

ture  ?  If  you  tell  her  that  the  water  must  not  boil,  she  shifts  her  stew- 
pan  to  the  side  of  the  fire,  where  it  shall  only  simmer,  and  she  firmly 
believes  that  such  simmering  water  has  a  lower  temperature  than 
water  that  is  boiling  violently  over  the  fire.  "  It  stands  to  reason  " 
that  it  must  be  so,  and,  if  the  experimental  philosopher  appeals  to  fact 
and  the  evidence  of  the  thermometer,  he  is  a  "theorist." 

The  French  cook  escapes  this  simmering  delusion  by  her  common 
use  of  the  bain-marie  or  "  water-bath,"  as  we  call  it  in  the  labora- 
tory, where  it  is  also  largely  used  for  "  digesting  "  at  temperatures  be- 
low 212°.  This  is  simply  a  vessel  immersed  in  an  outer  vessel  of  water. 
The  water  in  the  outer  vessel  may  boil,  but  that  in  the  inner  vessel  can 
not,  as  its  evaporation  keeps  it  below  the  temperature  of  the  water 
from  which  its  heat  is  derived.  A  carpenter's  glue-pot  is  a  very  good 
and  compact  form  of  water-bath,  and  I  recommend  the  introduction 
of  this  apparatus  into  kitchens  where  a  better  apparatus  is  not  obtaina- 
ble. Some  iron-mongers  keep  in  stock  a  form  of  water-bath  which  they 
call  a  "milk-scalder."  This  resembles  the  glue-pot,  but  has  an  inner 
vessel  of  earthenware,  which  is,  of  course,  a  great  improvement  upon 
the  carpenter's  device,  as  it  may  be  so  easily  cleaned. 

One  of  the  incidental  advantages  of  the  bain-marie  is  that  the 
stewing  may  be  performed  in  earthenware  or  even  glass  vessels,  seeing 
that  they  are  not  directly  exposed  to  the  fire.  Other  forms  of  such 
double  vessels  are  obtainable  at  the  best  iron-mongers'.  I  have  lately 
seen  a  very  neat  apparatus  of  this  kind,  called  "  Dolby's  Extractor." 
This  consists  of  an  earthenware  vessel  that  rests  on  a  ledge,  and  thus 
hangs  in  an  outer  tin-plate  vessel  ;  but,  instead  of  water,  there  is  an 
air-space  surrounding  the  earthenware  pot.  A  top  screws  over  this, 
and  the  whole  stands  in  an  ordinary  saucepan  of  water.  The  heat  is 
thus  very  slowly  and  steadily  communicated  through  an  air-bath,  and 
it  makes  excellent  beef -tea  ;  but,  being  closed,  the  evaporation  does 
not  keep  down  the  temperature  sufficiently  to  fulfill  the  above-named 
conditions  for  perfect  stewing.  At  temperatures  beloio  the  boiling- 
point  evaporation  proceeds  superficially,  and  the  rate  of  evaporation  at 
a  given  temperature  is  proportionate  to  the  surface  exposed,  irrespect- 
ive of  the  total  quantity  of  water  ;  therefore,  the  shallower  the  inner 
vessel  of  the  bain-marie^  and  the  greater  its  upper  outspread,  the 
lower  will  be  the  temperature  of  its  liquid  contents  when  its  sides  and 
bottom  are  heated  by  boiling  water.  The  water  in  a  basin-shaped  in- 
ner vessel  will  have  a  lower  temperature  than  that  in  a  vessel  of  simi- 
lar depth,  with  upright  sides,  and  exposing  an  equal  water-surface.  A 
good  water-bath  for  stewing  may  be  extemporized  by  using  a  common 
pudding-basin  (I  mean  one  with  projecting  rim,  as  used  for  tying 
down  the  pudding-cloth),  and  selecting  a  saucepan  just  big  enough 
for  this  to  drop  into,  and  rest  upon  its  rim.  Put  the  meat,  etc.,  to  be 
stewed  into  the  basin,  pour  hot  water  over  them,  and  hot  water  into 
the  saucepan,  so  that  the  basin  shall  be  in  a  water-bath  ;  then  let  this 


THE   CHEMISTRY   OF   COOKERY.  365 

outer  water  simmer — very  gently,  so  as  not  to  jump  the  basin  witli  its 
steam.  Stew  thus  for  about  double  the  time  usually  prescribed  in 
English  cookery-books,  and  compare  the  result  with  similar  materials 
stewed  in  boiling  or  "  simmering  "  water. 

XXI. 

In  my  last  I  explained  the  hardening  effect  of  boiling  water  on 
meat,  and  the  consequent  necessity  of  keeping  down  the  temperature 
considerably  below  the  boiling-point  in  order  to  obtain  a  tender  and 
full-flavored  stew.  Some  further  explanation  is  necessary,  as  it  is 
quite  possible  to  obtain  what  commonly  passes  for  tenderness  by  a 
very  flagrant  violation  of  the  principles  there  expounded.  This  is 
done  on  a  large  scale  and  in  extreme  degree  in  the  preparation  of 
ordinary  Australian  tinned  meat.  A  number  of  tins  are  filled  with 
the  meat,  and  soldered  down  close,  all  but  a  small  pin-hole.  They  are 
then  placed  in  a  bath  charged  with  a  saline  substance,  such  as  chloride 
of  zinc,  which  has  a  higher  boiling-point  than  water.  This  is  heated 
up  to  its  boiling-point,  and  consequently  the  water  which  is  in  the  tins 
with  the  meat  boils  vigorously,  and  a  jet  of  steam  mixed  with  air 
blows  from  the  pin-hole.  When  all  the  air  is  expelled  and  the  jet  is 
of  pure  steam  only  (a  difference  detected  at  once  by  the  trained  ex- 
pert), the  tin  is  removed,  and  a  little  melted  solder  skillfully  dropped 
on  the  hole  to  seal  the  tin  hermetically.  An  examination  of  one  of 
these  tins  will  show  this  final  soldering  with — in  some — a  flap  below 
to  prevent  any  solder  from  falling  in  among  the  meat.  The  object  of 
this  is  to  exclude  all  air,  for,  if  only  a  very  small  quantity  remains, 
oxidation  and  putrefaction  speedily  ensue,  as  shown  by  a  bulging  of 
the  tins  instead  of  the  partial  collapse  that  should  occur  when  the 
steam  condenses,  the  display  of  which  collapse  is  an  indication  of  good 
quality  of  the  contents. 

By  "  good  quality  "  I  mean  good  of  its  kind  ;  but,  as  everybody 
knows  who  has  tried  beef  and  mutton  thus  prepared,  it  is  not  satis- 
factory. The  preservation  from  putrefactive  decomposition  is  per- 
fectly successful,  and  all  the  original  constituents  of  the  meat  are 
there.  It  is  apparently  tender,  but  practically  tough — i.  e.,  it  falls  to 
pieces  at  a  mere  touch  of  the  knife,  but  these  fragments  offer  to  the 
teeth  a  peculiar  resistance  to  proper  masticatory  comminution.  I  may 
describe  their  condition  as  one  of  pertinacious  fibrosity.  The  fibers 
separate,  but  there  they  are  as  stubborn  fibers  still. 

This  is  a  very  serious  matter,  for,  were  it  otherwise,  the  great  prob- 
lem of  supplying  our  dense  population  wdth  an  abundance  of  cheap 
animal  food  would  have  been  solved  about  twenty  years  ago.  As  it 
is,  the  plain  tinned-meat  enterprise  has  not  developed  to  any  important 
extent  beyond  affording  a  variation  with  salt  junk  on  board  ship. 

What  is  the  rationale  of  this  defect  ?  Beyond  the  general  state- 
ment that  the  meat  is  "  overdone,"  I  have  met  with  no  attempt  at 


366  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

explanation  ;  but  am  not,  therefore,  disposed  to  give  up  the  riddle 
without  attempting  a  solution. 

Reverting  to  what  I  have  already  said  concerning  the  action  of 
heat  on  the  constituents  of  flesh,  it  is  evident  that  in  the  first  place  the 
long  exposure  to  the  boiling-point  must  harden  the  albumen.  Syntonin^ 
or  muscle-Jibrine,  the  material  of  the  ultimate  contractile  fibers  of  the 
muscle,  is  coagulated  by  boiling  water,  and  further  hardened  by  con- 
tinuous boiling,  in  the  same  manner  as  albumen.  Thus,  the  muscle- 
fibers  themselves  and  the  lubricating  liquor*  in  which  they  are  im- 
bedded must  be  simultaneously  toughened  by  the  method  above 
described,  and  this  explains  the  pertinacious  fibrosity  of  the  result. 

But  how  is  the  apparent  tenderness,  the  facile  separation  of  the 
fibers  of  the  same  meat,  produced  ?  A  little  further  examination  of 
the  anatomy  and  chemistry  of  muscle  will,  I  think,  explain  this  quite 
satisfactorily.  The  ultimate  fibers  of  the  muscles  are  enveloped  in  a 
very  delicate  membrane  ;  a  bundle  of  these  is  again  enveloped  in  a 
somewhat  stronger  membrane  {areolar  tissue) ;  and  a  number  of  these 
bundles  or  fasciculi  are  further  enveloped  in  a  proportionally  stronger 
sheath  of  similar  membrane.  All  these  binding  membranes  are  mainly 
composed  of  gelatine,  or  the  substance  which  (as  explained  in  No.  5) 
produces  gelatine  when  boiled.  The  boiling  that  is  necessary  to  drive 
out  all  the  air  from  the  tins  is  sufficient  to  dissolve  this,  and  effect  that 
easy  separability  of  the  muscular  fibers,  or  fasciculi  of  fibers,  that  gives 
to  such  overcooked  meat  its  fictitious  tenderness. 

I  have  entered  into  these  anatomical  and  chemical  details  because 
it  is  only  by  understanding  them  that  the  difference  between  true  ten- 
derness and  spurious  tenderness  of  stewed  meat  can  be  soundly  under- 
stood, especially  in  this  country,  where  stewed  meats  are  despised  be- 
cause scientific  stewing  is  practically  and  generally  an  unknown  art. 
Ask  an  English  cook  the  difference  between  boiled  beef  or  mutton  and 
stewed  beef  or  mutton,  and  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred  her 
reply  will  be  to  the  effect  that  stewed  meat  is  that  which  has  been 
boiled  or  simmered  for  a  longer  time  than  the  boiled  meat. 

She  proceeds,  in  accordance  with  this  definition,  when  making  an 
Irish  stew  or  similar  dish,  by  "  simmering  "  at  212°  until,  by  the  coag- 
ulation and  hardening  of  the  albumen  and  syntonin,  a  leathery  mass  is 
obtained  ;  then  she  continues  the  simmering  until  the  gelatine  of  the 
areolar  tissue  is  dissolved,  and  the  toughened  fibers  separate  or  become 
readily  separable.  Having  achieved  this  disintegration,  she  supposes 
the  meat  to  be  tender,  the  fact  being  that  the  fibers  individually  are 
tougher  than  they  were  at  the  leathery  stage.  The  mischief  is  not 
limited  to  the  destruction  of  the  flavor  of  the  meat,  but  includes  the 

*  I  have  ventured  to  ascribe  this  lubricating  function  to  tlie  albumen  which  envelops 
the  fibers,  though  doubtful  whether  it  is  quite  orthodox  to  do  so.  Its  identity  in  compo- 
sition with  the  synovial  liquor  of  the  joints  and  the  necessity  for  such  lubricant  justify 
this  supposition.     It  may  act  as  a  nutrient  fluid  at  the  same  time. 


THE   CHEMISTRY   OF   COOKERY,  367 

destruction  of  the  nutritive  value  of  its  solid  portion  by  rendering  it 
all  indigestible,  with  the  exception  of  the  gelatine  which  is  dissolved 
in  the  gravy.  This  exception  should  be  duly  noted,  inasmuch  as  it  is 
the  one  redeeming  feature  of  such  proceeding  that  renders  it  fairly 
well  adapted  for  the  cookery  of  such  meat  as  cow-heels,  sheep's  trot- 
ters, calves'-heads,  shins  of  beef^  knuckles  of  veal,  and  other  viands 
which  consist  mainly  of  membranous,  tendinous,  or  integumentary 
matter  composed  of  gelatine.  To  treat  the  prime  parts  of  good  beef 
or  mutton  in  this  manner  is  to  perpetrate  a  domestic  atrocity. 

I  am  not  yet  able  to  record  the  result  of  stewing  a  sirloin  of  beef 
in  accordance  with  the  scientific  principles  expounded  in  my  last. 
Have  no  hopes  of  being  able  to  do  so  until  I  can  spare  time  to  stand 
by  the  kitchen  fire  with  thermometer  in  hand  from  beginning  to  end 
of  the  process,  or  have  constructed  a  stewing-pot,  big  enough  for  the 
purpose,  so  arranged  that  its  contents  can  not  possibly  by  any  effort 
of  ingenious  perversity  be  raised  above  180°.  The  domestic  super- 
stition concerning  simmering  is  so  wide-spread  and  inveterate  that 
every  normally-constituted  cook  stubbornly  believes  that  simmering 
water  is  of  much  lower  temperature  than  boiling  water,  and  there- 
fore any  amount  of  instruction  or  injunctions  for  the  maintenance  of 
a  heat  below  boiling  will  be  stubbornly  translated  into  an  order  for 
"  gentle  simmering,"  a  quarter  of  an  hour  of  which  would  spoil  the 
sirloin. 

I  may,  however,  mention  an  experiment  that  I  have  made  lately. 
I  killed  a  superannuated  hen — more  than  six  years  old,  but  otherwise 
in  very  good  condition.  Cooked  in  the  ordinary  way  she  would  have 
been  uneatably  tough.  Instead  of  being  thus  cooked,  she  was  gently 
stewed  about  four  hours.  I  can  not  guarantee  to  the  maintenance 
of  the  theoretical  temperature,  having  suspicion  of  some  simmering. 
After  this  she  was  left  in  the  water  until  it  cooled,  and  on  the  follow- 
ing day  was  roasted  in  the  usual  manner,  i.  e.,  in  a  roasting-oven.  The 
result  was  excellent  ;  as  tender  as  a  full-grown  chicken  roasted  in  the 
ordinary  way,  and  of  quite  equal  flavor,  in  spite  of  the  very  good  broth 
obtained  by  the  preliminary  stewing.  This  surprised  me.  I  antici- 
pated the  softening  of  the  tendons  and  ligaments,  but  supposed  that 
the  extraction  of  the  juices  would  have  spoiled  the  flavor.  It  must 
have  diluted  it,  and  that  so  much  remained  was  probably  due  to  the 
fact  that  an  old  fowl  is  more  fully  flavored  than  a  young  chicken. 
The  usual  farmhouse  method  of  cooking  old  hens  is  to  stew  them 
simply  ;  the  rule  in  the  midlands  being  one  hour  in  the  pot  for  every 
year  of  age.  The  feature  of  the  above  experiment  was  the  supple- 
mentary roasting.  As  the  laying  season  is  now  coming  to  an  end,  old 
hens  will  soon  be  a  drug  in  the  market,  and  those  among  my  readers 
who  have  not  a  hen-roost  of  their  own  will  oblige  their  poulterers  by 
ordering  a  hen  that  is  warranted  to  be  four  years  old  or  upward.  If 
he  deals  fairly  he  will  supply  a  specimen  upon  which  they  may  repeat 


368  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

my  experiment,  very  cheaply.  It  offers  the  double  economy  of  utiliz- 
ing a  nearly  waste  product  and  obtaining  chicken-broth  and  roast  fowl 
simultaneously. 

One  of  the  great  advantages  of  stewing  is  that  it  affords  a  means 
of  obtaining  a  savory  and  very  wholesome  dish  at  a  minimum  of  cost. 
A  small  piece  of  meat  may  be  stewed  with  a  large  quantity  of  vege- 
tables, the  juice  of  the  meat  savoring  the  whole.  Besides  this,  it  costs 
far  less  fuel  than  roasting. 

The  wife  of  the  French  or  Swiss  landed  proprietor,  i.  e.,  the  peasant, 
cooks  the  family  dinner  with  less  than  a  tenth  of  the  expenditure  of 
fuel  used  in  England  for  the  preparation  of  an  inferior  meal.  A  little 
charcoal  under  her  hain-marie  does  it  all.  The  economy  of  time  cor- 
responds to  the  economy  of  fuel,  for  the  mixture  of  viands  required 
for  the  stew  once  put  into  the  pot  is  left  to  itself  until  dinner-time,  or 
at  most  an  occasional  stirring  of  fresh  charcoal  into  the  embers  is  all 
that  is  demanded. — Knowledge. 


CATCHING   COLD. 

By  C.  E.  page,  M.  D. 
"  She  caught  her  death  o'  cold,  taking  gruel  out  of  a  damp  basin." — Old  Story. 

THERE  has  always  been  more  or  less  of  mystery  connected  with  the 
disorder  popularly  called  "  a  cold."     A  close  observer,  in  study- 
ing this  question,  will  find  : 

1.  That,  while  persons  of  all  ages,  sexes,  occupations,  social  posi- 
tions, and  in  all  conditions  of  general  health — from  the  delicate  infant 
and  the  frail  consumptive  to  the  most  robust  man — have  colds,  say 
to-day,  from  the  slightest  causes,  often  enough,  indeed,  when  utterly 
at  a  loss  to  account  for  the  attack  ;  next  month,  or  next  week,  perhaps, 
the  same  individuals — the  frail  and  delicate  ones,  even — may  pass 
through  severe  exposures  to  wet  and  cold,  even  to  the  point  of  being 
chilled  through  and  through,  without  producing  a  symptom  of  this 
disorder. 

2.  Every  day  throughout  the  year  we  see  evidences  of  the  disease  ; 
to  the  last  individual  in  any  community  none  escape  altogether,  a  large 
proportion  are  affected  several  times,  and  individuals  there  are  who 
rarely  pass  an  entire  month  without  some  of  the  symptoms  ;  while 
others,  notably  children  and  infants  who  are  fed  every  hour  or  two, 
are  almost  constant  sufferers  from  nasal  catarrh,  difficult  breathing 
("  snuffles  "),  and  general  malaisey  and  are  peculiarly  subject  to  acute 
attacks. 

3.  Whenever  it  happens  that  an  unusually  large  proportion  of  the 
people  are  attacked  at  about  the  same  time,  the  disease  is  popularly 


CATCHING    COLD.  369 

attributed  to  the  influence  of  an  "  influenza-wave  "  ;  but  this  theory- 
seems  to  me  utterly  untenable,  else  a  still  larger  proportion  would  be 
thus  affected,  and  the  disease  would,  in  general,  be  confined  to  such 
periods  ;  whereas  very  many  escape  at  such  times,  only,  alas  !  to  fall 
victims  to  the  disorder  during  the  finest  season  of  the  year,  when  the 
weather  is  the  mildest  and  most  charming  and  the  temperature  most 
uniform.  Indeed,  some  of  the  severest  "  attacks "  are  observed  at 
such  times,  and  the  disease  is  far  more  prevalent  during  a  season  of 
steady  hot  weather  in  summer  than  during  a  period  of  steady  cold 
weather  in  winter  !  But  it  is  during  a  warm  spell  in  midwinter,  after 
the  world  has  for  quite  a  period  of  intense  cold  been  confined  icithin- 
doorsy  that  "  everybody  has  a  cold  "  ! 

4.  While  the  disease  under  consideration  is  no  respecter  of  persons, 
but  is  as  universal  as  the  dietetic  habits  of  the  people  are  uniform, 
there  is  one  class,  viz.,  vegetarians,  who  are  very  much  less  subject  to 
it,  often  passing  the  entire  year  without  an  attack,  or,  if  attacked,  are 
less  seriously  affected,  and  recover  more  speedily  than  others  about 
them.  Individuals,  indeed,  there  are,  living  still  more  abstemiously, 
and  paying  proper  regard  to  the  ventilation  of  their  dwellings,  who 
never  have  a  cold,  though  half  the  town  may  be  sick  with  the  disease  : 
the  "  wave  "  never  touches  even  the  hem  of  their  garments. 

5.  Members  of  this  class,  however,  upon  resuming  their  former 
practices  as  to  diet,  returning  to  the  "  mixed  "  diet  and  three  meals  a 
day,  also  resume  the  habit  of  "  catching  cold  "  ;  indeed,  a  visit  of  a  few 
weeks,  in  a  family  of  "  good  livers,"  especially  if  the  latter  are  "  air- 
haters  "  also,  will  often  produce  an  attack. 

Personally,  though  a  life-long  sufferer  from  the  disease  in  various 
forms,  from  the  "  snuffles "  of  infancy  to  the  "  hay-fever "  of  adult 
age,  together  with  occasional  attacks  of  neuralgia,  rheumatism,  throat 
and  lung  affections,  etc.,  I  now  find  it  impossible  to  excite  any  of  the 
*•  well-known  symptoms,"  or,  in  fact,  any  form  of  disease,  though  sub- 
jecting myself  to  what  many  would  consider  the  most  suicidal  prac- 
tices in  the  matter  of  exposure  to  the  elements,  so  long  as  I  live  upon 
a  frugal  diet,  chiefly  cereals  and  fruit,  served  plainly — nominally  two 
meals  a  day  ;  holding  myself  ready,  however,  to  "  skip  "  a  meal  when 
necessary,  i.  e.,  whenever  any  of  the  symptoms  of  indigestion,  as  acid 
stomach,  flatulence,  pressure  in  the  region  of  the  lungs  or  stomach,  etc., 
warn  me  of  having  carried  the  pleasures  of  the  table  a  trifle  beyond 
the  needs  of  the  organism. 

I  have,  in  my  efforts  to  "  catch  "  cold,  submitted  myself  to  ex- 
posures that  to  the  minds  of  most  'people  would  appear  of  a  suicidal 
character,  wearing  low  shoes  and  walking  in  snow  and  slop  until  both 
socks  and  shoes  were  saturated,  sitting  an  hour  in  that  condition  and 
going  to  bed  without  warming  my  feet  ;  removing  flannel  under-gar- 
ments  in  midwinter  on  the  approach  of  colder  weather,  and  attending 
to  out-door  affairs  without  the  overcoat  habitually  worn  ;  sleeping  with 
VOL.  XXIV. — 24 


370  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

a  current  of  air  blowing  directly  on  my  head  and  shoulders  ;  sitting 
entirely  naked  in  a  draught,  on  a  very  cold,  damp  night  in  the  fall,  for 
fifteen  minutes  before  getting  into  bed  ;  wearing  cotton  night-shirt 
and  sleeping  under  light  bed-covers  on  the  night  following  the  use  of 
flannel  gown  and  heavy-weight  bedclothes  ;  rising  from  bed  on  a  cold, 
rainy  morning,  and  sitting  naked  for  an  hour,  writing,  and  then  put- 
ting on  shirt  and  trousers  only,  the  shirt  almost  saturated  with  rain 
and  the  trousers  quite  damp,  from  hanging  by  the  window — these  and 
similar  experiments  I  have  tried  repeatedly,  but  without  catching  cold  : 
I  become  cold,  and  become  warm  again,  that  is  all.* 

On  the  other  hand,  changing  the  nature  of  my  experiments,  go- 
ing back  to  my  old  habits  as  to  diet — the  indulgence  of  what  we  call 
a  "  generous  "  diet — the  universal  mixed  diet  of  the  people,  viz.,  fish, 
flesh,  fowl,  with  the  hot,  stimulating,  and  greasy  condiments  almost 
invariably  associated  with  this  class  of  food,  together  with  pastry,  pud- 
dings, and  sauces,  coffee,  etc. — I  have  found  no  difficulty  in  accumulat- 
ing a  "  cold,"  and  within  a  reasonable  length  of  time — the  time  de- 
pending upon  the  degree  of  my  over-indulgence  as  to  frequency  and 
amount — although,  now,  a  part  of  the  programme  consisted  in  taking 
the  most  extreme  care  to  avoid  everything  in  the  way  of  "  exposures," 
as  this  term  is  commonly  applied — keeping  the  feet  dry  and  warm, 
paying  the  utmost  attention  to  wraps,  etc.,  etc.  Indeed,  my  own  ex- 
perience and  observation  satisfy  me  of  the  truth,  and  furnish  ample 
explanation  for  it,  of  the  oft-expressed  opinion  that  those  people  who 
wrap  the  most  and  take  the  most  care  in  such  respects  are  the  greatest 
sufferers  from  "  colds  "  ;  and,  theoretically,  this  would  be  the  logical 
deduction  from  a  consideration  of  the  simple  facts  taught  even  in  the 
primary  text-books  on  physiology  :  certainly,  the  less  clothing  one 
wears  and  the  more  he  is  exposed  to  cold,  the  nearer  he  is  carried, 
metaphorically  speaking,  to  the  polar  regions,  where  stirfeit- fever  is 
unknown  !  Said  an  observing  friend  to  me,  "  I  am  apt  to  catch  cold 
when  I  put  on  my  winter  flannels — why  is  it  ?  "  My  explanation  was 
satisfactory  to  him,  for  he  was  a  bright  man;  but,  in  general,  it  is  difficult 
for  people  to  comprehend  the  fact  or  the  principle  involved  therein. f 

*  Accidents  often  cause  worse  exposures  than  any  I  have  enumerated  above,  without 
exciting  this  disorder :  for  example,  upon  the  occasion  of  a  shipwreck  on  a  bleak,  Northern 
coast,  in  winter,  not  one  of  the  stranded  mariners  or  passengers  would  have  *'  a  cold  "  in 
consequence.  Indeed,  a  sufficient  degree  of  exposure  to  hunger  and  cold  would  tend  to 
"  cure  "  every  case  of  this  disorder  that  previously  existed  on  shipboard  ;  and  if  the  ex- 
posure should  not  extend  beyond  measure — beyond  the  power  of  endurance  of  an  indi- 
vidual or  the  entire  group — no  sickness  of  any  sort  would  result. 

f  For  the  past  two  winters  the  writer  has  worn  no  under-flannels.  He  removed  them 
in  midwinter  (1881-'82)  as  a  part  of  the  treatment  for  "  a  cold ! "  The  balance  of  the 
curative  regimen  consisted  in  a  quick  sponge-bath,  succeeded  by  an  air-bath  with  friction 
for  fifteen  minutes  in  a  cool  room,  abstaining  from  food  for  the  entire  day,  though  the 
appetite  was  craving,  engaging  in  active  exercise  in  the  open  air.  By  night  the  feverish 
symptoms  had  disappeared,  the  oppressed  lungs  were  relieved,  hoarseness  scarcely  notice- 
able— in  a  word,  convalescence  established. 


CATCHING    COLD.  371 

In  the  course  of  my  experiments,  whenever  I  have  fed  my  cold 
as  far  as  I  wished  or  dared  to  go,  I  have,  in  every  instance,  ban- 
ished the  disease  by  entirely  abstaining  from  food  for  a  time  ;  I  have 
never  known  this  remedy  (if  applied  at  the  very  onset)  to  fail  of 
"breaking  up"  a  common  cold  in  twenty-four  to  forty- eight  hours, 
whatever  the  age,  sex,  or  occupation  of  the  patient.  However  we 
may  differ  as  to  the  origin  of  the  disorder,  whenever  I  can  prevail 
upon  a  sufferer  to  try  this  remedy,  we  come  to  be  of  one  opinion  as  to 
what  will  most  surely  and  speedily  "  cure  "  it. 

Of  course  the  size  of  the  "  dose  "  must  bear  some  relation  to  the 
severity  of  the  case  :  *  On  the  first  appearance  of  the  disease — the 
symptoms  of  a  slight  cold,  so  familiar  to  all — skipping  a  single  meal,  in 
the  case  of  a  person  who  takes  but  two  meals  a  day  habitually,  or  two 
meals,  in  the  case  of  a  three-mealer,  will  sometimes  suffice,  if  the  suc- 
ceeding meals  be  very  moderate  ones.  I  have  usually,  in  my  experimen- 
tation, been  satisfied  to  "  turn  "  at  the  "  one-meal  buoy,"  not  often  being 
obliged  to  abstain  longer  than  twenty-four  hours.  When,  however,  I 
have  chosen  to  prolong  the  experiment  by  continuing  to  eat  heartily, 
as  is  the  custom  with  people  in  general  at  such  times,  I  have  found 
my  experience  identical  with  theirs  :  the  symptoms  would  increase  in 
severity,  and  to  nasal  catarrh,  headache,  slight  feverishness,  and  lan- 
guor, would  be  added  sore-thioat,  perhaps,  with  pressure  at  the  lungs, 
hoarseness,  increased  fever,  and  entire  indisposition  for  exertion.  In 
this  case,  two,  perhaps  three  days*  fasting  would  be  required,  with  a 
little  extra  sponging  of  the  skin,  to  completely  restore  the  balance. 
Out-door  air  is  desirable,  and — when  not  demanding  too  great  effort — 
exercise.  Air-haths,  when  there  is  much  feverishness  of  the  skin,  are 
comforting  and  curative.  The  practice  of  holding  down  the  bed- 
clothes, in  case  of  fever  and  delirium,  lest  the  burning  body  "  catch 
cold,"  and  of  stinting  the  supply  of  fresh  air  for  the  same  reason,  is 
no  less  irrational  than  to  withhold  water  or  to  offer  food. 

Years  of  study  and  observation  have  forced  me  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  disease  which  manifests  the  symptoms  popularly  supposed  to 
indicate  that  a  cold  has  been  caught  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes  a 

*  In  the  "  Boston  Journal  of  Chemistry,"  February,  1882,  I  reported  a  case  of  con- 
sumption (the  patient,  seventy  years  old,  had  been  declining  for  three  years,  and  was 
helpless  in  bed)  cured  by  a  forty-three  days'  fast.  He  had  been  a  great  sufferer ;  but  his 
cough  and  pains  gradually  disappeared  during  the  first  two  weeks.  Within  four  months 
thereafter,  on  a  fruit-and-bread  diet,  he  had  regained  his  normal  weight  and  strength. 

A  bad  case  of  malarial  fever,  the  past  summer,  yielded  to  a  twelve  days'  fast,  and 
nothing  else.  Another  patient  suffering  from  rheumatism,  with  night-sweats,  fasted  thir- 
teen days,  obtaining  great  relief.     His  night-sweats  ceased  the  fourth  day. 

Dr.  Wood,  Professor  of  Chemistry  in  Bishop's  College,  Montreal,  reports  for  the 
Canada  "  Medical  Record  "  forty-seven  cases  of  acute  articular  rheumatism  cured  by  fast- 
ing— time  required,  from  four  to  eight  days — and  a  recent  letter  assures  me  that  this 
remedy  is  still  successful  with  him.  He  consequently  has  come  to  regard  rheumatism  as 
"  a  phase  of  indigestion." 


372  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

filth-disease^  arises  largely  from  indigestion,  and  forms  the  basis,  so  to 
say,  or  is  in  fact  the  first  stage  of  all  the  so-called  filth-diseases. 
Whatever  interferes  with  digestion  or  depuration,  or  depraves  the 
vital  organism  in  any  manner,  produces  an  impure  condition  of  the 
body — a  condition  of  disease  ;  and  a  continuance  of  disease-producing 
habits  must  inevitably  result  in  periodical  or  occasional  "  eruptions," 
the  severity  of  which  will  depend  upon  the  degree  of  one's  transgression. 
Among  the  causes  of  this  impure  bodily  condition  are  (1)  impure 
food,*  (2)  excess  in  diet,  and  (3)  impure  air.  Our  homes,  offices, 
shops,  halls,  court-houses,  churches,  and,  with  rare  exceptions,  all  liv- 
ing-rooms, private  or  public,  are  insufficiently  or  not  at  all  ventilated  ; 
and,  except  while  in  the  open  air,  a  very  large  proportion  of  our 
people,  in  all  the  walks  of  life,  habitually  breathe  an  atmosphere  viti- 
ated by  being  breathed  over  and  over  again ;  they  are  starving  for 
want  of  oxygen,  and  are  being  poisoned  by  carbonic  acid.  In  default 
of  sufficient  oxygen  the  best  of  food  can  not  be  transformed  into  pure 
blood — there  will  always  be  a  corresponding  indigestion  ;  nor  can  the 
carbonic  acid  be  eliminated  freely  in  an  impure  atmosphere.  We 
have,  then,  serious  "  interference  with  digestion  and  depuration," 
whenever  we  remain  even  for  a  single  hour  of  the  twenty-four  in  an 
"  in-door  "  atmosphere,  i.  e.,  an  atmosphere  that  is  not  in  tolerably  free 
communication  with  the  great  body  of  air  without.  The  only  offset 
for  restriction  in  oxygen  is  restriction  in  diet  and  exercise  ;  but  a  com- 
bination of  this  character  would  produce  enfeeblement  of  the  system, 
though  if  a  proper  balance  were  maintained  there  would  arise  no 
febrile  symptoms  such  as  we  are  considering.  We  have  plenty  of 
people  living  in  unventilated  rooms  who,  so  far  as  exercisei^  concerned, 
live  a  well-balanced  life  ;  but  seldom  do  these,  any  more  than  the 
robust  and  active,  practice  any  sort  of  voluntary  restriction  as  to 
quality  or  quantity  of  food — nausea  and  lack  of  appetite  being  the 
only  safeguards.  Persons  of  this  class  are  great  sufferers  from  colds. 
Impure  air,  although  a  prevailing  source  of  disease,  is  not  abso- 
lutely essential  in  provoking  this  disorder  ;  an  unwholesome  diet  alone 
being  sufficient.  In  none  of  my  own  experiments  have  I  suffered  any 
restriction  in  the  matter  of  pure  air.  But  for  this  depraved  condition 
— this  chronic  state  of  impurity — that  I  have  undertaken  to  describe 

*  Under  this  head  I  am  led  to  class  all  foods  eaten  unnaturally,  as  (1)  farinaceous 
dishes  (the  mushes,  soft  bread,  etc.),  that  on  account  of  their  mode  of  preparation  and 
dressing  can  not  be  insalivated ;  and  (2)  flesh-food  that  is  "  well  masticated  "  or  taken 
in  the  form  of  hash.  It  has  been  demonstrated  (by  experiments  on  dogs)  that  carnivo- 
rous animals  fed  on  hashed  meat  suffer  from  indigestion,  while,  if  they  are  allowed  to 
swallow  their  meat  as  they  like,  in  chunks,  it  is  all  digested.  In  repeated  experiments 
upon  myself,  I  find  that  a  moderate  ration  of  meat,  swallowed  in  pieces  of  convenient 
size,  occasions  no  disturbance,  while  the  same  quantity  chewed  fine,  or  taken  in  the  form 
of  hash,  is  not  well  borne.  The  point  is,  that  while  minced  meat  passes  out  of  the  stom- 
ach before  being  dissolved  by  the  gastric  juice,  large  pieces  remain  to  be  gradually 
dissolved.     There  is  no  demand  for  the  chemical  action  of  saliva  on  this  class  of  foods. 


CATCHING    COLD.  373 

and  account  for,  such  sicknesses  as  croup,  diphtheria,  pneumonia, 
measles,  scarlet,  typhus,  typhoid,*  rheumatic,  "  malarial,"  and  other 
fevers. 

I  have  already  remarked  that  the  condition  of  disease  produced  by 
an  unhygienic  mode  of  living,  relating  chiefly  to  food  and  air,  and 
whose  occasional  ebullitions  are  observed  in  the  "  well-known  symp- 
toms of  cold,"  forms  the  basis  of  most  sicknesses  by  whatever  name 
they  are  known.  "  I  catched  cold  in  the  first  place,  and  kept  adding 
to  it,  some  way,  I  couldn't  tell  how,  and  finally  it  settled  on  my  kid- 
neys "  (or  lungs,  throat,  face,  limbs,  or  whatever  organ  or  locality 
seems  especially  affected).  As  the  nearest  to  a  panacea  for  all  the 
physical  ills  of  life,  I  would  offer  this  :  Take  care  of  the  colds  and  the 
fevers  will  take  care  of  themselves.  Whatever  may  be  the  origin  of 
disease,  or  whatever  may  give  rise  to  its  manifestations,  whenever 
these  manifestations  or  symptoms  are  said  to  indicate  a  cold,  the  con- 
dition, as  every  intelligent  physician  well  knows,  is  that  of  fever :  the 
thermometer  placed  under  the  tongue  shows  at  once  that  the  tempera- 
ture is  above  the  normal.  The  patient  may,  usually  does,  have  periods 
of  chilliness  ;  his  first  noticeable  symptom  is,  very  likely,  a  chill ;  and 
if  at  such  a  moment  he  happens  to  feel  a  puff  of  fresh  air  on  his  cheek 
he  thinks  that  was  the  moment  when  he  caught  his  cold  !  Possibly 
he  might  have  been  feeling  a  little  too  warm,  and  that  "  draught "  f 
did  the  business  for  him  !  Chills  and  fever,  speaking  in  popular 
phrase  (in  reality  it  is  all  fever),  indicate  blood-poison,  always.  In  its 
earliest  stage,  the  patient,  being  perhaps  wholly  unaware  of  his  condi- 
tion, feels  "  too  warm,"  and  throws  off  coat  or  shawl ;  pretty  soon  he 
feels  the  reaction — the  chill — and,  thinking  he  has  done  a  careless 
thing  in  removing  the  garment,  replaces  it ;  too  late,  alas  !  he  has 
already  caught  cold  ! 

"  It  is  noteworthy  as  a  curious  yet  easily  explicable  fact,"  says  the 
"Lancet,"  "that  few  persons  take  cold  who  are  not  either  self-con- 
sciously careful  or  fearful  of  the  consequences  of  exposure."  J     It  is 

*  It  is  held  by  some  that  typhoid  fever  and  some  other  diseases  depend  upon  the  in- 
troduction of  germs  of  the  disease  from  without  the  organism.  "  No  seed,  no  crop," 
remarks  a  friend,  and  adds :  "  These  germs  do  not  always  lodge,  or,  if  they  do,  may  not 
grow ;  but  they  may.  Not  all  the  thistle-seeds  take  root  and  grow."  To  which  I  reply, 
that  neither  thistles  nor  any  other  undesirable  weeds  ever  "  get  the  start "  of  a  good  gar- 
dener ;  and  that,  of  all  antagonists  to  obnoxious  or  undesirable  "  weeds,"  the  vital  organ- 
ism, under  the  influence  of  rational  personal  hygiene,  is  the  most  alert  and  efficient. 
— none  of  these,  or  at  least  but  seldom,  could  get  a  foothold. 

f  Whenever  a  patient  comes  to  me  with  "  a  cold,"  complaining  of  a  draught,  I  usually 
ask,  "  A  '  draught '  of  what — pure  air  or  impure  food  ?  "  The  answer,  in  the  absence  of 
certain  physiological  knowledge,  is  sure  to  be  a  blank  stare  of  helpless  ignorance  as  to 
my  meaning. 

X  Former  patients  comfort  me  with  such  remarks  as  these :  "  Your  colds-theory  has 
given  me  a  new  lease  of  life ; "  "  How  thankful  I  am  for  being  rid  of  my  old  fear  of  cold 
air ! "  "  I  date  my  first  real  improvement  from  the  hour  when  you  induced  me  to  throw 
off  my  dread  of  cold,"  etc.    "  Now  that  I  know  what  it  is,"  writes  a  bright  Southern  lady, 


374  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

not,  however,  that  these  over-careful  people  catch  cold  from  fear,  but 
rather  that  their  cowardice  keeps  them  in- doors  too  much,  or  incites 
them  to  "  muffling  "  themselves  when  they  do  go  out — they  quake  from 
fear  of  "  night-air,"  "  draughts,"  and  so  cheat  themselves  of  health- 
producing  influences.  Lacking  active  exercise  and  fresh  air,  or  swel- 
tering with  an  excess  of  clothing,  they  must  suffer  from  indigestion. 
That  is,  though  they  may  eat  as  much,  or  more,  they  can  not  digest  as 
much  as  the  fearless  person  who  dresses  light,  pays  no  heed  to  the 
weather,  spends  considerable  time  out-doors  every  day,  and,  because 
of  this,  can  not  and  will  not  remain  in  "  stuffy  "  rooms. 

The  "  fresh-air  idiot  "  seldom  takes  cold.  "  That  may  be,"  says  the 
timid,  blood-poisoned,  chilly  man,  "  but  he  causes  every  one  else  to, 
with  the  open  doors  and  windows."  There  is  a  grain  of  truth,  if  not 
of  sense,  in  this  assertion  ;  for  the  pure  air  in  contact  with  the  skin,  and 
in  the  lungs,  of  those  who  are  most  in  need  of  it — who  are  filled  up,  so 
to  say,  with  the  impurities  of  indigestion  and  deficient  depuration — the 
constipated  air-haters — gives  the  needed  stimulus,  or,  rather,  so  aug- 
ments the  vital  powers  that  "  the  reconstructive  process  is  initiated, 
and  thus  apparently  the  disease  itself,  but  there  is  a  wide  difference 
between  a  proximate  and  an  original  cause.  A  man  may  be  too  tired 
to  sleep  and  too  weak  to  be  sick.  Bleeding,  for  the  time  being,  may 
*  break  up  '  an  inflammatory  disease — the  system  has  to  regain  some 
little  strength  before  it  can  resume  the  work  of  reconstruction.  The 
vital  energy  of  a  person  breathing  the  stagnant  air  of  an  unventilated 
stove-room  is  often  inadequate  to  the  task  of  undertaking  a  restorative 
process — though  the  respiratory  organs,  clogged  with  phlegm  and  all 
kinds  of  impurities,  may  be  sadly  in  need  of  relief.  But,  during  a 
sleigh-ride,  or  a  few  hours'  sleep  before  a  window  left  open  by  acci- 
dent, the  bracing  influence  of  the  fresh  air  revives  the  drooping  vital- 
ity, and  Nature  avails  herself  of  the  chance  to  begin  repairs — the 
lungs  reveal  their  diseased  condition,  i.  e.,  they  proceed  to  rid  them- 
selves of  the  accumulated  impurities. 

"For,"  continues  Oswald,*  "rightly  interpreted,  the  external  symp- 
toms of  disease  constitute  a  restorative  process  that  can  not  be  brought 
to  a  satisfactory  issue  till  the  cause  of  the  evil  is  removed.  So  that, 
in  fact,  the  air-hater  confounds  the  cause  of  his  recovery  with  the 
cause  of  his  disease.  Benjamin  Franklin,  "  whose  wisdom  was  of  that 
rare  kind  which  does  not  grow  old,"  expressed  his  conviction  of  the 
fact  that  "the  causes  of  *  colds'  are  totally  independent  of  wet  and 
even  of  cold."f  Dr.  Herring  remarks  of  a  family  of  friends,  "They 
all  invariably  had  *  colds  in  the  head '  the  next  day  after  dining  on 
roast  goose  ! " 

"  I  seldom  catch  cold,  and,  when  I  do,  it  gets  away  again  right  soon  !  "  I  am  compelled 
to  admit  that  all  this  is  more  profitable  for  patients  than  for  the  practitioner. 

*  "  Physical  Education,"  by  F.  L,  Oswald,  M.  D. ;  New  York,  D.  Appleton  &  Co. 

f  "Essays,"  p.  216. 


CATCHING    COLD.  375 

"  The  immediate  effects  of  a  displacement  of  blood  from  the  sur- 
face, and  its  determination  to  the  internal  organs,  are  not,"  says  the 
"  Lancet,"  **  as  was  once  supposed,  sufficient  to  produce  the  sort  of  con- 
gestion that  issues  in  inflammations.  If  it  were  so,  an  inflammatory  con- 
dition would  be  the  common  characteristic  of  our  bodily  state.  When 
the  vascular  system  is  healthy,  and  that  part  of  the  nervous  apparatus  by 
which  the  caliber  of  the  vessels  is  controlled  performs  its  proper  func- 
tions normally,  any  disturbance  of  equilibrium  in  the  circulatory  sys- 
tem which  may  have  been  produced  by  external  cold  will  be  quickly 
adjusted.  Most  of  the  sensations  of  cold  or  heat,"  continues  the  "  Lan- 
cet," "  which  are  experienced  by  the  hypersensitive  have  no  external 
cause."  They  have,  however,  an  internal  cause  which  I  have  endeav- 
ored to  point  out  and  account  for,  as  well  as  indicate  the  natural 
remedy.  A  "  chilly  "  person  is  a  sick  person,  and  is  in  a  state  predis- 
posing him  to  an  "  attack  " — a  natural  kill-or-cure  sickness — whenever 
external  conditions  are  favorable.  But  no  amount  of  transient  cold, 
or  wet,  or  draughts,  can  alone  originate  the  symptoms  of  "  a  cold  "  ; 
the  predisposing  cause  must  of  necessity  exist,  or  the  effects  will  be  of 
a  wholly  different  character  :  temporary  discomfort — suffering,  per- 
haps— and,  at  the  worst  (if  the  exposure  be  of  a  severe  nature,  as  in 
the  case  of  a  feeble  person),  a  lowering  of  the  general  health.  Short 
of  the  point  of  freezing  to  death,  or  of  exposure  so  severe  as  to  render 
reaction  impossible,  the  person  will  get  cold  and — get  warm  again,  that 
is  all. 

There  is  a  maxim  worthy  of  all  acceptation  :  "  If  you  stuff  a  cold 
you  will  have  to  starve  a  fever."  Unfortunately  abbreviated  to  "  stuff 
a  cold  and  starve  a  fever,"  and  utterly  misinterpreted,  a  deal  of  mis- 
chief has  been  done,  for  which  the  only  compensation  evident  to  my 
mind  is  this  :  those  who  have  accepted  the  first  division  of  the  command 
have  gorged  themselves  conscientiously  !  They  have  taken  allopathic 
doses  of  a  homoeopathic  remedy — similia  similihus  curantur — with  a 
vengeance  !  But  when  the  incipient  fever  became  well  established  did 
these  superobedient  children  of  Nature  obey  the  second  injunction? 
No,  and  with  good  reason,  apparently — the  first  prescription  proving  a 
failure  (?),  they  did  not  dare  to  try  the  second  !  Now  and  then,  how- 
ever, it  has  been  tried,  either  because  of  the  courage  or  exceptional 
intelligence  on  the  part  of  the  patient  or  his  physician,  and  with  uni- 
form good  results.  Where  the  "  fasting-cure  "  is  applied  in  extenso, 
with  appropriate  water  and  air  baths,  sunshine,  and  perfect  ventilation, 
the  worst  forms  of  fever  rarely  have  a  "  run  "  of  ten  days — three  or 
four  days  will  often  suffice  to  insure  convalescence  ;  whereas,  under  the 
milk-and-brandy,  beef -tea,  and  tonic  treatment,  and  "  eating  little  and 
often,"  the  flames  are  fed  until  the  patients  are  burned  to  skeletons,  and 
a  large  percentage  fatally. 

I  think  I  should  be  justified,  in  the  estimation  of  most  people,  in 
saying  that  mankind  are  ^by  nature,  or  at  least  from  custom,  if  not 


376  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

gourmands,  certainly  prone  to  over-indulgence  in  diet.     I  find,  in  con- 
versing with  rational  people — and  most  people  are  rational  to  this  de- 
gree— that  they  are  quite  willing  to  subscribe  to  this  much  :  "  With- 
out doubt  we  eat  too  much,  and  indulge  in  many  dishes  of  an  un- 
wholesome nature."     There  are,  to  be  sure,  many  persons  who  call 
themselves  small  eaters,  and  who  do,  in  fact,  eat  very  little  food  ; 
such  would  be  inclined  to  take  issue,  and  upon  apparently  good  grounds, 
with  the  assertion  that  their  colds  could  spring  from  overeating.     But 
we  must  bear  in  mind  that  "  excess  in  diet "  is  a  relative  phrase  ;  the 
quantity  of  food,  if  we  regard  a  physiological  diet,  must  be  propor- 
tioned to — 1.  The  amount  of  labor  performed,  or  exercise  taken  ;  2. 
The  degree  of  cold  endured  ;  3.  The  amount  of  oxygen  taken  into 
the  blood  ;  i.  e.,  the  purity  of  the  air  habitually  breathed,  since  all 
these  circumstances  affect  the  needs  of  the  organism  for  nutriment, 
and  therefore  the  amount  of  the  digestive  fluids  that  can  possibly  be 
secreted  from  the  blood  by  the  appropriate  glands  of  the  stomach, 
liver,  pancreas,  and  intestines.     Moreover,  it  must  relate  to  the  pres- 
ent physical  condition  of  the  individual  :  for  example,  the  man  who 
has  recently  been  purified  by  a  "cold,"  may  carry  off,  without  ex- 
periencing serious  indisposition,  a  dinner  of  a  dozen  courses  {curses, 
as  Dr.  Abernethy  used  to  call  them),  either  one  of  which  would  alone 
suffice  to  produce  a  violent  "  attack  "  of  indigestion  in  the  case  of  his 
neighbor  who  might  be  approaching,  or  already  standing  on,  the  "  dead- 
line "  ;  but  a  succession  of  such  indulgences,  or  continuance  of  the 
prevailing  mode  of  living,  will  ere  long  again  bring  him  to  the  end  of 
his  tether,  so  to  say — to  the  brink  of  the  surfeit -precipice  upon  which 
so  many  habitually  live — ^to  that  condition  of  the  system  wherein  a 
single  dish  of  the  most  wholesome  food  constitutes  an  excess.    In  such 
a  case  the  form  of  the  disorder  will  depend  upon  various  circumstances, 
as  the  constitution,  temperament,  or  "  diathesis  "  of  the  individual,  the 
kind  of  food  eaten,  amount,  etc. — headache,  nausea,  colic  "  cramps,"  or 
cholera-morbus  (in  the  South,  during  the  heated  term,  genuine  cholera 
or  yellow  fever)  ;  or  it  may  excite  the  symptoms  of  that  initial  fever 
popularly  called  a  cold.     Many  people  eat  little,  simply  because  it  is 
physically  impossible  for  them  to  eat  much.    Kausea  or  lack  of  appetite 
prevents  them,  not  from  overeating,  but  from  eating  a  large  amount. 
Such  people  habitually  overeat.    Even  the  small  quantity  swallowed,  in 
face  of  Nature's  protest,  lack  of  relish,  is  relatively  a  greater  excess 
than  the  huge  dinner  eaten  by  a  "  good  feeder "  when  in  condition. 
Hence,  their  frequent  efforts  to  eat  (every  five  or  six  hours,  or  oftener), 
especially  in  view  of  the  kind  of  food  necessary  to  "  tempt  the  appe- 
tite," prevent  a  ready  return  to  a  normal  condition — prohibit  a  natural 
appetite,  i.  e.,  a  relish  for  plain  food.     For  all  such  patients  I  would 
direct,  first,  a  rest  for  the  stomach  (and  thus  a  respite  for  all  the  vis- 
cera concerned  in  digestion,  and  relief  for  the  excretories  as  well),  and 
then  attention  to  the  due  nutrition  of  the  body,  not  the  tickling  of  the 


THE  SOURCE   OF  MUSCULAR  ENERGY.  377 

palate  merely  or  mainly.  "Fasting,  fresh  air,  and  exercise,  is  Na- 
ture's panacea,"  says  Dr.  Oswald  ;  and  so,  in  practice,  I  have  found  it 
for  a  wide  range  of  "  diseases "  that  nothing  else  can  reach.  If  we 
agree  that  disease  results,  mainly,  from  the  breathing  of  impure  air, 
the  use  of  unnatural  food  or  excess,  and  often  deficient  exercise,  then 
it  would  seem  to  follow  that  ease  must  depend  upon  a  reform  in  these 
particulars.  In  all  my  experience  with  sick  people  I  have  never  known 
of  the  restoration  of  a  single  patient  to  fairly  robust  health  in  the  ab- 
sence of  such  reform.  I  have  rarely  known  a  person  to  become  sick 
except  as  the  direct  result  of  some  degree  of  fear  of  pure  air,  and  fear- 
lessness regarding  the  influence  of  impure  food.  Whatever  else  may 
have  contributed  to  the  production  of  his  disease,  it  is  seldom,  indeed, 
that  these  may  not  be  truly  regarded  as  the  principal  causes.  Nature's 
preventive  and  curative  agents  may  be  summed  up  thus  :  Pure  air, 
appropriate  food,  exercise  (active  or  passive  as  the  case  may  require), 
skin-cleanliness,  with  proper  ventilation  of  the  surface  of  the  body, 
i.  e.,  through  the  use  of  non-sweltering  garments,  supplemented  by 
rational  exposure  of  the  entire  surface  of  the  body  to  the  air,  by  means 
of  air-baths,  sunshine  in  the  home  and  "  sunshine  in  the  heart " — with 
these,  and  only  these,  all  curable  cases  will  go  on  to  certain  recovery. 
Without  them  no  medication  will  avail. 


THE  SOUECE  OF  MIJSCULAE  ENEEGY. 

By  J.  M.  STILLMAN,  Ph.  B. 

"ATFEW  and  valuable  scientific  discoveries  and  inventions  are  not  slow 
J-^  at  the  present  time  in  making  their  way  from  the  closets  and 
laboratories  of  the  investigators  or  discoverers  to  popular  recognition. 
It  is  somewhat  otherwise  with  the  gradual  development  of  knowledge 
on  subjects  once  thought  to  have  been  tolerably  clearly  understood  and 
of  no  immediate  practical  value.  The  gradual  modifications  which  take 
place  in  generally  accepted  theories  by  the  slowly  accumulating  results 
of  the  labor  of  many  investigators  are,  to  be  sure,  appreciated  by  the 
special  student  in  the  particular  department  of  knowledge  concerned, 
but  are  slower  in  meeting  with  public  recognition.  It  thus  happens 
that  teachers  and  books,  not  dealing  as  a  specialty  with  the  subject 
involved,  often  adopt  and  repeat  as  authoritative  views  and  theories 
which,  by  the  specialists  in  those  branches,  have  either  been  aban- 
doned or  brought  seriously  into  question.  Nor  is  it  to  be  otherwise 
expected.  Chroniclers  are  quick  to  seize  upon  and  distribute  the  news 
of  brilliant  or  startling  discoveries  or  inventions,  but  those  are  fewer 
who  will  track  patiently  the  slowly  accumulating  evidence  of  many 
workers,  appreciate  the  bearing  of  their  work,  and  produce  it  in  a 


378  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

form  in  which  it  can  be  appreciated  by  those  non-specialists  most  in- 
terested in  the  subject  involved. 

It  is  thus,  to  a  certain  extent,  with  the  subject  of  the  source  of 
muscular  power  in  the  animal  organism.  It  is  needless  to  specify  in 
this  particular.  Text-books  and  popular  articles  touching  on  the  sub- 
ject are  continually  asserting,  as  apparently  unquestioned,  theories 
which  at  the  present  time  are  either  exploded  or  very  much  in  doubt. 
It  would  seem,  therefore,  not  without  value  to  attempt,  as  far  as  prac- 
ticable in  a  popular  or  semi-popular  article,  a  general  statement  of  the 
present  condition  of  the  theories  on  the  source  of  muscular  power, 
and  of  the  main  points  of  the  evidence  which  tends  to  support  these 
theories. 

The  general  acceptance  of  the  law  of  the  conservation  and  corre- 
lation of  physical  forces  had  at  once  an  important  influence  in  direct- 
ing attention  to  the  source  of  muscular  force.  The  idea  was  readily 
taken  up  that  this  form  of  force  is  at  the  expense  of  heat,  which  is 
produced  by  the  oxidation  of  carbon  and  hydrogen  in  the  body,  the 
necessary  oxygen  being  conveyed  by  the  arterial  blood  to  the  mus- 
cular tissue.  In  other  words,  the  somewhat  trite  comparison  of  the 
human  body  and  the  muscular  system  to  an  engine,  which  consumes 
just  so  much  fuel  to  produce  so  much  force,  has  pretty  clearly  formu- 
lated the  idea  as  generally  accepted.  And  so  far  as  it  goes  the  com- 
parison is  not  bad. 

When,  however,  we  pass  beyond  this  somewhat  vague  simile  to 
an  examination  of  the  more  intimate  nature  of  these  various  processes, 
we  find  the  questions  raised  are  not  so  generally  understood.  Accept- 
ing that  the  muscular  force  is  produced  by  the  ultimate  oxidation  of 
carbon  and  hydrogen  to  carbonic-acid  gas  and  water  respectively,  the 
next  questions  that  suggest  themselves  are  :  "  What  is  the  immediate 
source  of  this  carbon  and  hydrogen — the  fuel  material  for  muscular 
force  ? "  and  "  What  is  the  real  nature  of  these  processes  which  we 
call  briefly  oxidation?"  The  endeavors  to  answer  these  questions 
have  given  rise  to  many  discussions  and  disputes,  which  are,  even  at 
the  present  day,  by  no  means  concluded. 

Before  taking  up  the  discussion  of  the  theories  advanced  to  answer 
these  questions,  it  will  not  be  out  of  place  to  review  very  briefly  the 
composition  of  the  muscles  and  their  general  relations  to  the  circula- 
tion— only  in  so  far,  however,  as  is  necessary  for  a  clear  comprehension 
of  the  evidence  and  arguments  involved  in  the  discussion. 

A  muscle  is  essentially  a  collection  of  lengthened  cells  held  together 
by  a  connective  tissue.  Each  cell  consists  of  a  delicate  cell-wall  or 
membrane  containing  a  fluid  or  semi-fluid  mass  of  living  (protoplasmic) 
matter.  This  gelatinous  substance  possesses  the  power  of  contrac- 
tion under  the  stimulus  of  excitations  of  various  kinds — nervous  im- 
pulse, electricity,  heat — and  the  cell  becomes  thereby  shortened.  This 
process,  taking  place  simultaneously  in  all  the  cells  of  a  given  muscle 


THE  SOURCE  OF  MUSCULAR  ENERGY,  379 

under  the  influence  of  the  same  exciting  cause,  is  what  exerts  the 
power  of  the  contracting  muscle.  The  intensity  of  this  shortening  or 
contracting  power  has  been  approximately  measured — e.  g.,  by  ascer- 
taining experimentally  the  weight  necessary  to  prevent  a  muscle  from 
contracting  under  excitation.*  The  muscles  are  supplied  with  blood 
by  the  fine  ramifications  of  the  arteries,  and  the  blood  is  conducted 
away  again  by  the  ramifications  of  the  veins,  the  arterial  blood  los- 
ing oxygen  and  taking  up  carbonic  acid  during  its  passage,  as  is  the 
case  in  the  other  tissues  also. 

Regarding  the  composition  of  the  muscular  tissue,  it  may  be  simply 
noted  that  the  tissue  itself  is  composed  mainly  of  albuminoid  material 
(cell-contents)  and  of  the  substance  of  the  connective  tissue,  which  is, 
like  the  albuminoids,  composed  mainly  of  carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen, 
and  nitrogen,  and  in  much  the  same  proportions.  Besides  this,  the 
blood  and  lymph  permeate  the  muscular  tissue  throughout,  and  cer- 
tain non-nitrogenous  substances,  mainly  glycogen,  a  substance  resem- 
bling starch  or  dextrine  in  composition  and  properties,  are  stored  up 
in  the  muscular  tissue,  and  always  found  to  be  present.  Certain  other 
simple  compounds  containing  nitrogen  are  also  present,  and  are  con- 
sidered to  be  decomposition  products  of  the  more  complex  albuminoids. 
When  the  muscular  contraction  takes  place,  mechanical  force  may  be 
exerted  which  is  produced  at  the  expense  of  the  force  stored  up  as 
potential  chemical  energy  in  the  materials  which  serve  as  the  fuel  ma- 
terial. This  potential  energy  is  set  free  or  rendered  active  by  the 
chemical  processes  which  there  take  place,  and  appears  as  work,  as 
sensible  heat,  or  as  electrical  disturbances. 

Before  we  inquire  as  to  the  nature  of  these  chemical  processes,  it 
will  be  of  advantage  to  glance  briefly  at  the  results  of  important  in- 
vestigations which  have  been  made  on  this  subject,  as  these  form  the 
only  safe  data  by  which  we  may  judge  of  the  tenability  of  any  theory. 
It  would  be  out  of  place  here  to  attempt  a  full  reference  to  the  mass 
of  investigations  and  experiments  which  have  been  published,  and 
which  bear  on  the  topic  under  discussion. f  "We  shall  therefore  simply 
notice  the  principal  facts  which  have  been  established  as  the  results 
of  those  investigations,  and  which  are  most  pertinent  to  the  matter  in 
hand. 

The  experimental  researches  on  this  subject  may  be  classified  under 
four  heads :    1.  The  examination  of  the  muscular  tissue  itself  before 

*  This  value  has  been  found  in  man  at  about  6,000  to  8,000  grammes  per  square  cen- 
timetre of  cross-section  of  muscle  (85  to  1 14  pounds  per  square  inch)  for  the  maximum 
for  voluntary  contraction.  It  is  of  course  evident  that  the  intensity  of  the  force  exerted 
varies  with  the  kind  and  degree  of  excitation,  so  that  too  much  dependence  must  not  be 
placed  on  any  particular  values  thus  obtained.  They  simply  give  an  approximate  value 
for  ordinary  muscular  activity. 

f  Quite  full  references  may  be  found  in  the  excellent  and  quite  recent  text-books  of 
F.  Hoppe-Seyler,  "  Physiologische  Chemie,"  and  of  A.  Gamgee,  *'  Physiological  Chemistry 
of  the  Animal  Body." 


38o  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

and  after  muscular  action.  2.  The  examination  and  comparison  of  the 
blood  coming  to  the  muscle,  and  that  leaving  it,  during  rest  and  exer- 
tion. 3.  The  examination  of  the  gases  given  off  or  absorbed  by  the 
active  muscle  after  excision  from  the  animal,  and  under  the  influence 
of  artificial  irritation.  4.  The  influence  of  continuous  muscular  exer- 
tion on  the  respired  gases  and  on  the  waste  products  of  excretion. 

1.  With  regard  to  the  changes  in  the  muscular  tissue,  it  has  been 
noticed  that  the  proportion  of  water  in  the  muscles  is  increased  or  the 
proportion  of  solids  diminished  by  work,  the  amount  of  substances 
soluble  in  water  is  diminished  and  the  amount  soluble  in  alcohol  in- 
creased ;  and  particularly  that  glycogen  disappears  and  sugar  is  in- 
creased (the  latter  probably  as  a  product  of  fermentation  at  the  expense 
of  the  glycogen). 

2.  Changes  produced  in  the  blood  are  for  the  most  part  difficult  to 
trace  with  certainty  ;  but,  it  has  been  observed  that  the  blood  coming 
from  the  active  muscle  contains  more  carbonic  acid  and  less  oxygen 
than  that  coming  from  the  resting  muscle  ;  and,  further,  that  the  car- 
bonic acid  is  increased  in  greater  proportion  than  the  oxygen  is  dimin- 
ished.    We  shall  recur  to  this  later. 

3.  Investigations  into  the  changes  which  occur  in  gaseous  atmos- 
pheres surrounding  an  excised  muscle  made  to  contract  under  the  influ- 
ence of  electricity  are  interesting  and  instructive.  G.  Liebig  found  that 
the  excised  muscle  gave  off  carbonic  acid  and  took  up  oxygen,  but 
that  muscular  contraction  took  place  also  when  the  surrounding  atmos 
phere  contained  no  oxygen,  carbonic  acid  being  given  off,  however, 
in  this  latter  case  also.  Later  observers  confirmed  these  observations, 
and  Matteucci  considered,  from  his  experiments  in  the  same  direction, 
that  the  carbonic  acid  was  not  produced  at  the  expense  of  the  oxygen 
of  the  surrounding  atmosphere,  but  from  oxygen  held  in  some  form 
of  combination  in  the  muscular  tissue  itself.  Herrmann  found  that  a 
portion  even  of  the  oxygen  absorbed  from  the  air  was  absorbed  in 
consequence  of  incipient  putrefactions. 

4.  Investigations  under  the  fourth  head,  as  to  the  effect  of  mus- 
cular exertion  on  the  general  relations  of  respiration  and  excretion, 
have  been  very  elaborate  and  very  numerous.  Pettenkofer  and  Voit, 
Ludwig  and  Sczelkow,  and  others,  have  investigated  the  relations  of 
carbonic  acid  and  water  given  off  to  food  and  oxygen  consumed  as  in- 
fluenced by  muscular  exertion.  Their  investigations  have  shown  that 
the  oxygen  consumed  and  carbonic  acid  and  water  given  off  are  largely 
increased  by  muscular  exertion.  This  had  been  noticed  as  a  general 
fact  by  Lavoisier  a  half -century  or  so  earlier,  but  the  experiments  of 
the  above-named  investigators  were  carried  on  with  a  care  and  thor- 
oughness which  left  little  to  be  wished  for  in  that  direction. 

Whether  the  subject  of  the  experiment  be  kept  on  a  constant  diet 
during  both  work  and  repose,  or  whether  it  be  allowed  to  eat  and  drink 
according  to  desire,  or  even  if  no  food  be  permitted  during  the  experi- 


THE  SOURCE   OF  MUSCULAR  ENERGY.  381 

ment,  the  general  fact  remains  the  same,  that  the  quantities  of  carbonic 
acid  and  water  eliminated  during  work  are  much  greater  than  during 
rest,  in  many  cases  the  ratio  being  as  high  as  two  to  one.  It  is  also 
found  that  the  oxygen  taken  up,  though  increased  during  muscular 
exercise,  is  not  increased  in  proportion  to  the  carbonic  acid  eliminated. 
The  result  is,  that  the  ratio  of  the  volume  of  oxygen  consumed  to  the 
volume  of  carbonic  acid  eliminated,  which  is  normally  somewhat  less 
than  unity,  tends  to  approach  unity  during  muscular  work.  It  should 
be  here  remarked  that  investigations  dealing  with  total  respired  gases, 
although  doubtless  in  the  main  reliable,  are  not  without  certain  de- 
fects. If  we  could  be  certain  that  muscular  exercise  left  all  other 
organic  functions  unaffected,  we  could  safely  attribute  the  observed 
changes  to  the  muscular  contraction  alone.  But  such  is  probably  not 
the  case.  The  functions  of  organs  are  influenced  by  the  activity  of 
others,  and  hence  the  changes  noticed  in  products  of  elimination  or  in 
the  consumption  of  oxygen  can  not  with  safety  be  attributed  solely  to 
the  muscular  work  performed,  as  these  substances  are  consumed  or 
produced  by  the  combined  activity  of  all  the  living  tissues  of  the  or- 
ganism. Hence  the  value  of  the  corroborative  testimony  of  the  other 
methods  of  investigation  noticed  above. 

The  influence  of  muscular  exertion  on  the  elimination  of  nitrogen 
has  also  received  much  attention,  inasmuch  as  the  nitrogen  eliminated 
(mainly  in  the  form  of  urea  by  the  kidneys)  may  be  taken  as  a  measure 
of  the  amount  of  nitrogenous  food  or  tissue  decomposed  in  the  organ- 
ism. The  influence,  then,  of  muscular  exertion  on  the  excretion  of 
nitrogen  is  of  importance  as  showing  also  its  influence  on  the  decom- 
position of  albuminoids  (foods  or  tissues).  The  results  of  the  numer- 
ous investigations  on  this  subject  have  been  somewhat  at  variance. 
Many  have  found  no  material  increase  in  the  elimination  of  nitrogen 
during  muscular  exertion  ;  others  find  a  slight  increase,  but  not  suffi- 
cient to  indicate  any  immediate  relation  of  the  nitrogen  eliminated  to 
the  work  performed.  Passing  over  the  work  of  earlier  investigators, 
we  will  consider  briefly  the  results  of  some  of  the  later  investigators. 
Voit  was  one  of  the  first  to  make  careful  and  exact  experiments  ex- 
tending over  a  considerable  period  of  time,  and  he  determined  that 
the  increase  in  elimination  of  nitrogen  during  muscular  exertion  is 
very  slight  ;  that  it  hears  no  constant  relation  to  the  work  done,  and  is 
more  influenced  by  diet  than  by  work.  Fick  and  Wislicenus  made  an 
ascent  of  the  Faulhom  in  the  Alps,  with  the  purpose  of  determining 
the  possibility  or  impossibility  of  albuminoids  being  the  fuel-material 
for  muscular  power.  They  estimated  the  mechanical  work  necessary 
to  raise  their  own  bodies  through  the  vertical  distance  to  which  they 
ascended.  They  then  calculated  the  amount  of  albuminoids  necessary 
to  produce  so  much  force  by  its  combustion.  They  determined  experi- 
mentally the  amount  of  nitrogen  in  their  excreta  during  the  period  of 
the  ascent,  and,  having  taken  no  nitrogenous  food  during  that  period, 


382  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

they  were  enabled  to  estimate  what  relation  the  albuminoid  decompo- 
sition bore  to  the  amount  necessary  to  supply  the  power  for  the  ascent. 
By  this  method  they  demonstrated  that  the  whole  amount  of  albumi- 
noid material  decomposed  during  the  ascent,  even  if  completely  oxid- 
ized to  carbonic  acid,  water,  and  nitrogen  (instead  of  yielding  its  nitro- 
gen in  the  form  of  urea,  as  is  actually  the  case),  would  produce  less  than 
half  the  force  necessary  to  raise  their  bodies  through  the  vertical  height 
to  which  they  ascended.  Thus  it  is  shown  that  the  amount  of  force 
represented  by  the  actual  decomposition  of  albuminoids  during  work 
is  by  no  means  adequate  to  account  for  the  work  done,  even  supposing 
that  all  the  nitrogenous  material  decomposed  in  the  body  went  for  that 
purpose,  and  that  no  other  muscular  work  were  performed  during  the 
ascent  than  the  mere  lifting  of  such  a  weight  to  the  given  height. 
Both  these  suppositions  are  evidently  incorrect,  as  the  nitrogen  is  elimi- 
nated in  almost  equal  quantities  when  no  voluntary  muscular  action  is 
exerted,  and  the  muscular  work,  voluntary  and  involuntary  (lungs, 
heart,  etc.),  on  such  a  trip,  would  evidently  far  exceed  that  necessary 
for  the  simple  elevation  of  a  dead  weight  to  a  specified  height. 

Experiments  conducted  by  Dr.  Parkes  on  two  soldiers  proved  that 
a  small  increase  of  nitrogen  elimination  was  produced,  and  also,  that 
this  increased  elimination  of  nitrogen  may  extend  for  many  days  after 
the  exercise  has  ceased. 

Dr.  Austin  Flint,  Jr.,  in  an  elaborate  and  thorough  investigation  on 
the  pedestrian  Weston,  found  a  decided  increase  in  the  nitrogen  elimi- 
nated during  work  ;  also,  a  decided  increase  in  the  ratio  of  nitrogen 
eliminated  to  that  taken  in  with  the  food.  The  value  of  his  results  is 
somewhat  impaired  for  our  present  purpose,  in  so  far  as  they  relate  to 
the  influence  of  muscular  exertion  simply,  because  the  condition  of  the 
subject  during  the  working  period  was  not  such  as  was  favorable  for 
a  fair  test.  His  appetite  fell  off  ;  he  slept  poorly  ;  was  extremely  nerv- 
ous and  irritable  much  of  the  time  ;  became  at  times  much  exhausted 
and  prostrated  even  to  nausea.  When  the  influence  of  the  nervous 
state  and  of  an  exhausted  condition  on  the  functions  is  taken  into  ac- 
count, it  will  be  evident  that  deductions  as  to  the  effect  of  muscular 
exertion  alone  would  in  this  instance  be  open  to  doubt.  Dr.  Pavy's 
experiments  on  the  same  pedestrian  indicated  also  an  increase  in  the 
nitrogen  elimination,  but  only  a  slight  increase  as  compared  with 
Dr.  Flint's  results. 

What,  then,  seems  tolerably  certain  is,  that  muscular  exertion  in- 
creases the  nitrogen  elimination  but  slightly,  and  perhaps  only  very 
slightly,  so  long  as  the  muscular  system  is  moderately  exercised  and  not 
overtaxed.  And,  indeed,  the  pertinent  question  here  would  seem  to  be, 
"  Is  the  normal  muscular  action  accompanied  with  any  elimination  of 
nitrogen  showing  a  decided  relation  of  the  work  done  to  the  nitrogen 
eliminated  ?  "  and  not  "  Is  the  excessive  and  exhaustive  exertion  of  the 
muscles  accompanied  with  any  increase  of  nitrogen  elimination  ?  '* 


THE  SOURCE   OF  MUSCULAR  ENERGY,  383 

Having  thus  glanced  at  some  of  the  more  important  experimental 
results  bearing  on  this  subject,  let  us  return  to  the  consideration  of 
the  two  questions  previously  enunciated.  First,  then,  "  What  is  the 
fuel-material  for  muscular  force  ?  is  it  albuminoid  and  nitrogenous,  or 
is  it  non-nitrogenous  ?  "  That  it  is  not  essentially  nitrogenous  will  ap- 
pear from  the  experiments  last  described,  for  if  such  were  the  case  we 
should  find  nitrogen  eliminated  in  much  greater  quantities  during  mus- 
cular work  than  during  rest,  which  is  not  the  case.  The  material  which 
supplies  the  force  by  its  decomposition  must,  then,  be  mainly  non-nitro- 
genous. Here,  again,  are  various  possibilities.  Fats,  sugars,  glycogen, 
are  all  non-nitrogenous,  and  we  have  next  to  inquire  whether  the  fuel- 
material  be  fats,  sugars,  or  glycogen.  The  facts  above  stated  of  the 
constant  occurrence  of  glycogen  in  the  muscular  tissues,  and  its  dis- 
appearance in  part  during  muscular  exercise,  suggest  at  once  the  pos- 
sibility of  this  substance  being  a  fuel-material.  We  shall  obtain  light 
on  this  question  from  the  facts  regarding  the  influence  of  muscular 
exertion  on  the  ratio  of  the  volume  of  carbonic  acid  expired  to  that  of 
the  oxygen  taken  up.  The  three  principal  classes  of  foods  consumed 
in  the  animal  body  are  the  fats,  carbohydrates  (starch,  sugars,  glyco- 
gen, etc.),  and  nitrogenous  substances.  For  the  present  purpose  it 
may  be  considered  that  the  fats  and  carbohydrates  are  ultimately  con- 
verted into  carbonic  acid  and  water,  and  that  the  nitrogenous  sub- 
stances are  ultimately  converted  into  carbonic  acid,  water,  and  urea. 
The  nitrogenous  foods  are  usually  subdivided  into  albuminoids  proper, 
and  substances  not  albuminoids.  All  these  nitrogenous  substances  are 
composed  mainly  of  carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen,  and  nitrogen,  and 
usually  also  sulphur,  in  proportions  which  vary  with  difi^erent  sub- 
stances, but  within  very  narrow  limits.  For  the  sake  of  simplicity, 
therefore,  it  will  be  permissible  to  take  a  certain  average  composition 
to  represent  the  entire  class,  and  the  deductions  will  apply  with  suffi- 
cient accuracy  to  the  nitrogenous  foods  as  a  body.  For  the  sake  of 
easy  comparison  we  may  also  represent  this  average  composition  by  a 
formula  which  may  be  considered  as  representative  of  the  class  ;  e.  g., 
^i43-^a26-^3B^46S-  ^^  ^^  ^^^  cousidcr  this  to  be  oxidized  to  carbonic 
acid,  water,  and  urea  (and  the  sulphur  to  be  oxidized  to  SO3,  as  would 
be  the  case  in  the  formation  of  a  sulphate),  we  might  represent  the  pro- 
cess by  the  following  equation  : 

Cu3H„,N^3sC>,eS  -^  2990  =  124CO,  +  75H,0  +  19C01^,H,  +  SO3. 

Albuminoids,  etc  Urea, 

This  would  give  248  volumes  CO^  produced  for  299  volumes  of 
oxygen  taken  up,  or  a  ratio  of  f  |f  =  0*83. 

If  we  consider  the  fats,  and  take  stearine  as  a  fair  example  of  this 
class,  we  should  have  for  such  an  equation — 

C..H„„0,  -^  1630  =  57CO,  +  55H,0. 

stearine. 

or  the  ratio  of  volumes  of  carbonic  acid  and  oxygen  would  be  \^ 


384  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

=  0*70.  Other  natural  fats  would  give  results  differing  little  from 
this  ratio. 

The  carbohydrates,  on  the  other  hand,  contain  relatively  more  oxy- 
gen than  the  other  classes  of  foods,  and  contain  hydrogen  and  oxygen 
in  just  such  proportions  as  exist  in  water.  Hence  by  their  oxidation 
just  enough  oxygen  must  be  consumed  to  convert  the  carbon  to  car- 
bonic-acid gas,  e.  g.  : 

CeH.oO,  +  120  =  6C0,  +  5H,0. 

Glycogen. 

C.Hi.Oe  +  120  =  eCaO  +  SHaO. 

Grape-sugar. 

The  ratio  is  hence  1  for  all  this  class,  since  the  carbonic  acid  formed 
is  equal  to  the  volume  of  the  additional  oxygen  consumed.  It  follows, 
then,  that  the  oxidation  in  the  organism  of  carbohydrates  would  tend 

CO 

to  cause  the  ratio  -— -^  to  approach  unity.     The  extensive  investiga- 

Oa 

tions  of  Regnault  and  Reiset  on  small  animals  have  shown  that  with 
carbohydrate  food  the  ratio  does  approach  unity,  sometimes  almost 
attaining  it,  though  of  course  it  is  impossible  to  eliminate  entirely  the 
decomposition  of  fats  and  albuminoids  in  the  organism,  and  hence  the 
ratio  is  kept  below  that  figure. 

So,  also,  as  we  have  seen  above,  the  tendency  of  muscular  exertion 
is  to  increase  this  ratio  and  cause  it  to  approach  unity.  The  evidence, 
then,  seems  to  point  with  tolerable  conclusiveness  to  the  fact  that  the 
immediate  fuel-material  is  mainly  non-nitrogenous  and  carbohydrate 
in  its  character.*  To  what  extent  this  supply  of  carbohydrates  is  de- 
rived from  the  glycogen  of  the  muscles,  to  what  extent  from  sugars 
absorbed  from  digestion,  or  produced  from  the  glycogen  of  the  liver, 
is  not  yet  established  with  sufficient  accuracy,  though  the  participa- 
tion of  the  muscle-glycogen  is  hard  to  doubt. 

We  have  said  the  immediate  fuel-material  is  apparently  carbohy- 
drates, for  the  possibility  still  remains  that  this  carbohydrate  material 
may  itself  be  in  part  derived  from  albuminoids.  It  is  certain  that  the 
liver-glycogen  is  in  great  part,  possibly  entirely,  derived  from  albu- 
minoids. Parke's  experiments,  above  mentioned,  showing  a  continu- 
ous elimination  of  increased  quantities  of  nitrogen  in  the  form  of  urea 

*  It  will,  I  think,  be  evident  that  the  widely  entertained  theory  of  Herrmann,  regard- 
ing  the  chemical  processes  taking  place  during  muscular  action,  is  not  contradicted  by  the 
considerations  here  advanced.  According  to  this  theory,  a  complex  nitrogenous  substance 
of  the  muscular  tissue  is  decomposed  during  muscular  activity  with  evolution  of  carbonic 
acid,  and  other  non-nitrogenous  residues,  together  with  a  simpler  nitrogenous  substance 
which  is  supposed  again  to  unite  with  other  (non-nitrogenous)  matter  to  form  the  origi- 
nal compound,  which  may  be  again  decomposed  during  contraction.  This  still  leaves  the 
non-nitrogenous  matter  the  fuel-material,  but  assumes  it  to  be  stored  up  in  the  form  of  a 
combination  with  a  complex  nitrogenous  substance  which  then  yields  it  again  in  the  form 
of  carbonic  acid  and  water.  This  theory  lies  too  far  in  the  field  of  speculation  for  its 
discussion  to  come  within  the  scope  of  the  present  article. 


THE  SOURCE   OF  MUSCULAR  ENERGY,  385 

for  days  after  continued  muscular  exertion,  would  be  in  harmony  with 
such  an  origin,  as  they  might  indicate  a  gradual  replacement  of  glyco- 
gen consumed,  at  the  expense  of  albuminoid  material  with  elimination 
of  urea  as  a  a  waste  product.  Sugars  (grape-sugar  and  maltose)  ab- 
sorbed from  digestion  or  formed  from  liver-glycogen,  are  doubtless 
consumed  in  the  tissues  and  organs  and  assist  in  producing  animal 
heat.  Whether  muscular  tissue  consumes  these  sugars  in  greater  quan- 
tity than  other  tissues  it  is  difficult  to  say  with  certainty. 

We  come  now  to  the  second  question  as  to  the  nature  of  this  de- 
composition to  which  we  have  alluded  as  oxidation.  This  question  is 
still  contested.  The  older  theory  is  that  the  oxygen,  taken  up  by  the 
blood,  is  given  up  in  the  form  of  active  oxygen,  or  ozone,  and  by  its 
energetic  oxidizing  power  burns  up  or  oxidizes  the  carbon  and  hydro- 
gen of  the  fuel-material,  with  formation  of  carbonic  acid  and  water. 

The  newer  theory  is  that  the  decomposition  processes  are  essen- 
tially fermentative  in  their  character  ;  that  under  the  influence  of 
appropriate  ferments  the  substances  combine  with  water,  splitting  up 
into  simpler  and  simpler  products  with  evolution  of  heat  or  force,  as 
is  the  case  with  all  fermentative  changes.  The  oxygen  present  in  the 
arterial  blood  gives  these  processes  the  character  of  fermentative 
changes  in  the  presence  of  oxygen  ;  secondary  oxidation  takes  place, 
as  in  putrefaction  in  presence  of  air,  the  final  products  being  mainly 
carbonic  acid  and  water,  as  also  is  the  case  in  putrefactive  processes. 

Some  of  the  objections  raised  to  the  older  theory  are  that  we  know 
of  no  similar  changes  produced  by  ozone  in  watery  solutions,  such  as 
exist  in  the  animal  organism  ;  that  the  oxygen  obtained  from  the  arte- 
rial blood  under  the  air-pump  contains  no  ozone.  Also  certain  com- 
pounds are  found  in  the  blood  and  tissues  which  are  essentially  deox- 
idized products,  which  could  not  be  supposed  to  exist  in  the  presence 
of  ozone,  but  the  presence  of  which  accords  with  the  supposed  fermen- 
tative character  of  the  processes  (Hoppe-Seyler).  The  fact  that  the 
evolution  of  carbonic  acid  from  the  contracting  muscle  is  in  great  part 
independent  of  the  presence  of  oxygen  at  the  time  would  harmonize 
also  with  such  a  fermentative  character  of  the  changes,  as  carbonic 
acid  is  the  product  of  many  fermentative  changes  out  of  the  presence 
of  oxygen,  as,  for  example,  of  the  alcoholic  fermentation  of  sugar. 
Matteucci's  supposed  storing  up  of  oxygen  in  some  form  of  combina- 
tion in  the  tissues  would  then  be  interpreted  rather  as  the  storing  up 
of  fermentable  substances  (like  glycogen)  rich  in  oxygen.  The  com- 
bustion theory,  on  the  other  hand,  would  seem  to  demand  that  the  evo- 
lution of  carbonic  acid  and  consumption  of  oxygen  should  be  simul- 
taneous, which  is  apparently  contradicted  by  the  experiments  of  G. 
Liebig,  Matteucci,  and  others  above  mentioned.  It  would  exceed  our 
limits  to  enter  more  fully  into  a  discussion  of  these  two  opposing 
theories.  The  conflict  between  them  is  still  in  progress,  and  new  evi- 
dence is  constantly  accumulating.     Both  theories  agree  in  this,  that 

TOL.  XXIY. — 25 


386  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

the  material  whicli  by  its  decomposition  produces  the  force  for  mus- 
cular work  is  finally  decomposed,  with  evolution  mainly  of  carbonic 
acid  and  water.  They  differ  in  their  views  of  the  nature  of  the  process 
and  the  steps  by  which  these  ultimate  products  are  obtained. 

We  have  here  endeavored  to  show  briefly  what  has  been  gained  in 
comparatively  recent  times  by  the  growth  of  knowledge  in  regard  to 
the  source  of  muscular  power.  Let  us  attempt  a  brief  summary  of  the 
main  points  brought  forward  in  the  preceding  discussion  :  1.  The 
source  of  muscular  energy  is  in  the  chemical  decomposition  of  certain 
substances,  which  is  accompanied  with  a  release  of  energy.  2.  The 
muscular  contraction  produces  a  greatly  increased  production  of  car- 
bonic acid  and  water,  and  an  increased  consumption  of  oxygen,  in  the 
general  respiration.  To  what  extent  this  is  due  to  the  mere  muscular 
contraction,  to  what  extent  to  the  influence  of  muscular  exercise  on 
other  functions,  is  diflicult  to  estimate  with  certainty.  3.  The  ex- 
cised muscle,  when  caused  to  contract,  gives  off  carbonic  acid,  and  this 
action  is  in  great  part  independent  of  a  simultaneous  absorption  of 
oxygen.  4.  The  blood  coming  from  the  contracting  muscle  con- 
tains more  carbonic  acid  and  less  oxygen  than  that  coming  from  the 
resting  muscle,  and  less  oxygen  than  that  coming  to  the  contracting 
muscle.  5.  The  ratio  of  carbonic  acid  given  off  to  oxygen  taken 
up  is  increased  by  muscular  exertion.  6.  The  nitrogen  elimination 
is  but  slightly  increased  during  muscular  exertion.  No  considerable 
amount  of  nitrogenous  muscular  tissue  is  consumed.  7.  The  imme- 
diate fuel-material  is  mainly  non-nitrogenous  and  carbohydrate  in  its 
character,  probably  in  part  at  least  derived  from  the  muscle-glyco- 
gen,  and  perhaps  from  some  other  substances  stored  in  some  manner 
in  the  muscular  tissue,  possibly  also  to  some  extent  from  sugars  con- 
veyed to  the  tissues  by  the  blood.  8.  It  is  not  certain  to  what 
extent  this  glycogen  or  other  non-nitrogenous  fuel-material  is  derived 
from  nitrogenous  or  albuminoid  material  during  rest  or  repose  of  the 
muscles,  but  such  an  origin,  for  a  portion  at  least  of  the  fuel-material, 
has  some  evidence  in  its  favor.  9.  The  nature  of  the  decomposi- 
tion of  this  fuel-material  is  as  yet  an  unsettled  matter.  The  older 
theory  of  direct  oxidation  has  been  to  a  great  extent  replaced  by  the 
more  modern  theory  of  fermentative  decomposition,  i.  e.,  splitting  up 
by  combination  with  water  into  simpler  products  with  an  accompany- 
ing release  of  energy,  and  this  process  followed  by  secondary  oxida- 
tions exerted  by  the  oxygen  of  the  blood.  Satisfactory  experimental 
evidence  for  deciding  with  respect  to  these  theories  as  yet  fails  us. 

In  conclusion,  it  is  well,  however,  to  recollect  that  at  best  the  ques- 
tions touched  upon  are  but  secondary  to  the  more  fundamental  question 
upon  which  no  investigation  has  as  yet  thrown  even  the  most  dim  and 
feeble  light,  viz.,  "  What  is  muscular  force  ?  "  It  seems  impossible 
to  conceive  how  a  collection  of  cells  with  thin,  elastic  walls,  and  filled 
with  a  fluid  or  semi-fluid  mass,  can  contract  in  such  a  way  as  to  mani- 


IDIOSYNCRASY,  387 

fest  the  power  familiar  to  us  as  muscular  force.  We  are  here  brought 
face  to  face  with  the  same  difficulties  that  meet  us  whenever  we  at- 
tempt to  explore  the  mysterious  physics  and  chemistry  of  living  mat- 
ter. The  attempts  which  have  been  made  to  account  for  the  peculiar 
selective  power  of  the  living  cells  of  the  rootlets  of  plants,  to  explain 
the  selective  action  of  the  gland-cells  of  the  kidneys  which  act  partly 
according  to  laws  of  transudation  and  diffusion,  and  partly  in  opposi- 
tion to  those  laws,  have  given  us  no  satisfaction  on  those  points.  And 
it  is  the  same  with  regard  to  the  essential  functions  of  other  living 
tissues — all  are  carried  on  under  the  influence  of  the  peculiar  and  un- 
comprehended  properties  of  living  matter. 

We  have  gained,  and  are  constantly  gaining,  valuable  knowledge 
as  to  very  many  of  the  processes  taking  place  in  the  living  body,  but 
as  to  the  processes  which  take  place  in  the  truly  living  cells  of  gland, 
muscle,  brain,  or  nerve,  we  are  in  almost  complete  darkness.  ^  At  the 
doors  of  these  most  refined  and  mysterious  of  Nature's  laboratories,  we 
must  lay  down  our  rude  tools  and  methods,  and  confess  to  ourselves 
that  "  thus  far  and  no  farther  "  may  we  hope  to  press  our  eager  search 
for  truth. 


IDIOSYNCEASY. 

By  Professor  GRANT  ALLEN 

EVERY  man  is,  in  the  true  Greek  sense  of  the  term,  an  idiosyn- 
crasy. He  is  a  syncrasis,  because  he  derives  all  his  attributes, 
physical  or  mental,  from  two  parents,  or  four  grandparents,  or  eight 
great-grandparents,  and  so  forth.  But  at  the  same  time  he  is  an  idio- 
syncrasis,  because  that  particular  mixture  is  eminently  unlikely  ever 
to  have  occurred  before,  or  ever  to  occur  again,  even  in  his  own  broth- 
ers or  sisters.  That  he  is  and  can  be  at  birth  nothing  more  than  such 
a  crasiSf  that  he  can  not  conceivably  contain  anything  more,  on  the 
mental  side  at  least,  than  was  contained  in  his  antecedents,  is  the 
thesis  which  this  paper  sets  out  to  maintain. 

Take  a  thousand  red  beans  and  a  thousand  white  beans  ;  shake 
them  all  up  in  a  bag  together  for  five  minutes,  and  then  pour  them 
out  in  a  square  space  on  a  billiard-table  just  big  enough  to  contain 
them  in  a  layer  one  deep.  Each  time  you  do  so,  your  product  will  be 
the  same  in  general  outline  and  appearance  :  it  will  be  a  quadrangular 
figure  composed  of  beans,  having  throughout  the  same  approximate 
thickness.  But  it  will  be  a  mixture  of  red  beans  and  white  in  a  cer- 
tain order  ;  and  the  chances  against  the  same  order  occurring  twice 
will  be  very  great  indeed.  Make  the  beans  ten  thousand  of  each  so 
as  to  cover  the  table  ten  deep,  and  the  chance  of  getting  the  same 
order  twice  decreases  proportionately.     Make  them  a  hundred  thou- 


388  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

sand  each,  and  it  becomes  infinitesimal.  You  have  practically  each 
time  not  only  a  syncrasis  but  an  idio-syncrasis  as  well. 

Now,  a  human  being  is  the  product  of  innumerable  elements, 
derived  directly  from  two  parents,  and  indirectly  from  an  infinity  of 
earlier  ancestors  ;  elements  not  of  two  orders  only,  but  of  infinite  or- 
ders ;  combined  together,  apparently,  not  on  the  principle  of  both  con- 
tributing equally  to  each  part,  but  of  a  sort  of  struggle  between  the 
two  for  the  mastery  in  each  part.  Here,  elements  derived  from  the 
father's  side  seem  to  carry  the  day  ;  there,  again,  elements  derived 
from  the  mother's  side  gain  the  victory  ;  and  yonder,  once  more,  a 
compromise  has  been  arrived  at  between  the  two,  so  that  the  offspring 
in  that  particular  part  is  a  mean  of  his  paternal  and  maternal  antece- 
dents. Under  such  circumstances,  absolute  equality  of  result  in  any 
two  cases  is  almost  inconceivable.  It  would  imply  absolute  equality 
of  conditions  between  myriads  of  jarring  and  adverse  elements,  such 
as  we  never  actually  find  in  nature,  and  such  as  we  can  hardly  believe 
possible  under  any  actual  concrete  circumstances. 

The  case  of  twins  comes  nearer  to  such  exact  equality  of  condi- 
tions than  any  other  with  which  we  are  acquainted.  Here,  the  vary- 
ing health  and  vigor  of  the  two  parents,  or  the  difference  between  their 
respective  functional  activities  at  two  given  times,  are  reduced  to  a 
minimum  ;  and  we  get  in  many  instances  a  very  close  similarity  in- 
deed. Yet  even  among  twins,  the  offspring  of  the  same  father  and 
mother,  produced  at  the  same  moment  of  time,  there  are  always  at 
least  some  differences,  mental  and  physical ;  while  the  differences  are 
occasionally  very  great.  A  competent  observer,  who  knew  the  Siamese 
twins,  informed  me  that  differences  of  disposition  were  quite  marked 
in  their  case,  where  training  and  after-circumstances  could  have  had 
little  or  nothing  to  do  with  them,  inasmuch  as  both  must  have  been 
subjected  to  all  but  absolutely  identical  conditions  of  life  throughout. 
One  was  described  as  taciturn  and  morose,  the  other  as  lively  and 
good-humored.  Whether  anything  of  the  same  sort  has  been  noticed 
in  the  pair  of  negro  girls  called  the  Two-headed  Nightingale,  I  do 
not  know,  but,  to  judge  from  their  photographs,  there  would  seem  to 
be  some  distinct  physical  diversities  in  height  and  feature.  We  can 
only  account  for  these  diversities  in  twins  generally  by  supposing  that 
in  that  intimate  intermixture  of  elements  derived  from  one  or  other 
parent,  which  we  have  learned  from  Darwin,  Spencer,  and  Galton,  takes 
place  in  every  impregnation  of  an  ovum,  slightly  different  results  have 
occurred  in  one  case  and  in  the  other.  To  use  Darwin's  phraseology, 
some  gemmules  of  the  paternal  side  have  here  ousted  some  gemmules 
of  the  maternal  side,  or  vice  versa ;  to  use  Mr.  Spencer's  (which  to 
my  judgment  seems  preferable),  the  polarities  of  one  physiological 
unit  have  here  carried  the  day  over  those  of  another. 

But  why  under  such  nearly  identical  conditions  should  there  be 
Buch  diversity  of  result  ?     Let  us  answer  the  question  by  another  : 


IDIOSYNCRASY,  389 

Why,  with  a  thousand  red  and  a  thousand  white  balls,  shaken  togeth- 
er with  an  equal  energy  by  a  machine  (if  you  will),  and  poured  out 
on  our  billiard-table,  should  there  be  a  similar  diversity  ?  The  fact 
is,  you  can  not  get  absolute  identity  of  conditions  in  any  two  cases. 
Imagine  yourself  mixing  two  fluids  together  with  a  spoon,  as  regularly 
as  you  choose  ;  can  you  possibly  make  the  currents  in  the  two  exactly 
alike  twice  running  ?  And  here  in  the  case  of  humanity  you  have  not 
to  deal  with  simple  red  beans  or  with  simple  fluids,  but  with  very  com- 
plex gemmules  or  very  complex  physiological  units. 

If  even  in  twins  we  can  not  expect  perfect  similarity,  still  less  can 
we  expect  it  in  mere  ordinary  brothers  and  sisters.  Here,  innumerable 
minor  physiological  conditions  of  either  parent  may  affect  the  result 
in  infinite  ways.  Not,  indeed,  that  there  is  any  sufficient  reason  for 
supposing  passing  states  of  health  and  so  forth  directly  to  impress 
themselves  upon  the  heredity  of  the  offspring  ;  but  one  can  readily 
understand  that,  in  a  process  which  is  essentially  a  mixture  of  ele- 
ments, small  varieties  of  external  circumstances  may  vastly  alter  the 
nature  of  the  result.  Shake  the  bag  of  beans  once,  and  you  get  one 
arrangement  ;  shake  it  once  more,  and  you  get  another  and  very  dif- 
ferent one.  To  this  extent,  and  to  this  extent  only,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
chance  in  the  true  sense  enters  into  the  composition  of  an  individual- 
ity. The  possible  elements  which  may  go  to  make  up  the  mental  con- 
stitution of  any  person  are  (as  I  shall  try  to  show)  strictly  limited  to 
all  those  elements,  actual  or  latent,  which  exist  in  the  two  persons  of 
his  parents  ;  but  the  particular  mixture  of  those  elements  which  will 
come  out  in  him — the  number  to  be  selected  and  the  number  to  be 
rejected  out  of  all  the  possible  combinations — will  depend  upon  that 
minute  interaction  of  small  physical  causes,  working  unseen,  which  we 
properly  designate  by  the  convenient  name  of  chance.  In  this  sense, 
it  is  not  a  chance  that  William  Jones,  the  son  of  two  English  parents, 
is  born  an  Englishman  in  physique  and  mental  peculiarities,  rather 
than  a  Chinese  or  a  negro  ;  nor  is  it  a  chance  that  he  is  born  essentially 
a  compound  of  his  ancestors  on  the  Jones  side  and  on  the  Brown  side, 
but  it  is  a  chance  that  he  is  born  a  boy  rather  than  a  girl ;  and  it  is 
a  chance  that  he  is  born  himself  rather  than  his  brother  John  or  his 
brother  Thomas.  If  we  knew  all,  we  could  point  out  exactly  why  this 
result  and  not  any  other  result  occurred  just  there  and  then  ;  but,  as 
we  do  not  know  all,  we  fairly  say  that  the  result  is  in  so  far  a  chance 
one.  And,  even  if  we  knew  all,  we  should  still  be  justified  in  using 
the  same  language,  for  it  marks  a  real  difference  in  causation.  Will- 
iam Jones  is  an  Englishman  and  a  Jones-Brown  strictly  in  virtue  of 
his  being  the  son  of  Henry  Jones  and  Mary  Brown  ;  but  so  are  all  his 
brothers  and  [mutatis  mutandis)  his  sisters  too.  He  is  himself,  and 
not  one  of  his  brothers  or  his  sisters,  in  virtue  of  certain  minute  mo- 
lecular arrangements,  occurring  between  certain  elements  for  the  most 
part  essentially  identical  with  the  elements  which  went  to  make  up 


390  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

the  other  members  of  his  family.  To  be  metaphorical  once  more,  one 
may  say  that  a  Robinson  differs  from  a  Jones  because  he  is  a  mixture 
of  brown  peas  and  white  peas  ;  whereas  one  Jones  differs  from  another 
in  being  a  particular  mixture  of  red  beans  and  black  beans,  differently 
arranged  in  each  case. 

Next  after  the  similarity  between  brothers  and  sisters  or  other 
blood-relations,  we  may  expect  to  find  the  similarity  between  the  off- 
spring of  the  same  class  in  the  same  community,  similarly  situated  : 
and  this  the  more  so  in  proportion  to  the  average  identity  of  their 
several  lives.  For  example,  one  would  naturally  expect  that  our  own 
agricultural  laborers,  all  engaged  in  much  the  same  sort  of  work  and 
surrounded  by  much  the  same  sort  of  objects,  would  produce  by  in- 
termarriage very  similar  children.  Still  more  would  this  be  the  case 
among  very  homogeneous  savages,  such  as  the  Esquimaux  or  the  South 
American  Indians.  And  where  the  identity  of  pursuits  is  very  great 
on  both  sides,  and  in  all  individuals,  as  among  the  Fuegians,  the  Ved- 
dahs,  the  Andaraanese,  we  should  expect  to  find  a  great  likeness  of 
physique  and  character  between  all  the  offspring. 

Conversely,  where  marriages  take  place  between  persons  of  differ- 
ent races,  or  very  differently  situated,  we  may  look  for  great  differ- 
ences between  the  offspring,  especially  when  compared  with  those  of 
marriages  between  relatively  homogeneous  persons.  Under  such  cir- 
cumstances, the  children  tend  more  or  less,  though  very  irregularly, 
to  present  a  mean  between  the  two  parents.  Thus,  to  take  the  most 
obvious  instance,  the  average  mulatto  is  half-way  as  a  rule  between 
the  negro  and  the  European,  physically  at  least,  though,  for  various 
reasons  to  be  considered  hereafter,  it  often  happens  that  he  is  more 
than  the  equal  in  intelligence  of  the  average  white.  But  even  in  the 
same  family  of  mulattoes  great  differences  exist  between  the  children. 
Some  will  be  darker,  others  lighter  ;  some  will  be  curlier-headed,  others 
straighter-haired  ;  some  will  have  prognathous  faces  and  depressed 
noses,  others  will  have  more  regular  features  and  more  prominent 
noses.  So  far  as  my  observation  goes,  too,  it  does  not  always  happen 
that  the  most  European  physical  type  has  the  most  European  mind: 
on  the  contrary,  high  intelligence  often  accompanies  a  very  African 
physique,  while  English  features  may  be  concomitant  with  a  truly 
negro  incapacity  for  logical  reasoning,  generalization,  or  elementary 
mathematical  ideas.  It  seems  as  though  in  each  part  there  was  a 
struggle  for  supremacy  between  the  two  types  :  and  the  one  type  may 
apparently  carry  the  day  in  certain  external  peculiarities,  while  the 
other  type  carries  the  day  in  the  more  intimate  arrangements  of  the 
nervous  system.  At  the  same  time,  I  can  not  myself  doubt  that  there 
must  be  a  very  intimate  connection  between  every  one  of  the  sense- 
organs  and  the  brain  ;  and  I  can  hardly  believe  that  prognathism  and 
other  like  physical  peculiarities  do  not  imply  various  correlated  nerv- 
ous facts  of  great  psychological  importance.     Though,  in  the  result- 


IDIOSYNCRASY.  391 

ing  compromise  between  the  two  diverse  heredities,  the  one  seems 
largely  to  prevail  over  the  other  in  certain  parts,  yet  it  is  difficult  to 
suppose  that  there  is  not  a  minute  interrelation  between  all  the  parts  : 
and  perhaps  the  significant  fact  that  every  mulatto,  though  darker  or 
lighter,  is  at  least  brown,  not  purely  black  or  purely  white,  gives  us 
the  best  key  to  the  true  nature  of  the  situation. 

So  far,  I  have  been  tacitly  but  intentionally  taking  for  granted  the 
very  principle  which  I  set  out  to  prove,  in  order  fully  to  put  the  reader 
in  possession  of  the  required  point  of  view.  The  question  now  arises, 
Where  in  this  series  of  events  is  there  room  for  any  fresh  element  to 
come  in  ?  Can  any  man  ever  be  anything  other  than  what  some  of 
his  ancestors  have  been  before  him  ?  And,  if  not,  how  is  progress  or 
mental  improvement  possible?  That  men  have  as  a  matter  of  fact 
risen  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  intellectual  position  is  patent.  That 
some  races  have  outstripped  other  races  is  equally  clear.  And  that 
some  individual  men  have  surpassed  their  fellows  of  the  same  race  and 
time  is  also  obvious.  How  are  we  to  account  for  these  facts  without 
admitting  that  new  elements  do  at  sundry  times  creep  in  by  chance,  in 
the  false  and  unphilosophical  sense  of  the  word  ?  How  can  we  get  ad- 
vance unless  we  admit  that  exceptional  children  may  be  born  from 
time  to  time  with  brains  of  exceptional  functional  value,  wholly  un- 
caused by  antecedents  in  any  way  ? 

The  answer  to  this  question  is  really  one  of  the  most  important  in 
the  whole  history  of  mankind.  For  on  the  solution  of  the  apparent 
paradox  thus  propounded  depend  two  or  three  most  fundamental  ques- 
tions. It  is  by  this  means  alone  that  we  can  account,  first,  for  the  exist- 
ence of  great  races  like  the  Greeks  or  the  Jews.  It  is  by  this  means 
alone  that  we  can  account,  secondly,  for  genius  in  individuals.  And 
it  is  by  this  means  alone  that  we  can  account,  thirdly,  for  the  possi- 
bility of  general  progress  in  the  race.  It  is  surprising,  therefore,  that 
the  question  has  so  little  engaged  the  attention  of  evolutionary  psy- 
chologists at  the  present  day. 

There  are  only  two  conceivable  ways  in  which  any  increment  of 
brain-power  can  ever  have  arisen  in  any  individual.  The  one  is  the 
Darwinian  way,  by  "spontaneous  variation" — that  is  to  say,  by  varia- 
tions due  to  minute  physical  circumstances  affecting  the  individual  in 
the  germ.  The  other  is  the  Spencerian  way,  by  functional  increment 
— ^that  is  to  say,  by  the  effect  of  increased  use  and  constant  exposure 
to  varying  circumstances  during  conscious  life.  I  venture  to  think 
that  the  first  way,  if  we  look  it  clearly  in  the  face,  will  be  seen  to  be 
practically  unthinkable  :  and  that  we  have  therefore  no  alternative  but 
to  accept  the  second.  Deeply  as  I  feel  the  general  importance  of  Dar- 
win's theory  of  "  spontaneous  variation  "  (using  the  words  in  the  sense 
in  which  he  always  used  them),  it  seems  to  me  that  that  theory  can 
not  properly  be  applied  to  the  genesis  of  a  nervous  system,  or  of  any 
part  of  a  nervous  system,  and  that  in  this  case  we  must  rather  come 


392  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

back  to  the  genesis  worked  out  by  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  in  the  part  of 
his  "Principles  of  Psychology"  entitled  "Physical  Synthesis." 

For  let  us  for  a  moment  try  to  imagine  a  nervous  system  being 
produced,  or  increased  in  value,  by  natural  selection  of  spontaneous 
variations  alone,  without  the  aid  of  functional  variations  at  all.  It  is 
easy  to  see  that  an  animal  or  a  plant  may  vary  indefinitely  here  or 
there  in  color,  or  in  hardness  of  skin,  or  in  woodiness  of  tissues,  and 
so  forth  ;  and  it  is  easy  to  see  that  among  these  truly  "  accidental " 
variations  *  some  may  be  better  adapted  to  their  particular  environ- 
ment than  others.  But  can  we  imagine,  say,  an  eye  to  be  produced  by 
a  series  of  such  individual  accidents  ?  I  do  not  say  a  human  eye,  but 
a  simple  pigment  cell,  with  a  nerve  given  off  from  it  to  a  ganglion  as 
in  the  case  of  the  Amphioxus  f  And  if  we  can  imagine  this  (which  I 
can  not),  can  we  imagine  a  child  being  bom  into  the  world,  gifted,  I 
do  not  say  with  innumerable  faculties  never  possessed  by  his  ancestors, 
but  with  a  single  nerve-cell  or  nerve-fiber  more  than  they  possessed  ? 
Just  let  us  look  at  what  a  palpable  absurdity  this  notion  implies. 

Here  is  William  Jones's  head,  containing  an  average  human  brain, 
developed  on  the  same  pattern  as  his  father's  brain  (or  as  his  father's 
in  part  and  his  mother's  in  part)  :  and  here  in  a  particular  spot  in  a 
particular  convolution  of  it,  by  a  combination  of  mere  physical  cir- 
cumstances, has  arisen  a  totally  new  and  hitherto  non-existent  nerve- 
cell.  Clearly,  this  is  an  acquisition  to  the  race,  by  way  of  spontaneous 
variation.  But  what  is  the  functional  use  of  this  new  nerve-cell? 
What  physical  circumstance  decides  whether  it  is  to  answer  to  a  new 
movement  in  the  left  little  finger,  or  to  a  single  creative  element  in  the 
composition  of  a  future  fugue  ?  Let  us  grant  a  little  more  :  let  us 
suppose  the  surrounding  cells  are  all  concerned  in  the  appreciation  of 
color,  or  in  the  manipulation  of  numbers.  Will  the  new  cell  in  the 
first  case  answer  to  a  new  and  hitherto  undiscovered  color  or  to  a  fur- 
ther aesthetic  pleasure  in  an  existent  color,  or  to  a  higher  synthesis  into 
which  colors  enter  as  elements  ;  or  what  in  the  second  case  will  be  its 
mathematical  value  ?  Again,  what  good  will  it  be  without  a  whole 
network  of  connecting  fibers  which  will  link  it  to  percipient  structures 
in  the  eye  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  all  the  various  higher  layers  in  the 
stratified  hierarchy  of  color-thought  elements  or  number-dealing  ele- 
ments on  the  other  hand  ?  Granted  that  one  man  in  a  hundred  was 
bom  with  one  such  new  cell  in  his  brain,  and  (setting  aside  the  ques- 
tion how  the  cell  comes  to  have  any  function  at  all)  what  are  the 

*  It  is  a  great  pity  that  to  this  day  one  is  always  obliged  to  employ  this  useful  terra 
with  a  caution  in  the  way  of  quotation-marks,  in  order  to  avoid  a  supposed  philosophical 
scholar's-mate  from  sixth-form  critics.  "  Accidental  "  in  biology  means,  of  course,  "  pro- 
duced by  causes  lying  outside  the  previous  vital  history  of  the  race  " ;  in  a  word,  "  indi- 
vidual," Among  such  accidental  variations  survival  of  the  fittest  preserves  a  few.  But 
it  is  annoying  that  one  can  never  use  so  transparent  a  phrase  without  being  informed 
magisterially  by  a  lofty  reviewer  that  the  word  accidental  is  un philosophical,  and  that 
nothing  ever  happens  in  nature  without  a  cause. 


IDIOSYNCRASY.  393 

chances  that  that  cell  would  be  so  connected  with  other  cells  elsewhere 
as  to  make  any  part  of  an  organized  brain  ?  Can  we  imagine  a  new 
cell  so  imported,  connected  in  rational  manners  with  hundreds  of  other 
cells,  in  any  other  way  than  by  a  miracle  ?  Which  is  only  a  different 
form  of  saying,  can  we  imagine  it  at  all  ? 

But  here,  again,  is  something  more  than  William  Jones's  head  ; 
here  is,  let  us  say,  a  great  poet's,  or  a  great  philosopher's,  or  a  great 
mathematician's  head  ;  and  here  are  the  upholders  of  spontaneous  va- 
riation asking  us  to  believe,  not  that  one  cell  within  it  thus  spontane- 
ously varied  in  the  right  direction,  but  that  a  vast  number  of  cells  and 
fibers  all  varied  simultaneously  and  symmetrically,  so  as  to  produce  a 
harmonious  and  working  whole,  capable  of  giving  us  Othello,  or  the 
Evolution  Theory,  or  the  Differential  Calculus.  Why,  the  thing  is 
clearly  impossible — impossible,  that  is  to  say,  as  a  result  of  "acci- 
dental "  physical  causes.  We  might  just  conceivably  imagine  one  or 
two  fibers  made  to  connect  one  or  two  hitherto  unconnected  nerve- 
cells,  though  even  here  the  probability  that  the  nerve-cells  so  connected 
were  of  heterogeneous  orders  would  be  far  greater  than  the  probability 
that  they  were  of  homogeneous  orders  ;  we  could  much  more  readily 
imagine  such  connections  resulting  in  a  potentiality  for  believing  that 
a  lobster's  tail  was  a  blue  hope  of  raspberry  watches  than  in  a  poten- 
tiality for  believing  that  water  was  composed  of  hydrogen  and  oxy- 
gen, or  that  propositions  in  A  were  not  convertible.  But  we  certainly 
can  not  imagine  a  whole  network  of  such  fibers  to  spring  up  by  spon- 
taneous variation  in  a  human  brain,  and  yet  to  produce  an  organized 
result.  If  spontaneous  variation  ever  works  in  this  way,  its  product 
must  surely  be  either  an  idiot  or  a  raving  madman.  To  believe  the 
opposite  is  too  much  like  believing  in  Mr.  Crosse's  electrical  Acari, 
which  were  developed  de  novo,  out  of  inorganic  material,  in  a  dirty 
galvanic  battery,  and  yet  possessed  all  the  limbs  and  organs  of  degen- 
erate spiders.  It  is  asking  us  once  more  to  accept  a  still  greater  mir- 
acle than  the  first. 

But  such  miracles,  it  is  urged,  do  take  place  elsewhere  in  nature. 
For  example,  an  almond-tree,  let  us  say,  once  produced  a  peach-bear- 
ing branch  by  bud-variation.  Hence  it  has  been  inferred  that  the 
peach  is  a  spontaneous  variation  on  the  central  almond  theme.  Yet 
peaches  are  in  color,  fleshiness,  sweetness,  and  perfume,  true  fruits, 
adapted  to  the  fruity  method  of  dispersion,  by  means  of  attracting 
birds  ;  whereas  the  almond  is  a  nut,  with  the  usual  nutty  peculiarities 
of  green  and  brown  color,  dryness,  absence  of  sweet  juice,  and  so 
forth.  In  this  case,  then,  it  would  seem  that  bud-variation  imme- 
diately produced  a  variety  adapted  to  a  different  environment  in  ever 
so  many  distinct  ways.  Well,  I  have  introduced  this  case,  just  be- 
cause it  illustrates  the  very  impossibility  of  such  a  supposition.  For 
it  seems  pretty  clear  that  if  peaches  have  grown  at  one  act  from  al- 
monds, then  this  must  really  be  a  case  of  reversion  ;  the  almond  must 


394  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

itself  be  a  dried-up  form  of  a  still  earlier  peach  ;  and  this  will  be 
equally  true  even  if  all  the  existing  peaches  can  be  shown  to  be  de- 
scended from  nut-like  almonds.  For  the  almond  is  a  plum  by  family  ; 
and  all  the  other  plums  have  juicy  fruits  ;  while  one  of  them,  the  apri- 
cot, closely  approaches  the  almond-peach  group  in  most  of  its  char- 
acters. Seeing,  then,  that  the  almond  must  almost  certainly  be  de- 
scended from  juicy  fruit-bearing  ancestors,  nothing  is  more  natural 
than  that  under  altered  circumstances  it  should  revert, /?er  saltum,  to  a 
juicy  peach.  But  to  suppose  that  the  peach  type  was  originally  de- 
veloped per  saltiim  from  an  almond  is  to  suppose  that  it  varied  at  once 
in  several  separate  ways,  all  equally  and  correlatively  adapted  to  a 
particular  mode  of  dispersion.  It  is  to  suppose  that  accident  could  do 
in  a  minute  what  we  have  every  reason  to  believe  can  only  be  done 
by  infinitesimal  variations  and  infinite  selection. 

But  if  the  naturalist  can  not  imagine  the  production  of  a  peach  de 
novo  out  of  an  almond  at  a  single  jump,  how  can  he  imagine  the  pro- 
duction of  a  new  thinking  element  in  a  human  brain  ?  How  can  he 
suppose  that  the  accidental  introduction  of  one  more  little  bit  of  mat- 
ter into  that  vast  organized  labyrinth — a  mighty  maze,  but  not  without 
a  very  definite  and  regular  plan — can  have  any  kind  of  intelligible 
relation  to  the  complicated  system  of  cross-connections  and  superim- 
posed directive  departments  which  make  it  up  ?  And  if  it  be  objected 
that  the  view  taken  above  of  the  constitution  of  the  brain  is  wooden 
and  mechanical,  I  would  answer  that  it  is  certainly  absurdly  diagram- 
matic and  inadequate,  but  that  it  is  so  far  right  in  that  it  insists  upon 
making  believers  in  spontaneous  variation  try  to  realize  their  own  un- 
thinkable attitude.  As  to  materialism,  surely  it  is  more  profoundly 
materialistic  to  suppose  that  mere  physical  causes,  operating  on  the 
germ,  can  determine  minute  physical  and  material  changes  in  the 
brain,  which  will  in  turn  make  the  individuality  what  it  is  to  be,  than 
to  suppose  that  all  brains  are  what  they  are  in  virtue  of  antecedent 
function.  The  one  creed  makes  the  man  depend  mainly  upon  the 
accidents  of  molecular  physics  in  a  colliding  germ-cell  and  sperm- 
cell  ;  the  other  creed  makes  him  depend  mainly  upon  the  doings  and 
gains  of  his  ancestors,  as  modified  and  altered  by  himself. 

And  now  let  us  look  at  this  second  creed,  in  order  to  see  how  far 
it  surpasses  its  rival  in  comprehensibility,  concinnity,  and  power  of 
explaining  all  the  phenomena.  If  it  be  true  that  all  nerve-increment 
and  especially  all  brain-increment  is  functionally  produced,  we  can 
easily  understand  why  each  new  cell  or  fiber  should  stand  in  its  true 
and  due  relation  to  all  the  rest.  It  will  have  been  evolved  in  the 
course  of  doing  its  own  work,  and  it  will  be  necessarily  adapted  to  it 
because  the  act  of  working  has  brought  it  into  being.  There  will  be  no 
doubt  whether  the  new  cell  governs  the  peculiar  action  of  the  left  little 
finger  in  performing  that  amusing  conjuring  trick,  or  is,  on  the  con- 
trary, connected  with  the  perception  of  orange-red,  because  the  cell 


IDIOSYNCRASY,  395 

was  actually  differentiated  (say  out  of  pre-existing  neuroglia,  though 
that  is  a  hypothetical  matter  of  detail)  in  the  very  act  of  performing 
the  trick  in  question.  There  will  be  no  doubt  whether  the  new  fibers 
are  related  to  the  arithmetical  faculty  or  to  the  Sanskrit  verbs,  because 
they  were  actually  rendered  possible  as  nervous  tracks  in  the  act  of 
learning  decimal  fractions.  It  is  true,  we  may  admit  to  the  utmost 
the  intense  complexity  of  the  existing  brain,  and  the  vast  number  of 
its  elements  involved  in  even  the  simplest  muscular  adjustment  or  the 
simplest  visual  perception.  Nobody  feels  the  necessity  for  admitting 
such  complexity  more  fully  than  myself.  One  may  allow  with  M. 
Ribot  that  every  act  of  thought  jmust  be  conceived  rather  as  a  vast 
dynamical  tremor,  affecting  a  wide  plexus  of  very  diverse  nerve-ele- 
ments, than  as  a  single  function  in  a  single  cell  or  fiber.  One  may 
acknowledge  that  what  one  ought  really  to  picture  to  one's  self  (at  the 
present  stage  of  human  evolution)  is  not  so  much  the  genesis  of  a  new 
cell  for  governing  the  little  finger,  or  of  a  new  fiber  for  understand- 
ing a  fact  in  decimal  fractions,  as  the  habituating  an  immense  series  of 
cells  and  fibers,  perhaps  in  various  parts  of  the  brain,  to  thrill  together 
in  unison  on  the  occurrence  of  a  single  cue.  But  let  us  thus  purify 
and  dematerialize  our  conception  as  far  as  we  like,  we  must  neverthe- 
less come  back  at  last  to  the  fact  that  every  gain  implies  a  modifica- 
tion in  structure,  and  that  this  modification  in  structure,  if  it  is  to 
have  any  functional  meaning  and  value  whatsoever,  must  be  function- 
ally brought  about. 

That  such  functional  modifications  are  forever  taking  place  in  all 
of  us  is  a  matter  of  common  observation,  as  evidenced  by  psychological 
facts.  We  are  always  seeing  something  which  adds  to  our  total  stock 
of  memories  ;  we  are  always  learning  and  doing  something  new.  The 
vast  majority  of  these  experiences  are  similar  in  kind  to  those  already 
passed  through  by  our  ancestors  ;  they  add  nothing  to  the  inheritance 
of  the  race.  To  use  a  familiar  phrase  in  a  slightly  new  and  narrower 
sense,  they  do  not  help  to  build  up  "  forms  of  thought  "  ;  though  they 
leave  physical  traces  on  the  individual,  they  do  not  so  far  affect  the 
underlying  organization  of  the  brain  as  to  make  the  development  of 
after-brains  somewhat  different  from  previous  ones.  But  there  are 
certain  functional  activities  which  do  tend  so  to  alter  the  development 
of  after-brains  ;  certain  novel  or  sustained  activities  which  apparently 
result  in  the  production  of  new  correlated  brain-elements  or  brain- 
connections,  hereditarily  transmissible  as  increased  potentialities  of 
similar  activity  in  the  offspring.  If  this  is  not  so,  then  there  is  no 
meaning  at  all  in  the  facts  collected  by  Mr.  Galton,  or,  indeed,  for  the 
matter  of  that,  in  the  common  facts  of  human  experience  as  to  heredi- 
tary transmission  of  faculties  for  acquired  pursuits  of  any  sort.  If 
the  children  of  acrobats  make  the  best  tumblers,  if  the  descendants 
of  musical  families  make  the  best  singers  and  composers,  if  a  great 
thinker  or  a  great  painter  is  usually  produced  by  the  convergence  of 


396  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

two  lines  of  thinkers  or  artists,  then  the  general  truth  of  this  principle 
is  abundantly  clear. 

Supposing  such  small  functionally  -  produced  modifications  to  be 
always  taking  place,  it  will  be  obvious  that  they  must  take  place 
most  in  the  most  differentiated  societies,  and  least  in  the  least  differ- 
entiated. A  race  of  hunting  savages  will  perform  a  certain  number 
of  routine  acts,  which  will  be  for  the  most  part  the  same  for  all  mem- 
bers of  the  tribe,  and  will  remain  pretty  much  the  same  from  genera- 
tion to  generation.  In  the  particular  direction  of  hunting  and  fishing, 
the  cleverness  at  last  attained  will  be  very  remarkable  ;  but  in  most 
other  directions  there  will  be  little  excellence  and  still  less  variety. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  a  tribe  which  is  also  made  a  trading  and  navi- 
gating one  by  the  accident  of  a  maritime  position,  a  new  set  of  activi- 
ties will  be  specially  cultivated,  and  will  give  rise  to  new  functional 
modifications  in  a  different  direction.  Suppose  some  of  the  tribe,  in 
this  latter  case,  to  be  mainly  inland  cultivators  and  hunters,  while 
others  of  the  tribe  are  mainly  seaboard  traders  or  pirates,  then  each 
of  these  sections  will  tend  to  develop  certain  special  hereditary  brain- 
modifications  of  its  own.  But  if  a  man  of  the  inland  section  marries 
a  woman  of  the  maritime  section,  or  vice  versa,  then  the  offspring  will 
tend  to  reproduce  more  or  less  the  structural  peculiarities  of  both 
parents.  And  here  comes  in  an  important  corollary.  For  though, 
under  such  circumstances,  the  children  may  none  of  them  fully  repro- 
duce all  the  brain-gains  of  their  father's  line,  nor  all  the  brain-gains 
of  their  mother's  line,  they  will  yet  on  the  average  reproduce  a  fair 
share  of  the  fonner  and  a  fair  share  of  the  latter.  Accordingly,  they 
will  usually  turn  out,  on  the  whole,  persons  of  higher  general  brain- 
power than  either  ancestral  series  ;  they  will  partially  unite  the  strong 
points  of  both. 

It  seems  to  me  that  this  principle  is  one  of  very  great  importance. 
From  it  we  can  deduce  the  conclusion  that  in  any  complex  society 
many  children  represent  directly  a  convergence  of  two  unlike  lines  of 
descent,  and  indirectly  a  convergence  of  innumerable  unlike  lines,  with 
corresponding  gain  to  the  species.  Two  parents,  possessing  distinct 
points  of  advantage  of  their  own,  produce  children,  some  of  whom 
resemble  rather  the  one,  and  some  the  other  ;  but  many  of  whom  will 
at  least  tend  to  resemble  both  in  their  stronger  points.  Of  course,  one 
must  allow  much  for  the  idios'i/ncrasis  as  well  as  for  the  crasis.  This 
child  may  fall  below  both  its  parents  in  most  things  ;  that  child  may 
reproduce  the  weakest  elements  of  both  ;  yonder  other  child  may  at- 
tain the  average  or  may  surpass  them  in  everything.  But,  on  the 
whole,  the  principle  of  convergence  seems  to  imply  that  in  a  fairly 
complex  society  there  will  always  be  an  average  of  mental  improve- 
ment from  generation  to  generation,  due  to  the  constant  intercrossing 
of  brains  specially  improved  in  particular  directions.  This  improve- 
ment will,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  be  increased  and  favored  by  natural 


IDIOSYNCRASY.  397 

selection  ;  but  it  will  itself  form  the  basis  of  favorable  variations 
without  which  natural  selection  can  do  nothing.  It  seems  to  me  easy 
to  understand  how  survival  of  the  fittest  may  result  in  progress,  start- 
ing from  such  functionally  -  produced  gains  :  but  impossible  to  un- 
derstand how  it  could  result  in  progress  if  it  had  to  start  from 
mere  accidental  structural  increments  due  to  spontaneous  variation 
alone. 

Thus  it  becomes  clear  why  certain  countries  have  by  mere  geo- 
graphical position  necessarily  produced  certain  high  types  of  human 
intelligence,  while  in  certain  other  countries  the  race  has  never  pro- 
gressed beyond  a  very  low  level.  There  are  places  like  Central 
Africa,  where  the  physical  conditions  do  not  tend  to  produce  any 
great  diversity  of  occupation  ;  and  here  the  general  average  of  intelli- 
gence does  not  tend  to  rise  high.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  places, 
like  Greece,  Italy,  the  West  European  peninsulas  and  islands,  where 
the  physical  conditions  tend  to  differentiate  the  population  into  many 
groups,  agricultural,  mercantile,  sea-faring,  military,  naval,  and  profes- 
sional ;  and  here  the  general  average  of  intelligence  tends  to  rise  very 
high  indeed.  Of  course,  one  must  allow  much  influence  to  the  time- 
element  ;  for  every  such  increase  in  differentiation  involves  yet  further 
increases  in  the  sequel,  and  brings  the  social  organism,  or  parts  of  it, 
into  contact  with  new  environments.  The  ^gsean  is  not  now  of  the 
same  importance  in  this  respect  as  during  the  days  when  coasting 
voyages  from  island  to  island  were  the  utmost  possible  stretch  of 
navigation  :  the  science  acquired  there  has  widened  the  sphere  of 
navigation  itself,  first  to  the  entire  Mediterranean,  then  to  the  open 
Atlantic,  finally  to  all  the  oceans  of  the  whole  earth.  But  in  principle 
it  has  always  seemed  to  me  (as  against  the  really  accidental  view 
advocated  by  Mr.  Bagehot)  that  the  "philosophy  of  history,"  the 
general  stream  of  human  development,  could  be  traced  throughout  to 
perfectly  definite  physical  causes  of  this  sort.  Mr.  Bagehot,  basing 
himself  on  the  pure  Darwinian  theory  of  spontaneous  variations,  be- 
lieved that  the  differences  between  races  of  men  were  due  to  mere 
minute  physical  sports  in  their  nervous  constitution  :  it  appears  to  me 
rather  that  they  are  due  to  the  action  of  a  definite  environment,  thus 
effecting  a  differentiation  of  circumstances,  and  in  many  cases  calling 
into  constant  functional  activity  the  highest  existing  faculties  of  the 
various  social  units  in  the  most  diverse  ways.  We  may  not  thus 
(though  vide  post)  be  able  to  account  for  the  particular  character  and 
genius  of  a  Pericles,  an  Aristotle,  a  Hannibal,  a  Caesar,  a  Newton,  or 
a  Goethe  ;  but  we  can  thus  at  least  account  for  the  general  average  of 
intelligence  which  made  Greece,  or  Carthage,  or  Rome,  or  England, 
or  Germany,  capable  of  producing  such  an  individual,  as  a  slight  vari- 
ation on  the  common  type,  due  to  the  convergence  of  separately  rich 
and  varied  lines  of  descent.  The  real  illuminating  point  is  this — that 
such  men  do  arise  from  time  to  time  among  the  most  intelligent  na- 


398  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

tions,  and  that  they  do  not  arise  among  the  Australian  black-fellows, 
the  Digger  Indians,  or  the  Andaman-Islanders. 

And  now,  how  far  can  we  account  on  these  principles  for  the  ex- 
istence of  the  individual  genius  ?  Well,  here  we  must  begin  by  clear- 
ing the  ground  of  a  great  initial  fallacy.  Genius,  as  a  rule,  has  made 
quite  too  much  of  itself.  Having  had  the  field  all  to  itself,  it  has 
never  been  tired  of  drawing  a  hard  and  fast  line  between  itself  and 
mere  talent.  Nevertheless,  from  the  psychological  point  of  view,  noth- 
ing is  plainer  than  the  fact  that  genius  differs  from  mere  talent  only 
by  the  very  slightest  excess  of  natural  gifts  in  a  special  direction. 
True,  that  small  amount  of  superiority  makes  all  the  difference  in  our 
judgment  of  the  finished  work  :  we  say,  this  is  a  great  poem,  while 
that  is  a  pretty  trifle  ;  this  is  a  grand  scientific  generalization,  while 
that  is  a  painstaking  piece  of  laboratory  analysis  ;  this  is  a  magnifi- 
cent work  of  art,  while  that  is  a  very  creditable  little  bit  of  landscape- 
painting.  But,  in  the  brain  and  hands  of  the  performer,  what  infi- 
nitely minute  structural  modifications  must  underlie  these  seemingly 
vast  differences  of  effect !  And  even  in  ourselves,  the  critics,  how 
minute  are  the  shades  of  feeling  which  make  us  give  the  palm  to  the 
one  work  and  withhold  it  from  the  other  !  How  many  people  are 
really  competent  to  judge  in  any  way  of  the  differences  between  this 
poem  and  that,  between  this  oratorio  and  that,  between  this  picture 
and  that  ?  And  what  is  this  but  to  say  that  the  differences  are  in 
themselves  extremely  small  and  almost  elusive  ? 

Now,  in  a  country  like  Italy,  say,  where  for  many  ages  many  men 
have  continually  painted  pictures  of  the  nymphs  and  the  satyrs,  or  of 
the  Madonna  and  of  St.  Sebastian  ;  where  little  chapels  have  studded 
the  land,  from  age  to  age,  with  votive  tablets  to  Yenus  Genitrix  or  to 
Our  Lady  of  the  Sea  ;  where  countless  generations  of  workmen  have 
decorated  the  walls  of  Pompeii  or  covered  the  vulgarest  ceilings  of 
Florence  and  Genoa  with  hasty  frescoes — in  such  a  country  there  is 
developed  among  all  the  people  a  general  high  average  of  artistic  exe- 
cution, utterly  impossible  in  a  country  like  Scotland,  where  there  has 
hardly  ever  been  any  indigenous  spontaneous  art  at  all  to  speak  of. 
And  when  an  Italian  man  of  an  artistic  family,  having  inherited  from 
his  ancestors  certain  relatively  high  artistic  endowments,  marries  an 
Italian  woman  of  another  artistic  family,  similarly  but  perhaps  some- 
what differently  endowed,  there  is  at  least  a  possibility,  not  to  say  a 
probability,  that  their  children,  or  some  or  one  of  them,  will  develop 
great  artistic  power.  True,  we  can  not  follow  the  minute  working  of 
the  crasis  :  we  can  not  say  why  Paolo  is  an  artist  of  the  highest  type, 
while  Luigi  is  merely  a  fair  colorist,  and  Gianbattista  is  a  respectable 
copyist  of  the  old  masters.  But  at  least  we  can  say  that  all  three 
are  painters  after  a  fashion,  in  virtue  of  their  common  artistic  descent ; 
and  that  Paolo  is  a  great  painter  because  he  unites  in  himself,  more 
than  either  of  the  others,  the  respective  merits  of  the  two  ancestral 


IDIOSYNCRASY. 


399 


lines.  After  all,  we  common  mortals,  if  we  practiced  all  our  lifetime, 
could  not  turn  out  as  good  a  sketch  as  Gianbattista's  first  water-color. 

In  the  same  way,  in  a  Greece  where  every  god  had  his  temple, 
every  temple  its  statue,  every  house  its  shrine,  and  every  shrine  its 
little  deities — in  a  Greece  where  marble  was  what  brick  is  in  London, 
and  where  artistic  stone-cutters  were  as  common  as  carpenters  here — 
we  can  understand  why  a  Phidias  was  a  possible  product,  and  why  a 
Phidias-admiring  public  was  a  foregone  conclusion.  So,  too,  we  can 
understand  why  among  ourselves  so  many  artists  should  come  from 
the  only  real  native  schools  of  decorative  handicraft — the  workshops 
of  Birmingham,  Manchester,  and  London.  We  can  see  why  musical 
talent  should  arise  most  in  Germany  and  Italy,  or  among  the  Jews, 
or  in  our  own  case  among  the  Welsh  and  in  the  cathedral  towns.  We 
can  see  why  a  Watt  is  not  born  in  the  Tyrol ;  why  a  Stephenson  does 
not  come  from  Dolgelly  ;  why  America  produces  more  Edisons,  and 
Bells,  and  Morses,  and  Fultons  than  she  produces  Schillers,  or  Mozarts, 
or  Michael  Angelos.  The  convergences  which  go  to  produce  a  great 
mechanician  are  more  frequent  in  countries  where  mechanics  are  much 
practiced  than  they  are  in  the  Western  Hebrides  or  in  the  British  West 
Indies.  The  Quakers  do  not  turn  out  many  great  generals,  and  the 
kings  of  Dahomey  are  not  likely  to  beget  distinguished  philanthropists. 

Of  course,  there  are  some  hard  cases  to  understand — hard  for  the 
most  part,  I  believe,  because  we  do  not  know  enough  about  the  vari- 
ous convergent  lines  which  have  gone  to  produce  the  particular  phe- 
nomenon. Here  and  there,  a  great  man  seems  to  spring  suddenly  and 
unexpectedly  from  the  dead  level  of  absolute  mediocrity.  But  then, 
we  do  not  know  how  much  mediocrity  in  different  lines  may  ha^e 
gone  to  make  up  his  complex  individuality  ;  and  we  do  not  know  how 
much  of  what  seems  mediocrity  may  really  have  been  fairly  high  tal- 
ent. So  many  men  are  never  discovered.  Let  me  take  a  few  slight 
examples  from  our  own  time,  which  may  help  ^o  illustrate  the  slight- 
ness  of  the  chances  that  make  all  the  difference  in  our  superficial  judg- 
ments ;  and,  if  I  take  them  from  very  recent  cases,  I  think  the  readers 
of  "  Mind  "  will  not  misunderstand  my  object ;  for  it  is  almost  impos- 
sible to  recover  the  facts  from  remoter  periods. 

Carlyle,  in  spite  of  his  spleen,  was  no  bad  judge  of  intelligence  ; 
and  Carlyle  thought  Erasmus  Darwin,  the  younger,  an  abler  man  than 
his  brother  Charles,  the  author  of  "  The  Origin  of  Species."  Probably 
nobody  else  would  agree  with  Carlyle  ;  people  seldom  do  ;  but  at  any 
rate  it  is  clear  that  Erasmus  Darwin  must  have  been  a  man  very  high 
above  the  average  in  intellect,  doubtless  inheriting  the  same  general 
tendencies  which  are  inherent  in  the  whole  of  that  distinguished  fam- 
ily. Yet,  if  it  had  not  been  for  his  brother,  probably  the  world  at 
large  would  never  have  heard  of  him.  Again,  supposing  he  had  had 
no  brother,  but  had  married  and  had  children,  all  of  whom  achieved 
celebrity,  we  might  have  inquired  in  vain  whence  these  children  came 


400  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

by  their  ability.  Once  more,  take  Charles  Darwin  himself.  He  was 
nearly  if  not  quite  fifty  before  he  published  "  The  Origin  of  Species." 
It  was  a  mere  chance  that  with  his  feeble  health  he  lived  on  to  com- 
plete that  great  work.  Suppose  he  had  died  at  forty,  how  would  he 
have  been  remembered  ?  Chiefly  as  the  author  of  a  clever  book  of 
scientific  travels,  and  of  a  monograph  on  the  fossil  acom-bamacles.  In 
a  world  of  such  mere  accidents  as  these,  who  shall  say  that  an  appar- 
ently negative  instance  proves  anything  ? 

Take  another  and  somewhat  different  case — the  Tennyson  family. 
Here  we  have  three  brothers,  all  with  more  or  less  poetical  tempera- 
ment, and  all  marked  by  much  the  same  minute  peculiarities  in  cast  of 
thought  and  turn  of  expression.  Only  two,  however,  I  believe,  have 
published  or  at  least  have  acknowledged  their  verses  ;  and  of  these 
two  alone — Alfred  Tennyson  and  Charles  Tennyson  Turner — ^has  one 
a  right  to  speak  publicly.  When  the  "  Poems  by  Two  Brothers  "  ap- 
peared, who  could  have  said  which  of  the  two  was  destined  to  turn 
out  a  great  poet  ?  And  in  the  after-event,  who  can  say  what  little 
difference  of  circumstances  may  have  made  the  one  into  a  clergyman 
and  the  other  into  a  professional  versifier  ?  If  Charles  Turner  had 
cultivated  his  muse  as  assiduously  as  the  laureate,  would  he  have  pro- 
duced equal  results  ?  What  little  twist  set  the  one,  with  Tennysonian 
love  of  form  carried  to  the  length  of  a  passion,  upon  the  writing  of 
exquisite  sonnets  alone,  while  it  set  the  other  upon  "  In  Memori- 
am,"  and  "Maud,"  and  "The  Princess,"  and  the  "Morte  d'Arthur"? 
What  little  extra  encouragement  on  the  part  of  a  reviewer  may  have 
impelled  the  more  successful  poet  to  fresh  efforts  ;  what  professional 
distractions  or  religious  scruples  may  have  held  back  the  less  illustri- 
ous parson  ?  And  yet,  who  can  read  Charles  Tennyson  Turner's  son- 
nets without  feeling  that  though  the  idiosyncrasis  is  not  exactly  the 
same,  the  crasis  itself  is  at  bottom  identical  ?  Compare  the  sonnets 
with  the  work  of  any  one  among  the  imitators — the  men  who  "  all 
can  raise  the  flower  now,  for  all  have  got  the  seed,"  and  what  a  dif- 
ference !  The  imitator  is  all  servile  copyism  in  form,  with  no  real 
underlying  identity  of  matter  ;  the  brother  is  only  half  a  Tennyson 
in  mere  externals,  but  is  still  own  brother  in  the  most  intimate  turns 
of  thought  and  feeling. 

After  such  cases  as  these,  do  we  need  any  explanation  of  the  sud- 
den apparition  of  a  Carlyle,  a  Burns,  a  Shakespeare,  a  Dickens,  from 
out  the  ranks  of  the  people  themselves  ?  To  me  it  seems  not.  Are 
there  not  pithiness  and  sternness  and  ability  enough  in  the  Lowland 
peasantry  to  account  for  the  occasional  production,  out  of  thousands 
of  casts  at  the  dice,  of  such  a  convergence  as  that  which  gave  us  the 
old  man  at  Ecclefechan  who  "  had  sic  names  for  things  and  bodies," 
and  his  two  able  sons,  of  whom  the  more  strangely  compounded  was 
Thomas  Carlyle  ?  Is  there  not  in  another  type  of  Scotch  peasant 
enough  of  pathos  and  literary  power  and  honhomie  to  account  for  an 


IDIOSYNCRASY, 


401 


occasional  convergence  which  will  give  us  either  the  old  popular-song- 
writers, or  Burns  himself,  or  on  a  slightly  lower  level  such  a  woman 
as  Janet  Hamilton  ?  Again,  the  case  of  Dickens  looks  at  first  sight 
somewhat  more  difficult  ;  but  then  one  may  remember  that,  as  far  as 
general  mental  power  went,  Dickens  was  nowhere.  He  was  a  pure 
artist  in  a  special  and  very  restricted  line  ;  he  possessed  a  peculiar 
faculty  for  describing  queer  and  original  people  in  a  queer  and  origi- 
nal way.  Doubtless  this  faculty  was  in  him  so  fully  developed  that 
it  rose  to  the  rank  of  genius  in  its  own  line  ;  but  the  line  was  by  no 
means  an  exalted  one.  In  such  a  case,  who  can  say  what  quaint  little 
combinations  of  ordinary  elements  went  to  make  up  the  power  that 
amused  and  delighted  us  so  much  ?  Are  there  not  thousands  of 
people  in  our  midst  who  possess  just  the  same  faculty  in  a  less  de- 
gree— people  who,  without  depth  or  brilliancy  in  other  respects,  can 
raise  a  laugh,  by  their  clever  caricatures  of  the  habits  and  conversa- 
tion of  their  friends  ?  Throw  in  the  merest  side-twist  of  comical  ex- 
aggeration and  a  grain  of  plot-forming  capacity  into  such  a  raconteur, 
and  you  get  the  framework  for  the  genius  of  Dickens.  Of  genius  of 
that  sort,  indeed,  more  than  of  any  other,  one  may  fairly  say  that  it 
differs  only  by  a  hair's  breadth  from  humorous  mediocrity.  It  is 
otherwise,  I  believe,  with  really  deep  philosophical  or  scientific  power. 
Grasp,  insight,  luminousness,  breadth  ;  the  capacity  for  dealing  with 
the  abstract  ideas  of  mathematics,  of  logic,  of  metaphysics  ;  the  power 
of  seeing  or  formulating  great  generalizations — these  things,  if  I  read 
the  lives  of  thinkers  aright,  come  only  from  a  convergence  of  able  and 
powerful  stocks.  It  takes  three  generations,  they  say,  to  make  a  gen- 
tleman ;  surely  it  takes  many  generations  of  trained  intelligence  on 
both  sides  to  make  a  philosopher. 

At  the  same  time,  it  must  be  remembered  that  a  convergence  even 
of  two  mediocre  strains  may  produce  comparatively  high  results,  pro- 
vided the  endowments  of  the  two  strains  be  complementary  or  supple- 
mentary to  one  another.  To  this  cause  may  perhaps  be  attributed  the 
general  high  level  of  intelligence  displayed  by  half-breeds — even  half- 
breeds  with  a  lower  race.  I  have  already  alluded  to  the  intellectual 
superiority  of  mulattoes,  a  large  proportion  of  whom  appear  to  me 
(and  to  some  other  observers)  considerably  above  the  average  of  either 
Europeans  or  negroes.  And  this  is  not  surprising  when  we  recollect 
that  the  negro  brain,  though  relatively  inferior,  must  almost  neces- 
sarily be  highly  cultivated  in  some  particular  directions,  where  the 
European  brain  is  comparatively  deficient.  If,  then,  a  mulatto  child 
inherits  in  fair  degrees  the  quick  perceptive  faculties;  and  intuitions  of 
his  mother,  and  the  higher  reasoning  faculties  and  forethought  of  his 
father,  he  is  likely  on  the  average  to  be  better  equipped  in  inherited 
potentialities  than  either.*     Similarly,  one  may  take  it  for  granted 

*  Darwin  has  somewhere  noted  that  half-breeds  with  lower  races  appear  to  be  on  the 
whole  often  morally  inferior  to  either  parent  race  ;  and  he  has  suggested  that  this  inferiority 
VOL.  XXIV. — 26 


402  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

that  each  great  European  nationality  has  some  strong  points  not 
equally  shared  by  the  others  ;  and  it  is  a  trite  observation  that  inter- 
marriages between  members  of  such  nationalities  tend  to  produce  an 
unusually  high  level  of  general  intelligence.  In  Ireland,  the  mixed 
French  families,  sprung  from  intemiarriages  with  refugees,  have  long 
been  noticed  in  this  respect  ;  at  Norwich  and  throughout  the  eastern 
counties,  the  mixed  descendants  of  the  Huguenots  (such  as  the  Mar- 
tineaus  and  others)  have  been  equally  distinguished.  Perhaps  one 
might  even  point  out  an  exceptional  amount  of  intellectual  power  in 
the  more  mixed  Celtic  and  Teutonic  regions  of  Britain — the  border- 
lands of  the  two  races — notably  at  Aberdeen  and  in  Devonshire.  But 
the  most  remarkable  and  least  dubious  instance  is  that  of  the  mixed 
offspring  of  Jews  and  Christians.  Here  we  start  with  a  pure  race  of 
unusual  intellectual  vigor  and  power,  the  Jews  long  thrown  by  circum- 
stances into  an  environment  which  has  brought  out  many  of  their 
faculties  in  a  very  high  degree.  They  are  the  oldest  civilized  race 
now  remaining  on  the  earth;  they  are  artistic,  musical,  literary,  ex- 
ceptionally philosophic,  and  hereditarily  cultivated.  Even  by  marriage 
among  themselves  they  naturally  produce  a  very  large  proportion  of 
remarkable  men.  But  when  they  marry  out  with  Christian  women — 
in  other  words,  with  women  of  the  European  race — the  special  Aryan 
traits  seem  to  blend  with  the  Semitic  in  a  very  notable  and  powerful 
mixture.  I  have  not  space  to  give  illustrations,  but  the  list  that  can 
be  compiled  of  distinguished  persons  of  half- Jewish  blood  is  something 
simply  extraordinary,  especially  when  one  remembers  the  compara- 
tively small  sum-total  of  such  intermarriages.  Indeed,  the  difficulty 
would  probably  be  to  find  a  single  person  of  mixed  Jewish  race  who 
was  not  at  least  above  the  average  in  intellect  and  in  plasticity  of 
thought. 

Finally,  it  seems  to  me  that  unless  we  accept  the  view  here  con- 
tended for,  that  all  increments  of  brain-power  are  functionally  pro- 
duced, the  whole  history  of  human  development  ought  to  present  the 
appearance  of  a  continuous  chaos.  Granted  this  principle,  we  can 
understand  why  a  Phidias  appeared  in  Greece,  a  Raffaelle  in  Italy,  a 
Watt  in  Britain  ;  without  it,  we  can  not  understand  why  they  should 
not  all  have  appeared  in  Iceland  or  in  New  Guinea  just  as  well.  If 
mere  physical  circumstances  affecting  germs  and  sperm-cells  can  pro- 
may  be  duo  to  reversion  to  an  earlier  and  still  more  savage  type  of  humanity.  Without 
expressing  any  opinion  on  the  question  of  fact  (a  delicate  one  to  decide),  I  fancy  another 
explanation  fits  more  simply  :  namely,  that  as  morals  are  a  comparatively  recent  and 
unstable  acquisition  even  in  the  best  and  highest,  they  do  not  crop  up  in  the  half-breed  ; 
and  the  union  of  relatively  high  European  intelligence  with  relatively  low  savage  ethics 
may  easily  produce  what  seems  at  least  to  be  a  very  brutal  and  diabolical  nature.  Surely 
there  can  be  nothing  worse  in  any  savage  than  such  abnormal  products  of  our  own  civil- 
ization as  Peace  the  murderer,  or  as  the  man  Thomasson  who  attempted  to  blow  up  an 
Atlantic  steamer  by  a  piece  of  dynamite  clock-work  for  the  sake  of  obtaining  the  insur- 
ance. 


tTIENNE  GEOFFROY  SAINT-HILAIRE.  403 

duce  miraculous  and  really  uncaused  new  developments  of  structure 
and  function — can  make  a  genius  spring  from  nobodies,  and  a  philoso- 
pher grow  at  one  leap  out  of  two  common  strains,  of  the  earth,  earthy 
— then  we  can  see  no  reason  why  there  should  not  be  great  families, 
great  epochs,  great  outbursts  in  any  one  place  as  well  as  another. 
But  if  all  increments  are  functionally  acquired,  then  we  can  understand 
why  this  environment  produces  races  of  sculptors,  that  environment 
races  of  poets,  yonder  environment  races  of  traders,  or  thinkers,  or 
\Soldiers,  or  mechanicians.  The  first  hypothesis  is  one  that  throws  no 
light  at  all  upon  any  of  the  facts  ;  the  second  hypothesis  is  one  that 
explains  them  all  with  transparent  lucidity. — Mind. 


ETIEK:>TE  GEOFFKOY  SAmT-HILAIRE. 

THE  name  of  SItienne  Geoffboy  Saint-Hilaire  is  most  inti- 
mately associated  with  the  establishment  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
unity  of  the  organic  plan  of  the  animal  kingdom.  This  great  natu- 
ralist was  born  at  fitampes,  France,  April  15,  1772,  and  died  in  Paris, 
June  9,  1844.  He  came  of  an  honorable  family,  of  only  a  moderate 
fortune,  another  branch  of  which  had  given  three  members  to  the 
Academy  of  Sciences.  His  father,  Jean  Gerard  Geoffroy,  an  attorney 
and  magistrate,  designed  him  for  the  ecclesiastical  profession.  So> 
after  having  taken  his  primary  studies  at  home,  he  obtained  a  bursar- 
ship  in  the  college  of  Navarre,  and,  about  1788,  a  canonry  and  a  bene- 
fice at  fitampes.  Everything  thus  promised  well  for  his  ecclesiastical 
advancement ;  but  he  felt  drawn  toward  the  natural  sciences  by  an 
irresistible  taste,  which  the  experimental  lessons  in  physics  of  Brisson 
had  contributed  to  develop.  On  leaving  the  college,  he  asked  per- 
mission of  his  father  to  remain  in  Paris,  to  attend  the  courses  of  the 
College  de  France  and  the  Jardin  des  Plantes.  The  father  consented, 
and  toward  the  end  of  1790  the  young  man  became  a  bachelor-in-law. 
He  went  no  further  in  this  profession,  but  sought  in  medicine  a  calling 
more  congenial  to  his  tastes,  without  remaining  faithful  to  that.  He 
entered  the  college  of  Cardinal-Lemoine  as  a  pensionnaire,  where  he 
attracted  the  notice  of  Lhomond  and  Hatiy,  who  were  teaching  there. 
Daubenton,  whose  lectures  in  the  Jardin  des  Plantes  he  was  attending, 
remarked  him  among  his  pupils,  invited  him  to  his  house,  charged  him 
with  commissions  relative  to  the  lectures,  and  intrusted  to  him  the 
determination  of  some  of  the  objects  in  the  collections  of  the  Jardin. 
The  French  Revolution  was  now  (1792)  raging  furiously,  and  all 
the  professors  in  the  college  were  arrested  on  the  13th  of  August  for 
the  crime  of  being  priests.  Hatiy  was  released  on  the  next  day, 
through  the  most  active  exertions  of  Geoffroy,  and  Lhomond  was 
delivered  by  one  of  his  former  pupils.    The  other  priests  were  detained 


404  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

in  the  prison  of  Saint-Firmin,  near  Geoffrey's  residence  ;  and  he,  on 
the  2d  of  September,  getting  access  to  the  prison  under  a  disguise, 
signified  to  them  that  he  intended  to  help  them  escape.  "  No,"  said 
the  Abbe  de  Keranran,  "we  will  not  leave  our  brethren,  for  that 
would  only  make  their  destruction  more  certain."  Geoffroy,  however, 
got  a  ladder,  and  took  it  after  nightfall  to  the  corner  of  the  prison- 
wall  which  he  had  designated,  and  waited  for  eight  hours  before  the 
first  priest  appeared.  One  of  the  prisoners  hurt  his  foot  in  jumping, 
and  our  hero  carried  him  in  his  arms  to  a  neighboring  yard.  Twelve 
of  the  priests  had  been  rescued,  when  one  of  the  guards  fired  a  gun, 
the  shot  from  which  went  through  Geoffroy's  clothes,  and  aroused  him 
to  the  fact,  which  he  had  not  noticed,  that  the  sun  had  risen.  He 
then  returned  home  ;  but,  though  he  had  arranged  to  meet  the  priests 
afterward,  he  was  not  destined  to  see  them  again  ;  and,  when  he  went 
to  the  appointed  rendezvous,  he  found  himself  alone.  Exhausted  by  his 
efforts,  Geoffroy  hurried  home  to  Etampes,  where  he  fell  dangerously 
ill,  but  was  brought  back  to  health  under  the  salubrious  influence  of  the 
fresh  country  air.  Haiiy's  letters  to  him  at  this  time  attest  the  affec- 
tion which  existed  between  the  master  and  his  pupil.  In  one  of  them 
the  great  mineralogist  wrote  (October  6, 1792)  :  "  Your  letter  reached 
me  just  as  I  was  going  out  to  dinner  ;  it  was  like  a  delicate  dessert, 
of  which  I  immediately  gave  a  part  to  M.  Lhomond  ;  we  were  never 
so  happy  at  the  table  except  when  you  were  really  with  us  " — and 
then  he  advises  Geoffroy  to  suspend  for  a  while,  for  the  sake  of  the 
restoration  of  his  health,  the  hard  study  of  crystallography,  and  attach 
himself  to  plants,  "  which  present  themselves  under  a  more  graceful 
mien  and  speak  a  more  intelligible  language.  A  course  in  botany  is 
all  pure  hygiene."  Geoffroy  resumed  his  studies  in  Paris  in  Novem- 
ber, and  in  March  following,  at  the  request  of  Daubenton  and  on  the 
nomination  of  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre,  he  was  appointed  sub-keeper 
and  assistant  demonstrator  in  the  Natural  History  cabinet  of  the  Jar- 
din  des  Plantes,  On  the  reorganization  of  the  Jar  din  des  Plantes  as 
the  Museum  of  Natural  History,  in  June,  1793,  he  was  named  to  the 
chair  of  Zoology  of  Vertebrated  Animals.  He  hesitated  to  accept 
the  position  because  his  studies  had  been  in  mineralogy,  but  Daubenton 
persuaded  him  to  do  so.  Immediately  after  his  installation,  he  began 
the  foundation  of  the  menagerie  of  the  Jar  din  des  Plantes^  beginning 
with  three  itinerant  collections  of  animals  that  had  been  confiscated 
by  the  police  and  taken  to  the  museum.  Of  what  he  accomplished  in 
this  department  he  has  written  :  "  When  I  began  to  direct  my  studies 
to  the  natural  history  of  animals,  that  science  had  not  been  encouraged 
at  Paris.  It  had  never  been  made  a  branch  of  instruction,  and  I  did 
not  expect  that  I  should  shortly  be  made  the  first  one  to  treat  it  in  a 
public  course.  Established  in  the  year  II  (1793-94)  as  Professor  of  the 
Natural  History  of  Mammalia  and  Birds,  I  became  also  an  administrator 
in  the  museums  of  the  collections  of  these  classes.     There  were  then 


tTIENNE   GEOFFROY  SAINT-HILAIRE,  405 

only  a  few  quadrupeds  in  the  national  collection.  My  duty  was  to  try 
to  increase  the  number.  I  entered  into  correspondence  with  the  prin- 
cipal naturalists,  I  was  powerfully  seconded  by  their  zeal,  and  the  col- 
lection of  viviparous  quadrupeds  or  mammals  is  now  the  richest  of 
that  class  in  existence.  I  have  likewise  greatly  enriched  the  collection 
of  birds.  Finally,  I  have  made  the  collections  useful  to  young  natu- 
ralists by  making  rigorous  determinations  of  the  animals  intrusted  to 
my  administration." 

The  course  was  opened  in  May,  1794,  and  in  the  following  Decem- 
ber Geoffroy  read  to  the  Society  of  Natural  History  an  essay  on  the 
aye-aye,  in  the.  introduction  to  which,  criticising  the  views  of  Bonnet 
on  the  scale  of  beings,  he  attacked  a  theory  that  was  but  slightly  dif- 
ferent from  the  one  which  he  himself  afterward  adopted. 

In  1795  the  Abbe  Tessier  had  found  in  Normandy  a  youth  who 
was  strongly  interested  in  natural  history,  and  gave  an  account  of  him 
to  Geoffroy,  to  which  the  young  man  added  a  communication  describ- 
ing some  of  his  researches.  Geoffroy  wrote  back  to  the  youth  :  "  Come 
to  Paris  without  delay  ;  come,  assume  the  place  of  another  Linnaeus, 
and  become  another  founder  of  natural  history."  The  youth  came, 
and  thus  was  opened  the  career  of  the  illustrious  Georges  Cuvier.  He 
and  Geoffroy  became  fast  friends,  and  together  composed  five  mem- 
oirs, of  which  one,  on  the  classification  of  mammalia,  contained  the 
theory  of  the  subordination  of  characters,  fundamental  to  Cuvier's 
system.  In  a  memoir  on  the  Makis,  or  Madagascar  monkeys,  pub- 
lished a  year  afterward  by  Geoffroy  alone,  appears  the  principle  of 
unity  of  composition,  to  which  the  author  afterward  related  all  com- 
parative anatomy.  The  minds  of  the  two  friends  had  already  begun 
to  diverge  toward  opposite  systems. 

In  1798  Cuvier%nd  Geoffroy  Saint -Hilaire  were  invited  to  accompa- 
ny Bonaparte  on  his  expedition  to  Egypt.  Cuvier  declined,  Geoffroy 
went.  There  he  was  one  of  the  members  of  the  scientific  commission 
that  explored  the  Delta,  and  of  the  Commission  of  Seven  for  the  or- 
ganization of  the  Institute  of  Egypt,  which  distinguished  itself  by  its 
archaeological  labors.  He  made  in  succession  journeys  through  the 
Delta,  to  Upper  Egypt,  and  to  the  Red  Sea.  After  his  return  from 
the  Cataracts,  at  the  end  of  1799,  he  established  himself  at  Suez,  and 
began  a  collection  of  the  fishes  of  the  Red  Sea. 

On  the  evacuation  of  Egypt  by  the  French,  the  scientific  party 
were  confined  to  Alexandria,  where,  amid  all  the  perils  of  the  siege, 
Geoffroy  continued  his  scientific  investigations  and  his  examinations  of 
the  electrical  fishes  of  the  Nile.  When  the  city  was  given  up,  no  res- 
ervation was  made  of  the  collections,  but  Geoffroy  managed  to  save 
them.  General  Hutchinson  demanded  a  strict  execution  of  the  terms 
of  surrender,  and  sent  Hamilton  to  enforce  them  upon  Geoff roy's 
treasures.  "  No,"  said  Geoffroy,  "  we  shall  not  obey  the  orders  ;  your 
army  can  not  get  in  here  for  two  days  :  we  will  take  that  time  to  bum 


4o6  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

our  cabinets,  and  then  you  can  do  with  our  persons  as  you  please. 
Yes,"  he  added,  to  the  astonished  officer,  "  we  shall  do  it.  You  are 
seeking  for  fame.  Depend  upon  it,  history  will  give  it  to  you,  for 
you  also  will  have  burned  an  Alexandrian  library."  These  bold  words 
were  reported  to  Hutchinson,  and  he  rescinded  the  order  for  seizing 
the  collections. 

Returning  to  France  in  1802  with  the  magnificent  zoological  and 
zootomical  collections  thus  literally  saved  from  the  fire,  Geoffroy  pro- 
ceeded to  classify  them  and  prepare  the  description  of  them  for  the 
grand  work  on  the  expedition  to  Egypt,  and  began  the  series  of  mono- 
graphs that  served  as  the  point  of  departure  and  as  supports  for  his 
system  of  natural  philosophy.  He  was  already  outlining  his  theory 
of  unity  of  composition,  in  memoirs  which,  aside  from  novelty  and 
elevation  of  ideas,  contained,  according  to  Cuvier,  "  facts  very  curious 
and  generally  new,  and  added  much  to  the  knowledge  of  naturalists 
and  anatomists  on  the  interior  organization  of  fishes."  These  memoirs 
secured  the  author's  admission  to  the  Academy  of  Sciences  in  Septem- 
ber, 1807. 

In  1808  Geoffroy  Saint-Hilaire  was  charged  with  a  scientific  mission 
to  Portugal,  then  occupied  by  a  French  army  under  Junot.  He  was 
exposed  to  many  perils  in  passing  through  Spain,  where  the  people 
were  restive  against  the  French  invasion,  and  was  held  a  prisoner  for 
several  months  at  Merida.  He  used  his  influence  with  Junot,  an  old 
comrade  of  his  in  Egypt,  to  make  the  condition  of  the  Portuguese 
more  easy  under  military  rule,  and  took  away  from  the  country  many 
cases  of  mineralogical  specimens,  plants,  and  animals,  including  Bra- 
zilian ones,  but  in  turn  enriched  the  museum  at  Lisbon  with  a  valu- 
able cabinet  of  minerals  from  Paris,  and  set  in  order  the  collections 
there,  which  had  hitherto  been  only  the  object  of  an  unintelligent  cu- 
riosity ;  and,  by  his  tact  and  reputation  for  a  general  benevolent  dis- 
position, he  managed  to  keep  what  he  had  acquired  from  Portugal 
when  the  French  were  obliged  to  give  up  everything  else  they  had 
taken  from  foreign  nations. 

In  1809  Geoffroy  was  appointed  Professor  of  Zoology  in  the  Fac- 
ulty of  Sciences  at  Paris,  and  toward  the  end  of  the  year  he  began  a 
course  of  instruction  which  was  destined  to  have  a  gr^at  influence 
upon  his  hearers  and  on  himself.  *'  From  this  moment,"  says  M.  Du- 
mas, "  his  thought,  sustained  by  the  respectful  attention  of  distin- 
guished pupils,  and  particularly  by  their  philosophical  studies,  sprang 
more  freely  into  the  fields  of  abstraction,  and  succeeded  in  fixing  those 
laws  of  organization  to  which  his  name  will  continue  to  be  always  at- 
tached, and  which  he  had  long  perceived.  Till  then  anatomical  phi- 
losophy, as  he  conceived  it,  had  no  existence  ;  it  was  with  us  and  for 
us  that  he  founded  that  doctrine,  endeavoring  every  year  to  overcome 
new  difficulties,  fortifying  his  convictions  with  new  proofs,  and  con- 
firming himself  in  his  views  by  their  success,  even  while  they  were  yet 


tTIENNE   G  EOF  FRO  Y  SAINT-HILAIRE.  407 

new."  Sickness  in  1812,  and  the  disasters  of  the  country  in  1813-14, 
interrupted  his  scientific  work.  In  1815  he  was  chosen  a  representative 
by  the  electors  of  Etampes,  and  performed  the  functions  of  his  office 
with  credit,  till  the  Restoration  put  an  end  to  them.  Restored  to  sci- 
ence, he  expounded  his  system  in  a  work  entitled  "  Philosophic  Ana- 
tomique  "  ("  Anatomical  Philosophy  "),  the  first  volume  of  which,  treat- 
ing of  the  respiratory  organs  and  skeletons  of  vertebrates,  appeared  in 
1818.  The  second  volume,  devoted  to  researches  on  human  monstrosi- 
ties, was  published  in  1822.  The  dominant  feature  of  these  two  vol- 
umes was  the  principle  of  unity  of  composition.  This  principle  was 
not  entirely  new  to  science.  It  had  been  glanced  at  by  Aristotle, 
Pierre  Belon,  Newton,  Buffon,  and  Yicq-d'Azyr  ;  but  it  remained  for 
Geoffroy  Saint-Hilaire  to  create  a  theory  embodying  the  views  which 
they  had  only  mentioned  sporadically. 

Previous  to  him,  naturalists,  giving  more  particular  attention  to 
human  anatomy,  recognizing  only  forms,  and  regarding  each  new  form 
as  a  new  organ,  had  multiplied  details  infinitely  without  discovering 
any  general  law.  "  The  first  step  toward  rising  to  the  ideal  type  of 
a  vertebrate  animal,"  says  M.  Flourens,  in  his  eulogy  before  the  Acad- 
emy, "  was  to  get  free  from  every  preconception  in  favor  of  human 
anatomy,  as  the  only  means  of  being  able  to  regard  the  organs  under 
their  more  general  conditions,  aside  from  the  merely  relative  consider- 
ations of  form,  volume,  and  use."  Geoffroy  was  convinced  that  iden- 
tities can  bear  only  upon  relations,  and  had  in  this  rule,  which  he 
called  the  principle  of  connections,  an  infallible  guide  through  all 
metamorphoses,  capable  of  unmasking  the  most  strangely  disguised 
affinities.  Thus,  whenever  two  parts  agreed  in  having  similar  relations 
and  dependencies,  they  were  analogous.  With  this  precept,  Geoffroy 
was  able  to  declare  that  the  materials  found  in  one  family  exist  in  all 
the  others,  and  to  proclaim  his  law  of  unity  as  a  law  of  nature.  In  his 
second  volume  he  extended  the  application  of  his  principle  to  the  for- 
mations called  monstrosities,  which  he  declared  were  not  original 
anomalies,  but  simply  cases  of  abnormal  or  of  incomplete  development 
of  some  particular  part. 

As  long  as  the  principle  of  unity  was  applied  simply  to  vertebrates 
it  was  incontestable,  and  excited  no  contradiction  ;  but  when  Geoffroy 
Saint-Hilaire  began  to  extend  it  to  invertebrates  he  encountered  a  vig- 
orous adversary  in  Cuvier,  whose  work  it  had  been  to  emphasize  the  dis- 
tinctions between  the  groups  which  his  former  patron  was  trying  to  re- 
duce to  unity.  When  Geoffroy,  in  1820,  brought  the  articulates  under 
his  general  type,  Cuvier  uttered  words  of  impatience  and  disapproval ; 
but,  when  in  1830  he  proposed  to  include  the  mollusks,  the  long  latent 
contention  broke  out.  "  Never,"  says  M.  Flourens,  *'  did  a  more  vital 
controversy  divide  adversaries  more  resolute,  more  firm,  or  who  had 
by  long  preparation  provided  themselves  with  more  resources  for  the 
combat,  and  (if  I  may  say  it)  more  learnedly  prepared  not  to  agree." 


4o8  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

The  division  spread  and  extended  to  all  countries  where  any  thought 
was  given  to  the  subjects  under  debate.  Geoffroy  was  highly  ap- 
plauded by  Goethe,  who  declared  the  discussion  a  very  important  one 
for  science,  and  made  it  the  subject  of  the  last  lines  he  ever  wrote. 
The  controversy  was  resumed  in  1832,  and  terminated  only  with  the 
death  of  Cuvier.  Geoffroy  sometimes  appeared  overcome  by  the 
ability  and  brilliancy  of  his  antagonist,  but  he  never  gave  up,  and 
time  has  rendered  its  verdict  that,  on  the  essential  points,  he  was  not 
in  the  wrong. 

The  Revolution  of  July  occurred  in  the  midst  of  the  discussions  in 
the  Academy,  and  Geoffroy,  who  sympathized  with  the  popular  move- 
ment, again  distinguished  himself,  as  he  had  done  in  the  previous 
Revolution,  by  an  act  of  hospitality  to  the  clergy,  in  giving  shelter  to 
the  Archbishop  of  Paris,  who  was  in  danger  of  violence. 

When  Cuvier  died,  every  one  hastened  to  sound  the  praises  of 
the  genius  of  the  great  anatomist.  Geoffroy  ventured  upon  a  criticism 
of  his  views  on  fossil  remains  and  regarding  the  revolutions  of  the 
globe,  and  was  accused  of  attacking  the  fame  of  his  late  antagonist. 
Deeply  wounded  at  so  unjust  an  imputation,  he  gave  up  the  work  that 
had  provoked  it,  saying  :  "It  would  perhaps  be  best  to  have  courage 
or  wisdom  enough  to  pay  no  attention  to  such  objections.  But  the 
question  now  concerns  one  of  the  glories  of  France,  the  first  zoologist 
of  our  age.  It  is  for  posterity,  if  it  deigns  to  concern  itself  with  the 
strifes  of  this  period,  to  do  justice  to  my  adversaries  and  myself." 
He  was  stricken  with  blindness  in  July,  1840,  and  with  paralysis  a  few 
months  afterward.  He  endured  the  infirmities  of  old  age  with  great 
resignation,  and  preserved  to  the  last  the  serenity  of  a  good  man  and 
a  great  mind — or,  as  Edgar  Quinet  remarks  of  him,  "  he  approached 
unveiled  truth  with  a  cheerful  face,  and  descended  without  fear  into 
eternal  knowledge." 

The  list  of  the  works  of  Geoffroy  Saint-Hilaire  would  be  a  very 
full  one  if  all  were  included.  Besides  the  larger  works  which  he  com- 
posed, or  in  the  composition  of  which  he  was  associated,  the  catalogue 
of  the  principal  only  of  the  papers  he  presented  to  learned  societies 
occupies  a  full  page  in  the  "Biographic  Generale."  His  most  im- 
portant publications  are  the  "Philosophic  Anatomique  "  (2  vols.,  1818- 
1820),  which  contains  the  exposition  of  his  theory  ;  "  Principles  de  la 
Philosophic  Zoologique "  ("Principles  of  Zoological  Philosophy," 
1830),  which  gives  a  synopsis  of  his  discussions  with  Cuvier  ;  "  ^fitudes 
Progressives  d'un  Naturalist "  ("  Progressive  Studies  of  a  Xaturalist," 
1835) ;  "  Notions  de  Philosophic  Naturelle  "  ("  Ideas  of  Natural  Phi- 
losophy," 1835)  ;  and,  in  conjunction  with  Frederic  Cuvier,  "  Histoire 
Naturel  des  Mammiferes,"  ("  Natural  History  of  Mammals,"  3  vols., 
1820-1842).  Among  the  best  works  about  him  are  the  "  Life,"  by  his 
son  Isidore  ;  the  "  Eulogy,"  by  M.  Flourens  ;  and  a  sketch  in  the  ap- 
pendix to  De  Quatrefages's  "  Rambles  of  a  Naturalist." 


CORRESP  ONDENCE, 


409 


CORIIESPONDENOE. 


SCIENCE    m  CLA.SSICAL  SCHOOLS. 
Messrs.  Editors : 

PROFESSOR  COOKE,  in  his  remarks  on 
"  The  Greek  Question,"  does  injustice  to 
the  best  classical  schools  in  express  terms, 
and  his  statements  ought  not  to  pass  unchal- 
lenged. Classical  culture  as  preparatory  for 
any  of  the  "  learned  "  professions,  literary  or 
scientific,  needs  no  defense.  But  Professor 
Cooke,  if  he  knew  the  facts,  should  not 
have  held  up  foreign  universities  as  wholly 
successful  in  the  change  he  proposes.  He 
should  not  have  said  that  *'  among  others 
the  University  of  Berlin,  which  stands  in 
the  very  front  rank,  has  already  conceded, 
to  what  we  may  call  the  new  culture,  all 
that  can  reasonably  be  asked."  Is  it  not 
true  that  these  concessions  were  made 
against  the  unanimous  protest  of  all  the 
faculties ;  that,  after  earnest  comparison  of 
the  progress  of  scholars  from  the  Real- 
schulen  and  the  Gymnasia,  the  scientific 
professors  are  unanimous  in  their  demand 
that  classical  training  shall  be  restored  even 
for  those  intending  to  enter  scientific  pro- 
fessions ? 

Professor  Cooke,  mentioning  by  name 
certain  well-known  classical  schools,  tells 
U3  that  "  the  attempt  to  introduce  some  sci- 
ence requisitions  into  the  admission  exami- 


nations has  been   an  utter   failun 


that 


*'  the  science  requisitions  have  been  simply 
crammed,  and  the  result  has  been  worse 
than  useless  "  ;  that  "  it  has,  in  most  cases, 
given  a  distaste  for  the  whole  subject"; 
that  "true  science-teaching  is  utterly  for- 
eign to  all  their  methods  "  ;  that  "the  small 
amount  of  study  of  natural  science  which 
we  have  forced  upon  them  has  proved  to 
be  a  wretched  failure,  and  the  sooner  this 
hindrance  is  got  out  of  their  way  the  bet- 
ter " ;  that  it  is  hopeless  to  look  for  any 
change  in  the  classical  schools.  These  are 
heavy  charges,  if  true ;  but  do  they  repre- 
sent the  facts  ? 

Harvard  College  was  among  the  first  to 
shake  off  old  methods,  and  to  introduce  a 
system  of  examinations  which  should  dis- 
tinguish between  those  applicants  who  had 
been  crammed  and  those  who  had  been 
taught.  Her  professors  have  showed  them- 
selves able  to  set  papers  in  all  branches, 
which  proved  those  admitted  worthy  to  join 
her  classes.  Professor  Cooke  would  prob- 
ably not  admit  that  his  colleagues  in  the 
scientific  departments  have  been  behind 
their  classical  associates  in  this  respect. 
What,  then,  has  been  the  record  of  the 
Roxbury  Latin  School  in  the  six  years  that 


boys  have  been  presented  in  Physics? 
Though  every  boy  has  been  allowed  to  try 
the  examinations  in  Physics,  even  if  we 
judged  him  deficient,  only  two  have  been 
rejected  out  of  above  eighty  presented.  In 
one  year,  out  of  fifteen  boys  presented,  six- 
teen honors  were  taken  in  subjects  purely 
scientific,  viz.,  seven  in  Prescribed  Mathe- 
matics, two  in  Prescribed  Physics,  one  in 
Prescribed  and  Elective  Physics,  and  six  in 
French. 

It  is  certain  that  many  of  those  eighty 
boys  have  not  been  crammed,  and  that  few 
of  them  have  gained  "a  distaste  for  the 
whole  subject."  For,  though  the  time  for 
the  subject  has  been  limited,  and  the  appa- 
ratus meager,  I  have  seen  them  eagerly 
making  apparatus  to  illustrate  their  lessons, 
and  discussing,  at  every  opportunity,  dis- 
puted points.  In  one  instance  three  boys 
worked  for  weeks  on  a  machine  to  prove 
their  teacher  in  the  wrong,  while  nearly  the 
whole  class  enthusiastically  supported  their 
mates  with  sincere  but  mistaken  conviction. 

Perhaps  one  ought  to  speak  modestly 
about  true  science-teaching  being  foreign 
to  all  his  methods,  but  I  will  say  that  the 
trustees,  taking  advantage  of  a  sHght  change 
made  necessary  by  the  rejection  of  Arnott 
as  a  standard  of  preparation,  and  of  a  fine 
addition  to  our  building,  have  fitted  up  a 
working  laboratory  for  our  physics,  and 
have  furnished  suitable  apparatus.  Then 
every  boy  of  my  present  class,  aided  only 
by  a  paper  giving  directions  for  manipula- 
tion, is  performing  every  experiment  for 
himself,  is  putting  his  questions  to  Nature, 
recording  and  interpreting  the  phenomena 
observed. 

We  do  not  regard  the  study  of  science 
as  forced  upon  us.  For  years  before  any 
science  was  required  a  good  portion  of  two 
years  was  given,  and  still  is  given,  to  the 
study  of  botany,  though  our  boys  are  not 
presented  in  that  subject.  And  the  authori- 
ties of  this  school  are  so  thoroughly  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  advancement  of  science 
that,  whether  physics  shall  be  required  by 
Harvard  or  not,  more  and  not  less  time  is 
likely  to  be  given  to  its  study  in  the  future. 

With  centuries  of  testimony  for  the 
"  old  classical  culture,"  testimony  unshaken 
by  repeated  assaults,  of  course  the  social 
prestige  of  our  classical  schools  and  univer- 
sities holds  its  own.  Of  course,  parents 
wish  their  sons  fitted  for  and  trained  by 
classical  colleges.  Of  course,  "nine,  at 
least,  out  of  every  ten,  offer  maximums  in 
classics,"  and  continue  as  they  have  begun. 


410 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


But,  when  Harvard  is  ready  to  remove 
Greek  from  the  list  of  prescribed  subjects, 
I  believe  that  many  classical  schools  will  be 
found  liberal  enough  to  give  pupils  every 
opportunity  to  replace  its  study  with  Ger- 
man, mathematics,  and  science,  taught  by 
men  both  competent  and  sincere. 

George  F.  Forbes, 
Master  in  Roxbury  Latin  School. 
EoxBUBT,  Mass.,  November  14, 18S3. 


THE  HOME-MADE  TELESCOPE. 
Messrs.  Editors : 

While  reading  the  very  useful  article  in 
the  November  issue  of  the  "  Monthly,"  by 
Dr.  George  Pyburn,  on  "A  Home-made 
Telescope,"  it  occurred  to  me  that  my  own 
experience  in  that  direction,  not  covered  by 
Dr.  Pyburn's  article,  might  prove  acceptable 
to  some  of  your  readers.  In  constructing 
my  telescope  I  made  the  tube  of  paper  and 
paste  substantially  as  described  by  Dr.  Py- 
burn, finishing  with  shellac-varnish  as  a 
protection  against  moisture.  The  three-inch 
object-glass  cost  about  twenty-five  dollars, 
which  is  nearly  the  total  outlay  for  the  in- 
strument, as  I  use  for  eye-pieces  those  be- 
longing to  my  microscope.  As  these  range 
from  a  two-inch  to  a  four-inch,  I  get  a  fair 
astronomical  telescope  with  ]Dovvers  from 
twenty-five  to  two  hundred  diameters,  af- 
fording satisfactory  views  of  the  more  in- 
teresting celestial  objects.  For  viewing  the 
sun,  a  light  box  open  on  one  side  is  at- 
tached to  the  tube,  containing  a  sheet  of 
white  paper  on  which  the  image  of  the  sun 
is  received  at  a  distance  of  nine  or  ten  inches 
from  the  eye-piece.  The  stand  is  unskill- 
fully  constructed  of  wood,  but,  as  the  instru- 
ment is  supported  at  two  points,  it  is  steady. 
It  is  of  convenient  height  for  an  observer  in 
a  sitting  posture,  the  object-end  of  the  tele- 
scope being  made  to  swing.  When  in  use 
the  telescope  is  strapped  in  a  kind  of  long 
trough  made  by  nailing  two  strips  of  boards 
together.  This  support  is  bolted  at  the  end 
next  the  observer  to  an  axle  having  a  ver- 
tical motion.  It  has  a  horizontal  motion  on 
the  bolt.  The  end  of  the  support  toward 
the  object  is  given  a  vertical  motion  from 
horizontal  to  perpendicular  by  a  lever  run- 
ning throuah  a  mortice  in  the  stand,  and 
working  on  a  pin  in  the  mortice.  A  rod 
jointed  on  tlie  lower  end  of  the  lever  is  al- 
ways in  reach  of  the  observer  with  which  to 
manipulate  it.  The  top  of  the  lever  is  fitted 
with  a  long  horizontal  roller,  on  which  a 
roller  placed  under  the  telescope  -  support 
rests  at  right  angles.  The  rollers  crossing 
each  other  at  right  angles,  smooth  and 
steady  motion  is  had  both  vertically  and 
horizontally.  Such  a  stand  may  be  made  in 
a  day.  George  W.  Morehouse. 

Watland,  New  York,  October  23, 1SS3. 


INSECTS  AS  CAEEIEES  OF  DISEASE. 
Messrs.  Editors : 

Although  not  prepared  to  accept  en- 
tirely the  theory  so  ably  presented  by  Dr. 
King,  in  the  September  number  of  your 
magazine,  as  to  the  mosquital  origin  of  ma- 
laria, I  believe  in  the  power  of  insects  to 
transmit  and  disseminate  infectious  diseases. 
The  active  agency  of  mosquitoes  and  other 
insects  in  the  spread  of  yellow  fever  has 
never  been  fully  appreciated,  and  it  is  to  be 
hoped  that  the  attention  of  the  boards  of 
health  in  the  localities  liable  to  this  terrible 
scourge  will  be  directed  to  this  source  of 
danger,  and  that  they  will  establish  cordons 
of  fires  as  well  as  men  around  infected  dis- 
tricts. However,  my  object  in  writing  this 
is  merely  to  add  further  testimony  as  to  the 
fact  of  insects  carrying  disease. 

The  interior  counties  of  the  Southern 
States  are  infested  by  a  minute  fly,  a  lit- 
tle larger  than  the  sand-fly  of  the  coast, 
but  without  the  sting  of  the  latter.  They 
are  called  gnats  or  black  gnats,  and  are 
exceedingly  troublesome,  from  their  habit 
of  flying  into  the  cars  and  eyes  of  both 
men  and  animals.  They  also  gather  upon 
any  running  sore  or  abrasion  of  the  skin, 
and,  though  they  do  not  bite  or  sting,  they 
are  very  irritating.  When  they  get  into 
the  eye  they  cause  a  very  sharp  pain,  and, 
though  immediately  killed  by  the  secre- 
tions, the  eye  feels  the  effects  for  some 
hours  after.  It  has  been  observed  that 
during  the  seasons  when  these  gnats  are 
most  plentiful  the  disease  known  as  sore- 
eyes  is  most  common  and  severe. 

Not  being  a  physician,  I  do  not  know 
the  name  of  the  disease,  but  it  is  very  con- 
tagious, and  usually  affects  an  entire  family 
when  once  introduced  into  it.  The  lids  of 
the  eye  become  irritated  and  swollen,  and  the 
entire  ball  is  red  and  inflamed.  Some  per- 
sons have  lost  the  sight  of  one  or  both  eyes 
from  it,  and  its  effects  are  felt  for  months 
after  recovery.  The  intimate  relation  ex- 
isting between  this  disease  and  the  gnats  is 
so  well  recognized  that  the  negroes  say  it  is 
caused  by  the  gnats  laying  their  eggs  in  the 
eye.  This,  of  course,  is  improbable,  but 
points  clearly  to  them  as  the  real  cause  in 
some  way.  I  do  not  think  the  irritation 
arising  from  their  getting  into  the  eye  is 
the  origin  of  the  trouble,  because  the  dis- 
ease does  not  always  or  even  generally  fol- 
low as  a  matter  of  course  ;  but  I  do  think 
that  the  germs  are  carried  upon  the  legs  or 
wings  of  the  gnats,  and  that,  when  one  so 
charged  touches  or  gets  into  the  eye,  the 
germ  or  bacteria  is  deposited,  and  from  that 
the  disease  is  developed.  • 

Of  course,  there  are  other  ways  of  trans- 
mitting the  disease,  but  the  most  active 
agent  is  undoubtedly  the  gnat,  since  after 
it  disappears  the  disease  ceases  to  spread, 
and  gradually  loses  its  character  as  an  epi- 


CORRESP  ONDENCE, 


411 


demic.  If  through  your  published  articles 
intelligent  observation  is  directed  toward 
the  dangers  inherent  in  our  insect  pests, 
and  means  are  discovered  to  avert  them, 
you  will  deserve  the  undying  gratitude  of 
suffering  humanity. 

Respectfully,     A.  G.  Boardman. 
Macon,  Geobgia,  September  22,  18S3. 


TIDAL  ANOMALIES. 

Messrs.  Editors : 

Professor  R.  W.  McFarland  ("  Popular 
Science  Monthly,"  volume  xii,  page  106), 
after  demonstrating,  as  a  result  of  Professor 
Schneider's  theory,  a  great  inequality  in  the 
daily  range  of  the  tides,  confidently  asks, 
"  Do  your  New  York  tides  play  such  tricks  ?  " 

However  it  may  be  with  the  New  York 
tides  I  will  not  undertake  to  say,  but  there 
are  numerous  localities  upon  the  globe  where 
the  tides  do  play  such  or  at  least  similar 
"  tricks,"  seemingly  at  variance  with  estab- 
lished theories,  and  in  some  places  these 
"tricks"  appear  to  be  contrary  to  all  our 
preconceived  notions  of  hydrodynamics. 
Thus,  at  the  entrances  of  the  various  United 
States  ports  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  the  tides 
either  exhibit  a  great  inequality  in  their 
daily  range,  or  but  one  flood  and  ebb  tide 
occurs  in  the  course  of  the  twenty-five  hours 
usually  occupied  by  the  two  tides.  The  one- 
tide  phenomenon  is  again  met  with  among 
the  Philippine  Islands ;  while  tides  exhib- 
iting considerable  daily  inequality  in  their 
range  are  met  with  in  numerous  other  places. 

That  part  of  the  St.  George's  Channel 
called  the  Irish  Sea  included  between  the 
fifty-third  and  fifty-fifth  parallel  of  latitude 
contains  a  body  of  water  covering  an  area  of 
about  ten  thousand  square  miles,  inclosed 
on  all  sides,  except  at  the  two  entrances, 
north  and  south  of  Ireland.  Throughout 
this  entire  body  of  water  the  time  of  high 
water  is  nearly  simultaneous,  the  difference 
nowhere  exceeding  an  hour.  Here  the  aver- 
age mean  range  of  the  tides  is  not  less,  prob- 
ably, than  twenty  feet.  The  water  to  sup- 
ply and  exhaust  this  broad  area  of  unusually 
large  range  of  tides  has  to  pass  in  and  out 
at  the  two  entrances  simultaneously  with 
the  rise  and  fall  of  the  water  in  the  Irish  Sea. 

Now,  the  puzzling  thing  about  these  tides 
is,  owing  to  the  time  of  high  water  at  the 
two  entrances  being  about  five  hours  earlier 
than  in  the  Irish  Sea,  at  least  two  thirds  of 
all  this  water  passing  in  and  out  of  the  St. 
George's  Channel  has  the  appearance  of 
running  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  level. 
Here  the  tides  exhibit  another  curious  freak 
in  the  distribution  of  their  range.  On  the 
east  coast  of  Ireland,  between  Wexford  and 
Wicklow  Head,  for  some  distance  there  arc 
no  rise  and  fall  to  the  tides  ;  while  directly 
on  the  opposite  side  of  the  channel,  on  the 
coast  of  Wales,  the  mean  range  is  not  less 
than  fifteen  feet. 


But  this  anomaly  of  the  water  appar- 
ently running  up-hill,  as  exhibited  by  the 
tides,  will  be  found  more  clearly  marked  at 
the  Strait  of  Gibraltar,  where  the  motion  of 
the  tidal  wave  is  easterly,  and  the  easterly 
tidal  stream  begins  at  high  water,  and  the 
westerly  tidal  stream  begins  at  low  water. 
The  same  phenomenon  is  met  with  again 
at  the  Strait  of  San  Bernardino,  Philippine 
Islands,  and  also  on  our  own  coast,  in  Mar- 
tha's Vineyard  Sound,  where  the  motion  of 
the  tidal  wave  is  westerly,  and  the  westerly 
tidal  stream  begins  at  high  water.  At  Cook's 
Strait,  New  Zealand,  the  motion  of  the  tidal 
wave  is  westerly,  and  the  westerly  stream 
begins  at  half  flood. 

These  are  only  a  few  of  the  more  clearly 
marked  of  the  many  anomalies  that  have 
come  under  my  observation  while  endeav- 
oring, as  a  navigator,  to  make  myself  ac- 
quainted with  the  concrete  phenomena  of 
the  tides. 

In  the  absence  of  a  better  explanation 
of  these  anomalies,  I  offer  the  following  hy- 
pothesis :  77iat  the  established  theory  of  the 
tides  is  substantially  connect ;  but,  that  the 
primary  tidal  wave  i<i  in  the  liquid  portion  of 
the  earth  beneath  the  solid  {though  to  a  greater 
or  less  extent  flexible)  crust ;  and  that  the 
tidal  phenomenon  as  it  reveals  itself  to  us  is 
a  secondary  tidal.,  undulaiory  motion,  deriv- 
ing its  impulse  from,  and  is  complicated  by, 
the  variable  flexibility  of  the  solid  crust  be- 
tween the  two  liquid  portions  of  the  earth. 

George  W.  Grim  (Bark  Coryphene). 
Yokouama,  Japan. 


ELEPHANTS'   TEICK8. 

Ifessrs.  Editors: 

The  following  extract  from  an  old  edi- 
tion of  the  "  Arabian  Nights  "  (Edinburgh, 
1772),  may  be  of  interest,  showing  as  it 
does  that  at  an  early  date  elephants  were 
trained  to  perform  tricks  which  excite  the 
curiosity  if  not  the  wonder  of  the  spectators 
in  the  modern  shows.  It  is  from  the  story  of 
"  Prince  Ahmed  and  the  Fairy  Pari-Banou  " : 

"  But  what  the  Prince  Houssain  most  of 
all  admired  was  the  ingenious  address  and 
invention  of  some  Indians,  to  make  a  large 
elephant  stand  with  his  four  feet  on  a  post 
which  was  fixed  into  the  earth,  and  stood 
out  of  it  above  two  feet,  and  beat  time  with 
his  trunk  to  the  music.  Beside  this  there 
was  another  elephant  as  big  as  this  and  no 
less  surprising;  which  being  set  upon  a 
board  which  was  laid  across  a  strong  rail 
about  ten  feet  high,  with  a  great  weight  at 
the  other  end  which  balanced  him,  kept  time 
by  the  motions  of  his  body  and  trunk  as 
well  as  the  other  elephant,  and  both  in  the 
presence  of  the  king  and  his  whole  court." 

When  this  story  was  written  I  do  not 
know,  as  this  edition  gives  no  notes  as  to 
the  original  sources  of  the  stories. 

Respectfully,       Davis  L.  James. 
Cincinnati,  October  6,  1SS3. 


412 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


EDITOR'S    TABLE. 


'^  CEUBCH-AKD-STATE''  FUNCTION  OF 
DEAD  LANGUAGES. 

THE  partisans  of  classical  studies 
had  a  Godsend  a  couple  of  years 
ago,  in  the  shape  of  a  report  emanat- 
ing from  the  professors  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  Berlin,  and  corroborated  by  the 
action  of  other  universities,  which  it 
was  claimed  ended  the  controversy  on 
the  question  of  modern  against  classical 
studies.  It  was  represented  that  the 
Germans  had  tried  out  the  issue  in  the 
fairest  way,  and  on  an  extensive  scale. 
They  had  two  systems  of  schools  which 
prepared  young  men  for  the  universities 
— one  the  gymnasiums,  devoted  mainly 
to  classical  studies ;  and  the  other  the 
real  schools,  modern  in  origin,  and  de- 
voted chiefly  to  modern  and  scientific 
studies :  and  it  was  said  that,  after  an 
ample  trial  of  the  two  modes  of  mental 
preparation,  the  unanimous  verdict  of 
the  faculty,  including  the  scientific  pro- 
fessors, was  in  favor  of  the  classical 
preparation  as  superior  to  the  scientific 
preparation  of  the  young  men.  The 
statement  as  it  appeared  was  very  tell- 
ing. The  New  York  "  Evening  Post  " 
gave  an  account  of  the  report  soon  aft- 
er its  appearance,  and  said :  "  It  will 
hardly  fail  to  be  regarded  as  the  most 
powerful  plea  ever  made  in  behalf  of 
classical  studies,"  and  Mr.  Charles  Fran- 
cis Adams,  Jr.,  has  been  reproached 
from  all  the  classical  quarters  for  ven- 
turing to  open  his  mouth  in  criticism 
of  our  dead-language  studies  after  the 
German  universities  had  given  to  the 
world  their  conclusive  jutlgment  upon 
the  question. 

We  confess  to  having  had  no  little 
distrust  of  the  case  as  it  was  thus  pre- 
sented. It  was  sufliciently  obvious  at 
the  time  that  we  were  not  in  possession 
of  all  the  facts  necessary  to  form  an 
intelligent  opinion  on  its  merits.  We 
know  enough  of  the  spirit  and  tactics 


of  the  classical  party,  in  this  country 
and  in  England,  to  justify  some  suspi- 
cion of  the  impartiality  of  their  proceed- 
ings in  Germany,  and  we  accordingly 
deferred  any  discussion  of  the  Berlin' 
report  until  more  information  should 
become  available  for  the  purpose.  Many 
questions  arose  of  decisive  significance 
to  which  answers  could  not  be  obtained, 
and  it  seemed  futile  to  debate  a  ques- 
tion while  in  the  dark  regarding  its 
most  important  conditions. 

But  the  information  wanted  is  now 
forthcoming,  and  it  well  pays  for  wait- 
ing. An  American  gentleman,  both  in- 
terested in  the  subject  and  very  com- 
petent to  investigate  it,  himself  a  culti- 
vated classical  scholar  and  educated  in 
Germany,  has  made  the  subject  a  mat- 
ter of  special  and  careful  inquiry,  and 
gives  the  result  in  the  opening  article 
of  the  present  "Monthly."  He  has  been 
in  Germany  during  the  past  year,  ex- 
pressly to  study  certain  aspects  of  its 
university  system,  and  has  visited  a  large 
number  of  its  great  educational  institu- 
tions, and  conversed  with  many  of  the 
professors  in  relation  to  the  nature  and 
actual  significance  of  the  real-school 
controversy,  and  the  action  that  has 
been  taken  upon  the  subject.  The  Ber- 
lin report  is  also  itself  published  in 
English  by  Ginn  &  Heath,  of  Boston, 
so  that  both  sides  of  the  case  are  now 
open  to  all  who  care  about  the  ques- 
tion. Those  who  read  the  paper  of  Pro- 
fessor, James — and  none  can  aflford  to 
pass  it  by — will  find  that  the  uses  to 
which  that  report  has  been  put  in  this 
country  are  entirely  unjustifiable.  It 
turns  out,  as  we  suspected,  that  there 
is  a  good  deal  more  to  be  taken  into 
consideration  than  has  been  represent- 
ed, and  that  the  German  document  is  a 
thoroughly  one-sided  affair. 

We  have  to  remember,  in  the  first 
place,  that  partisanship  on  this  question 


EDITOR'S   TABLE, 


413 


runs  very  high  in  Germany,  and  that 
the  reports  against  the  real  schools  were 
all  written  by  prejudiced  classical  ex- 
tremists. It  turns  out,  moreover,  that 
the  whole  question  was  decided  upon  in 
advance,  and  with  the  greatest  empha- 
sis, before  the  experiment  had  been  tried 
to  test  the  preparation  of  the  real- 
school  graduates,  and  that  from  the  out- 
set the  problem  was  not  that  of  the 
progressive  principles  of  higher  educa- 
tion, as  we  understand  it  in  this  coun- 
try, but  a  question  of  national  politics 
in  relation  to  the  policy  of  the  univer- 
sities. The  historic  ascendency  of  dead 
languages,  as  against  the  rising  claims 
of  science,  is  to  be  maintained  in  Ger- 
many for  state  reasons.  This  is  no 
mere  inference,  but  the  bluntly  de- 
clared position.  When  the  matter  was 
first  broached,  in  1869,  of  admitting 
the  real  -  school  graduates  to  the  uni- 
versities, the  Philosophical  Faculty  of 
the  Berlin  University  protested  ve- 
hemently against  the  contemplated  ac- 
tion on  the  grounds  here  stated.  They 
said:  "While  the  university  has  no 
reason  to  withhold  its  advantages,  it 
must  not,  in  its  desire  to  make  the 
higher  education  accessible  to  the  great- 
est possible  number,  forget  its  peculiar 
purpose  and  its  historical  task.  Its  du- 
ty is  to  fit  the  youth  for  the  service  of 
state  and  church."  Again:  "The  fac- 
ulty are  compelled  ...  to  utter  a  warn- 
ing against  the  surrender  of  that  which 
has  been  till  now  the  common  basis  of 
training  of  all  the  higher  public  func- 
tionaries, and  which,  if  it  be  once  given 
up,  can  never  be  regained."  And  still 
further:  "The  Philosophical  Faculty  can 
not  give  their  consent  to  such  a  move- 
ment. They  are  convinced  that  no  suf- 
ficient compensation  is  given  in  the  real- 
schule  for  tlie  lack  of  classical  educa- 
tion. They  fear  that  so  decided  a  low- 
ering of  standards  would  be  accompanied 
by  weighty  consequences,  especially  in 
such  a  state  as  Prussia."  And  finally, 
"The  faculty,  therefore,  believe  they 
owe  it  to  the  university  and  to  the 
state  to  declare  themselves  in  the  most 


positive  manner  against  a  more  exten- 
sive admission  of  Eealsch tiler." 

These  statements  give  us  the  key  of 
the  celebrated  "  Berlin  Report."  A  des- 
potic paternal  government  has  church- 
and-state  reasons  for  maintaining  a 
dead-language  culture  as  a  national  pol- 
icy. The  whole  vast  machinery  of  edu- 
cation in  that  empire  is  run  in  subor- 
dination to  the  ideal  of  government — 
a  military  despotism,  and,  to  discipline 
a  community  into  thorough  subjection 
to  this  ideal,  centuries  of  history  prove 
that  there  is  nothing  equal  to  the  dead 
languages  and  classical  studies.  Hence 
the  traditions  must  be  maintained  in 
their  full  rigor,  the  existing  faculties 
must  not  be  divided,  science  must  not 
be  suffered  to  take  a  coequal  place  with 
the  other  faculties,  or  to  become  an  in- 
dependent power  in  the  universities; 
in  short,  no  rival  system  of  organized 
higher  education,  based  upon  modern 
ideas,  must  be  tolerated. 

The  whole  question  was  thus  pre- 
judged and  predetermined,  and  no  ex- 
periment that  could  possibly  be  made 
under  the  Bismarckian  regime  would  be 
allowed  to  disturb  the  foregone  church- 
and-state  conclusion  of  the  Berlin  Philo- 
sophical Faculty.  The  real-school  grad- 
uates were,  however,  admitted  to  the 
university,  and  after  ten  years  it  was, 
of  course,  reported  by  the  same  faculty 
that  the  policy  pronounced  bad  at  the 
outset  was  bad  at  the  end.  The  real- 
school  graduates  were  declared  failures, 
as  they  must  have  been  failures  by  the 
church  -  and  -  state  standards  assumed, 
whatever  their  proficiency.  That  the 
teaching  in  the  real  schools  was  inferior 
to  that  in  the  gymnasiums  was  allowed 
no  weight;  that  the  gymnasiums  were 
pets  of  the  Government  and  the  real 
schools  neglected  was  of  no  importance, 
that  the  brightest  youths  and  the  best 
stock  of  Germany  crowded  into  the 
gymnasiums,  leaving  the  lower  grades 
to  tlie  real  schools,  amounted  to  noth- 
ing; and  that  the  system  of  study  in 
the  real  schools  had  not  been  shaped  as  a 
preparation  for  higher  university  work, 


414 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


as  was  the  fact  with  the  gymnasiums, 
counted  for  naught.  It  was  only  said 
that  the  graduates  of  the  gymnasiums 
beat  the  graduates  of  the  real  schools, 
when  tested  side  by  side  in  the  university. 
We  venture  to  think  that  "  the  most 
powerful  plea  ever  made  in  behalf  of 
classical  studies,"  when  viewed  in  the 
light  of  Professor  James's  exposition, 
will  be  seen  to  disclose  the  customary 
weakness  of  all  the  defenses  of  the 
classical  superstition,  besides  being  for 
imperative  considerations  wholly  inap- 
plicable in  this  country. 


LEARNING  ONE  LANGUAGE  BY  STUDY- 
ING  OTHERS. 

TnAT  fine  classical  scholar,  and  ac- 
complished master  of  both  prose  and 
poetic  English,  Walter  Savage  Landor, 
in  his  "  Letters  to  an  Author,"  observed, 
"  If  we  wish  to  write  well,  we  must  keep 
our  Greek  and  Latin  out  of  sight."  We 
shall  not  undertake  to  say  what  or  how 
much  Landor  meant  by  this  remark, 
but  he  could  not  have  signified  less  than 
that  the  influence  of  those  dead  lan- 
guages may  be  bad  upon  an  author  who 
strives  to  attain  a  high  standard  in  his 
native  tongue.  The  implication  is  that 
the  vernacular  must  be  itself  and  inde- 
pendently cultivated  without  interfer- 
ence from  foreign  influences.  Obvious- 
ly skill  and  perfection  in  any  art  can 
only  come  from  careful  study  and  pa- 
tient practice  of  that  art,  and  not  by 
studying  any  other  art.  The  ac(iuire- 
ment  of  a  language  for  its  highest  pur- 
poses, to  become  a  powerful  and  perfect 
instrument  for  the  expression  of  thought 
in  any  of  the  nobler  forms  of  literature, 
is  the  most  transcendent  of  the  arts,  and 
the  utmost  excellence  in  it  is  not  to  be 
achieved  through  the  study  of  anoth- 
er language.  Genius,  perseverance,  and 
an  everlasting  apprenticeship  are  re- 
quired to  develop  even  partially  the  re- 
sources of  any  vernacular  tongue,  and, 
by  the  laws  of  all  human  effort  and  hu- 
man success,  there  must  be  undivided 
concentration  upon  the  instrument  to 
be  mastered.     The  Greeks,  as  we  have 


before  had  occasion  to  state,  were  shut 
up  to  this  condition,  and,  by  not  scatter- 
ing their  eff'orts  upon  other  languages, 
carried  their  own  to  a  high  degree  of 
perfection.  But  in  these  times,  when 
there  is  such  a  passion  to  become  fa- 
miliar with  many  languages,  there  is  a 
corresponding  neglect  of  the  vernacular, 
and  no  end  of  crude,  incompetent  writ- 
ing is  the  result.  We  are  told  perpet- 
ually that  perfection  in  English  is  to  be 
achieved  through  familiarity  with  the 
ancient  classical  models;  or,  in  other 
words,  to  get  the  completest  command 
of  our  own  speech,  it  is  necessary  first 
to  know  the  Greek  and  Latin  languages. 
This  stereotyped  dictum  is  equally  a 
violation  of  common  sense,  out  of  har- 
mony with  the  open  facts,  and  in  the 
teeth  of  weighty  authority.  It  is  sim- 
ply notorious  that  a  great  number  of 
the  finest  masters  of  English  in  difi'er- 
ent  departments  of  literature  knew  little 
or  nothing  of  Greek  and  Latin,  and  ac- 
quired their  proficiency  in  English  by 
the  direct  cultivation  of  it.  And  that 
competent  classical  scholars  may  be, 
and  often  are,  incompetent  in  English, 
is  strongly  affirmed  by  many  who  have 
the  best  opportunities  of  knowing.  An 
able  English  scholar,  Mr,  Dasent,  who 
had  large  experience  as  an  examiner  of 
classical  students,  says  :  "  I  have  known 
young  men  who  write  very  good  Latin 
prose  indeed,  and  very  good  Latin  verse. 
I  know  what  good  Latin  prose  and  Lat- 
in verse  is,  and  I  have  known  the  same 
young  men  utterly  incapable  of  writing 
a  letter  or  a  decent  essay  in  their  own 
language."  And,  again  :  "  I  think  I 
know  good  writing  when  I  see  it,  and 
I  must  say  that  some  who  had  great 
classical  reputation  have  been  the  worst 
English  writers  I  have  known.  I  have 
observed  this  over  and  over  again.  I 
have  known  men  recommended  solely 
in  consequence  of  their  university  repu- 
tation, and  I  have  found  that  they  have 
been  signal  fiiilures  in  English  writing — 
splendid  scholars,  but  utterly  incapable 
of  expressing  themselves  in  their  own 
tongue.    They  have  no  choice  of  words. 


EDITOR'S   TABLE. 


415 


and  very  often  have  a  heavy,  cumbrous 
way  of  expressing  themselves." 

But  the  most  striking  exemplifica- 
tion of  this  principle  on  a  grand  scale 
is  probably  now  to  be  found  in  Ger- 
many. From  the  article  of  Professor 
James  we  gather  that  the  dead-language 
superstition  holds  on  in  that  country 
with  the  greatest  inveteracy.  Dead 
languages  are  the  center  and  pivot  of 
the  national  system  of  education,  main- 
tained with  unrelenting  tenacity  in  all 
the  favorite  government  institutions  of 
culture,  the  trade-mark  of  social  posi- 
tion, and  the  gateways  to  all  honor  and 
emolument.  In  the  official  preparatory 
schools,  the  gymnasia,  twice  as  much 
time  and  labor  are  given  to  Latin  and 
Greek  as  in  our  own  colleges.  Cer- 
tainly here,  if  anywhere,  we  should  ob- 
serve the  general  reflex  advantages  upon 
the  vernacular  speech  of  life-long  in- 
tercourse of  the  cultivated  German  mind 
with  the  classical  masterpieces.  If  the 
study  of  dead  languages  can  perfect  a 
living  language,  tlien  surely  the  Ger- 
man language  should  have  become  the 
world's  model  in  every  desirable  attri- 
bute, and  German  books  should  be 
taken  as  the  world's  standards  of  the 
finest  lingual  achievement.  If  the  vir- 
tues of  grinding  in  Latin  and  Greek  are 
so  great  as  they  are  alleged  to  be,  Ger- 
man writing  should  be  the  type  of  lu- 
cidity, elegance,  conciseness,  and  force 
of  expression.  But  such  are  not  the 
characters  for  which  the  German  writ- 
ers are  usually  distinguished.  They  are 
the  worst  expositors  in  the  world,  and 
the  national  habit  is  so  careless  and 
slovenly  that  it  is  recognized  even  by 
some  German  writers  themselves  as  a 
national  reproach.  Professor  Helm- 
holtz  translated  a  series  of  works  into 
German,  among  other  reasons  for  the 
avowed  purpose  of  doing  something  to 
raise  the  standard  of  clearness  and  sim- 
plicity in  the  use  of  the  German  Ian-' 
guage.  These  works,  offered  as  exem- 
plars, were  not  from  the  treasures  of 
Latin  and  Greek,  but  were  from  a  liv- 
ing language,   the  English,  and   by  a 


writer.  Professor  Tyndall,  who  had  at- 
tained his  remarkable  mastery  of  the 
native  tongue  by  the  critical  study  of 
it,  and  not  by  the  study  of  dead  lan- 
guages. The  following  extract  from  an 
editorial  in  "  Science  "  of  October  5th 
sufficiently  illustrates  the  literary  hab- 
its and  general  state  of  mind  of  a  people 
trained  beyond  any  other  people  in  the 
old  languages  of  Greece  and  Rome  : 

In  German  scientific  -vvrltings  the  excellence 
of  the  matter  usually  contrasts  vividly  with 
the  defective  style  and  presentation.  Indeed, 
the  Germans,  despite  the  superiority  of  their 
modern  Hterature,  are  awkward  writers,  and 
too  often  slovenly  in  literary  composition. 
Conciseness  and  clearness  are  good  qualities, 
which  may  assuredly  be  attained  by  the  ex- 
penditure of  thought  and  pains;  but  these 
the  German  investigator  seems  unwilling,  in 
many  cases,  to  bestow  upon  his  pen-work, 
but  follows  the  easier  plan  of  great  diffuse- 
ness.  Besides  this,  another  defect  is  not  un- 
common— the  ill-considered  arrangement  of 
the  matter.  This  occurs  in  all  degrees,  from 
a  well-nigh  incredible  confusion  (to  be  some- 
times found  even  In  elaborate  and  important 
essays)  to  a  slightly  illogical  order.  In  this 
regard,  a  curious  and  not  infrequent  variety 
of  this  fault  deser^-es  mention.  According 
to  the  headings  of  the  chapters  or  sections, 
the  division  of  topics  is  pei-fect ;  but  under 
each  head  the  matters  arc  tumbled  together 
as  if  a  clerk  was  contented  to  stuff  his  papers 
in  anyhow,  if  only  he  crammed  them  into 
the  right  pigeon-hole.  Speaking  broadly, 
the  German  mind  lacks  conspicuously  the 
habits  of  clearness  and  order.  There  have 
been  celebrated  exceptions,  but  they  were  in- 
dividual. The  nation  regards  itself  as  having 
a  decidedly  philosophical  bent,  meaning  a 
facility  at  taking  broad  and  profound  views 
of  the  known.  We  venture  to  contradict  this 
opinion,  doing  it  advisedly.  Their  profundi- 
ty is  mysticism,  their  breadth  vagueness,  yet 
a  good  philosopher  must  think  clearly.  It  is 
a  remarkable  but  little-heeded  fact,  that  Ger- 
many has  not  contributed  her  share  to  the 
generalizations  of  science  ;  she  has  produced 
no  Linn^,  Darwin,  Lyell,  Lavoisier,  or  Des- 
cartes, each  of  whom  bequeathed  to  posterity 
a  new  realm  of  knowledge,  although  she  has 
given  to  the  world  grand  results  by  the  ac- 
cumulated achievements  of  her  investigators. 
The  German's  imperfect  sense  of  humor  is 
another  obstacle  which  besets  him  on  every 
path.  He  is  cut  off  from  tlie  perception  of 
some  absurdity,  like  that  of  Kant's  neume- 
non,  for  instance.     One  can  not  explain  this 


4i6 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


to  Mm ;  it  were  easier  to  explain  a  shadow  to 
the  siin,  who  always  sees  the  lighted  side. 
To  state  the  whole  cpigrammatically,  German 
science  is  the  professional  investigation  of 
detail,  slowly  attaining  generalization. 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 

The  Law  of  Heredity.  A  Study  of  the 
Cause  of  Variation,  and  the  Origin  of 
Living  Organisms.  By  W.  K.  Brooks, 
Associate  in  Biology,  Johns  Hopkins 
University.  Baltimore  :  John  Murphy 
&  Co.     Pp.  336. 

This  work  combines  in  a  very  unusual 
degree  the  two  traits  that  are  so  rarely 
found  to  coexist  in  scientific  books :  it  is 
both  original  and  independent  in  its  views 
and  is  at  the  same  time  a  most  lucid  and 
popular  presentation  of  its  subject.  While 
the  work  is  as  far  as  possible  from  being 
a  compilation,  and  will  be  sure  to  take  its 
place  as  a  valuable  contribution  to  philo- 
sophic  biology,  the  author  has,  nevertheless, 
given  us  such  a  survey  of  the  general  sub- 
ject as  will  prove  interesting  and  instructive 
to  all  readers.  "We  needed  a  good  expo- 
sition of  the  nature  and  present  condition 
of  the  fundamental  problems  of  heredity, 
and  we  here  have  it  by  one  who  has  labored 
systematically  and  effectively  in  the  direc- 
tion of  their  solution  ;  and  what  is  perhaps 
still  more  to  the  purpose,  we  have  it  in  the 
light  of  a  new  and  advanced  theory  of  the 
subject  of  extreme  interest,  and  which  will 
probably  prove  a  permanent  and  valuable 
contribution  to  the  inquiry. 

Dr.  Brooks  devotes  his  first  chapter  to 
the  question,  "  What  is  heredity  ?  " — and 
he  gives  his  readers  a  vivid  idea  of  the 
marvels  which  it  involves.  Of  course,  peo- 
ple who  have  no  real  or  accurate  knowl- 
edge on  the  subject  of  life  are  but  ill  pre- 
pared to  appreciate  its  subtilties,  and  our 
author  observes  that  such  people  are  apt 
to  "  regard  an  adult  animal  with  feel- 
ings similar  to  those  with  which  an  in- 
telligent savage  might  regard  a  telephone 
or  a  steamboat.  ...  A  dog  with  all  the 
powers  and  faculties  which  enable  him  to  fill 
his  place  as  man's  companion  is  a  wonder 
almost  beyond  our  powers  of  expression ; 
but  we  find  in  his  body  the  machinery  of 
muscles  and  brains,  digestive,  respiratory, 
and  circulatory  organs,  eyes,  ears,  etc.,  which 
adapts  him  to  his  place ;   and  study  has 


taught  us  enough  about  the  action  of  this 
machinery  to  assure  us  that  greater  knowl- 
edge would  show  us  in  the  structure  of  the 
dog  an  explanation  of  all  that  fits  the  dog 
for  this  life — an  explanation  as  satisfactory 
as  that  which  a  savage  might  reach  in  the 
case  of  the  steamboat  by  studying  its  anat- 
omy. .  .  .  Let  our  savage  find,  however, 
while  studying  an  iron  steamboat,  that 
small  masses  of  iron  without  structure,  so 
far  as  the  means  at  his  command  allow  him 
to  examine  and  decide,  are  from  time  to 
time  broken  off  and  thrown  overboard,  and 
that  each  of  these  contains  in  itself  the 
power  to  build  up  all  the  machinery  and 
appliances  of  a  perfect  steamboat.  The 
wonderful  thing  now  is,  not  the  adaptation 
of  wonderful  machinery  to  produce  wonder- 
ful results,  but  the  production  of  wonderful 
results  without  any  discoverable  mechanism ; 
and  this  is,  in  outline,  the  problem  which  is 
brought  before  the  mind  of  the  naturalist 
by  the  word  heredity.  ...  In  the  mind  of 
the  naturalist  the  word  calls  up  the  greatest 
of  all  the  wonders  of  the  material  universe : 
the  existence  in  a  simple,  unorganized  e^^^ 
of  a  power  to  produce  a  definite  adult  ani- 
mal with  all  its  characteristics,  even  down 
to  the  slightest  accidental  peculiarity  of  its 
parents — a  power  to  reproduce  in  it  all  their 
habits  and  instincts,  and  even  the  slightest 
trick  of  speech  or  action." 

Dr.  Brooks  then  proceeds  to  state  va- 
rious other  striking  and  subtile  phenomena 
involved  in  heredity,  and  then  intimates 
that,  notwithstanding  their  refinement  and 
obscurity,  they  are  unquestionably  capable 
of  being  cleared  up  so  as  to  be  as  fully  un- 
derstood as  other  scientific  laws.  He  says  : 
"  We  may  not  be  able  as  yet  to  penetrate 
its  secrets  to  their  utmost  depths,  but  I 
hope  to  show  that  observation  and  reflec- 
tion do  enable  us  to  discover  some  of  the 
laws  upon  which  heredity  depends,  and  do 
furnish  us  with  at  least  a  partial  solution 
of  the  problem  ;  that  we  have  every  reason 
to  hope  that  in  time  its  hidden  causes  will 
all  be  made  clear,  and  that  its  only  mystery 
is  that  which  it  shares  with  all  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  universe." 

Chapter  II,  on  the  "  History  of  the  The- 
ory of  Heredity,"  is  of  extreme  interest. 
He  traces  the  most  notable  speculations 
upon  the  subject  that  have  been  made  in 
past  times,  and  points  out  their  inadequacy 


LITERARY  NOTICES, 


417 


both  from  defective  knowledge  and  from 
erroneous  views  of  the  nature  of  life,  and 
shows  that  no  explanations  of  the  phe- 
nomena could  be  at  all  satisfactory  until 
biology  had  fully  accepted  and  broadly 
planted  itself  upon  the  evolution  hypothe- 
sis. Dr.  Brooks's  summaiy  in  this  chapter 
of  the  fundamental  facts  that  have  been 
established  in  this  field  of  inquiry,  and 
which  he  presents  as  requisites  of  a  theory 
of  heredity,  is  very  discriminating  and  help- 
ful in  the  prosecution  of  the  inquiry.  In 
Chapter  III  the  same  line  of  historic  analy- 
sis is  pursued  more  closely,  and  the  author 
is  here  brought  to  the  consideration  of  Dar- 
win's theory  of  pangenesis,  one  of  the  latest 
forms  of  the  explanation  of  hereditary  phe- 
nomena. Dr.  Brooks  finds  the  hypothe- 
sis of  Darwin  to  be  unsatisfactory,,  in  that 
it  does  not  recognize  such  a  difference  in 
the  functions  of  the  reproductive  elements 
of  the  opposite  sexes  as  the  facts  require 
and  now  seem  to  warrant.  And,  after  his 
review  of  the  various  theories  that  have 
been  thus  far  offered,  our  author  then  pro- 
ceeds to  the  main  thesis  of  his  work,  which 
is  the  establishment  of  a  new  theory  of 
heredity  based  upon  the  different  powers 
and  functions  of  the  respective  reproductive 
elements. 

It  will  not  be  possible  here  to  give  any 
full  or  satisfactory  acccunt  of  Dr.  Brooks's 
theory  as  elaborated  and  illustrated  in  the 
volume  before  us,  nor  will  it  be  so  necessary 
to  the  readers  of  the  "Monthly,"  as  Vol. 
XV  of  this  magazine  contains  tw^o  articles 
upon  the  subject  by  the  author  representing 
his  views,  and  exemplifying  some  of  their 
higher  applications.  It  may  be  stated,  how- 
ever, that  while  Darwin  holds  that  male  and 
female  give  equal  elements  in  their  com- 
bined offspring,  Dr.  Brooks  maintains  that 
they  are  not  only  different,  but  that  the 
difference  rises  to  the  import  of  a  general 
law.  While  the  function  of  the  female  is 
conservative,  or  to  preserve  and  hand  on 
all  the  parts  that  belong  to  the  race — all 
that  has  been  acquired,  with  little  or  no 
tendency  to  vary  from  the  race  type — on  the 
other  hand,  the  male,  leading  a  more  varied 
and  adventurous  life,  stamps  the  tendency 
to  variation,  the  impulses  to  higher  de- 
velopment, upon  the  common  product  of 
organization.  There  is  more  than  plausi- 
voL.  XXIV. — 27 


bility,  more  even  than  probability,  in  this 
idea,  and  those  who  look  critically  into  the 
evidence  adduced  by  the  author  can  hardly 
fail  to  recognize  that  he  has  seized  upon  an 
important  principle  in  this  field  of  investi- 
gation. 

The  English  Grammar  op  William  Cob- 
BETT.  Carefully  revised  and  annotated 
by  Alfred  Ayres.  New  York :  D.  Ap- 
pleton  &  Co.  Pp.  254. 
"  •  Cobbett's  Grammar,'  "  says  the  edi- 
tor of  this  edition,  "is  probably  the  most 
readable  grnmmar  ever  written.  For  the 
purposes  of  self-education  it  is  unrivaled." 
This  is  probably  because  it  is  not  strictly  a 
grammar  according  to  the  common  ideas  of 
a  grammatical  text-book,  but  is  rather  a 
series  of  familiar,  practical  letters  on  the 
use  of  the  English  language.  Technicalities 
are  absent,  and  paradigms  are  rare,  and 
given  only  in  illustration  of  the  discussions 
of  the  text.  The  editor's  work  has  been 
chiefly  to  call  attention  to  the  points  in 
which  Cobbett's  teachings  differ  from  what 
is  now  considered  the  best  usage,  a  matter 
in  which  changes  may  have  occurred  or 
more  strict  distinctions  have  been  estab- 
lished since  the  first  edition  of  the  "  Gram- 
mar" was  published  in  1818;  to  note  the 
few  errors  of  diction  to  be  found  in  the  let- 
ters ;  and  to  emphasize  a  more  discriminat- 
ing use  of  the  relative  pronouns  than  is- 
customary  in  English  literature.  The  last  is 
a  point  on  which  the  editor  appears  to  set 
much  store.  The  rule  he  announces  on  the 
subject  is  that  "who  and  which  are  prop- 
erly the  co-ordinating  relative  pronouns,  and 
THAT  is  properly  the  restrictive  relative  pro- 
noun. Whenever  a  clause  restricts,  limits, 
defines,  qualifies  the  antecedent — i.  e.,  when- 
ever it  is  adjectival — explanatory  in  its 
functions — it  should  be  introduced  with  the 
relative  pronoun  that,  and  not  with  "which, 
nor  with  who  or  whom.  .  .  .  Who  and 
which  are  the  proper  co-ordinating  relatives 
to  use  when  the  antecedent  is  completely 
expressed  without  the  help  of  the  clause  in- 
troduced by  the  relative."  The  rule  seems 
to  be  a  useful  one,  other  things  being  equal ; 
but  as  we  read  the  thats  which  the  editor 
has  inserted  in  brackets  after  Cobbett's 
who's  and  which's  wherever  he  judges  the 
change  should  be  made  in  accordance  with 
his  rule,  and  as  we  observe  in  other  places, 


4i8 


THE  POPULAR   SCIEXCE  MONTHLY. 


we  find  it  will  not  do  to  establish  the  maxim  - 
as  obligatory,  but  that  it  must  be  made  rery 
often  to  yield  in  favor  of  euphony  or  consid- 
erations of  grace  in  style.  One  of  the  most 
commendable  features  in  the  present  edition 
is  its  complete  and  excellently  arranged 
index. 

Das  SirDirv  der  Staatswissexschaptek  ej 
Amkrika  (The  Study  of  the  Political  Sci- 
ences in  America).  By  Dr.  E.  J.  jAifES. 
Jena :  Gustar  Fischer.     Pp.  26. 

The  substance  of  this  publication  was 
originally  contributed  by  the  author,  a  pro- 
fessor in  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  to 
the  " Jahrbiicher  fiir  National  okonomie  und 
Statistik."  It  comprises  a  clear  review  of  ' 
the  present  condition  of  the  teaching  of  po-  ' 
litical  economy  and  other  branches  relating 
to  public  polity  and  administration  in  the 
colleges  of  the  United  States,  with  specific 
notices  of  the  courses  in  those  institutions 
in  which  more  particular  attention  is  given 
to  it. 

Twelfth  Asxcal  Report  op  thk  Fkitkd 
States  Geological  am>  Geographical 
SrRVET  OF  the  Territories.  By  F.  Y, 
Hatdes.  Washington :  Government 
Printing-office.  Part  I.  Pp.  809,  with 
154  Plates.  Part  H.  Pp.  503,  with 
80  Plates  and  17  Maps. 

These  volumes  and  the  accompanying 
portfolio  constitute  the  final  report  of  the 
Hayden  Survey,  and  cover  the  work  done  in 
1878  and  until  the  close  of  the  existence  of 
the  survey,  June  SO,  1879.  The  first  part 
includes  the  reports  of  Dr.  C.  A.  White  on 
Geology  and  Paleontology,  and  of  Professor 
A.  S.  Packard,  Jr.,  andlR,  W.  Schufeldt  on 
Zoology.  The  second  part  relates  to  the 
Yellowstone  National  Park,  and  comprises 
the  "Geology"  of  that  r^on,  by  W.  H. 
Hobnes ;  "  The  Thermal  Springs,"  by  Dr. 
A.  C.  Peale;  and  the  "  Top<^raphy,**  by 
Henry  Gannett,  E.  M. 

Sea-Sickxess  :  Its  Cause,  Nature,  and  Pre- 
vention without  Medicine  or  Change  in 
Diet.  By  Wiluam  H.  Hmsos.  Bos- 
ton: S.  E.  Cassino.  Pp.  147.  Price, 
11.25. 

Sea-sickxess  is  regarded  in  this  treatise 
as  the  result  of  offenses  against  gravity, 
aggravated  by  attempts  to  resist  them.  The 
irregular  motions  of  the  ship  are  constantly 


displacing  the  center  and  the  direction  of 
gravity  of  the  body  and  its  parts,  while  the 
muscular  efforts  made  to  counteract  those 
efforts  produce  other  shocks.  Consequent- 
ly, the  system  becomes  thoroughly  disorgan- 
ized. The  remedy  recommended  is  to  sub- 
mit to  the  conditions.  Secure  a  complete 
relaxation  of  the  muscles,  and  there  will  be, 
it  is  asserted,  no  trouble. 

Cumulatite  Method  for  learxikg  Ger- 
man*. By  Adolphe  Dretsprlsg.  New 
York:  D.  Appleton  &  Co.  P^.  253. 
$1.50. 

The  theory  on  which  Mr.  Dreyspring  has 
worked  is  that  of  repetition.  His  aim  is  to 
teach  the  student  German  by  the  same  kind 
of  process  as  that  by  which  a  native  learns 
it,  and  so  to  drill  him  that  he  shall  know 
when  a  phrase  is  formed  aright,  not  by  hay- 
ing to  go  through  the  painful  process  of  a 
grammatical  analysis,  but  simply  because  it 
"  sounds  right."  The  method  is  then  gen- 
erally  oral  and  conversational.  The  first 
stumbling-block  the  student  in  German  has 
to  meet  is  the  "  chaos,"  as  the  author  well 
styles  it,  of  genders.  Mr.  Dreyspring  meets 
it  by  drilling  the  pupU  in  series  of  exercises 
on  single  words  in  connection  with  the  arti- 
cles and  pronouns  and  some  adjectives.  By 
the  time  he  has  pronounced  the  word  in  a 
dozen  or  twenty  recurrences  with  the  adjec- 
tival terminations,  er,  ^,  or  e^  that  may  be 
appropriate  to  the  so-called  gender  of  the 
word  marking  as  many  adjectives,  he  will  be 
very  apt  to  have  gained  the  power  of  detect- 
ing a  wrong  use  at  once  by  its  sounding 
wrong.  Drills  governed  by  this  idea  are 
supplemented  by  exercises  and  reading-les- 
sons, with  a  stock  of  words  that  is  con- 
sidered ample  for  the  practical  wants  of 
every-day  life  and  conveisadon ;  and  when, 
the  author  believes^  "  by  constant  and  ever- 
varying  repetitions,  these  words  are  fully 
mastered,  the  student  will  possess  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  practical  framework  of  the 
language." 

Qtestoes  Htgiexicas  (Hygienic  Questions). 

By  Dr.  Jolo  Pires  Farixha.     Rio  de 

Janeiro:    Typc^raphia  NacionaL     Pp. 

64. 

Dr.  Farixha  is  physician  to  the  houses 
of  detention  and  correction  in  Rio  de  Ja- 
neiro.   The  pamphlet  before  us  is  a  coUec- 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


419 


tion  of  articles  which  he  has  contributed  to 
the  "Uniao  Medica"  and  the  "Jornal  do 
Commercio "  of  that  city,  on  such  subjects 
as  "  Animal  Emanations,"  "  The  Sewers  of 
Rio  de  Janeiro  and  their  Influence  upon  the 
Public  Health,"  and  "  Popular  Counsels  on 
Matters  of  Hygiene." 

Dangers  to  Health  :  A  Pictorial  Guide  to 
Domestic  Sanitary  Defects.  By  T.  Prid- 
GiN  Teale,  M.  a..  Surgeon  to  the  Gen- 
eral Infirmary  at  Leeds.  Fourth  edition. 
New  York :  D.  Appleton  &  Co.  Pp.  1G3. 
Price,  $3. 

A  MOST  vivid  presentation  of  the  ills 
which  follow  in  the  track  of  the  botching 
plumber  and  drain-builder  is  this  by  Dr. 
Teale.  Convinced  that  pictures  are  more 
effective  than  words,  the  author  depicts  in 
seventy  plates  various  faults  of  sewerage, 
most  of  them  actual  cases,  and  accompanies 
each  with  a  few  paragraphs  of  explanation 
or  history.  The  course  of  sewer-gas  is  indi- 
cated by  blue  arrows,  and  the  flow,  the  leak- 
age, and  infiltration  of  sewage  are  also  repre- 
sented in  blue.  Among  the  faults  described 
are  untrapped  waste  and  overflow  pipes 
passing  directly  into  a  soil-pipe,  traps  emp- 
tied by  evaporation  or  by  the  flow  of  water 
past  their  outlets,  drain-pipes  of  poor  quali- 
ty or  badly  joined,  and  drains  running  up- 
hill. A  particularly  striking  group  of  pict- 
ures, entitled  "  How  People  drink  Sewage," 
shows  the  danger  to  be  expected  from  drains 
passing  near  or  over  wells.  Among  the  in- 
teresting histories  is  the  following :  "  Enteric 
(typhoid)  fever  broke  out  in  a  gentleman's 
house,  from  whiph  it  spread  into  the  village. 
On  examination  I  found  that  the  water- 
closet  was  in  the  center  of  the  house,  and 
that  the  soil-pipe  discharged  into  a  common 
stone  drain  running  under  a  tiled  entrance- 
hall.  This  drain  was  almost  without  fall, 
so  much  so  that  it  had  become  blocked,  and 
the  sewage  had  found  its  way  under  the 
flooring  of  the  passage  and  rooms.  It  goes 
to  a  man's  heart  to  take  up  a  tiled  hall  in 
order  to  inspect  a  drain.  Moral — the  drain 
ought  never  to  have  been  placed  under  the 
hall."  Some  twenty  additional  defects  are 
noted  without  plates,  and  methods  for  de- 
tecting the  escape  of  sewer-gas  are  given. 
The  book  contains  also  some  hints  on  venti- 
lating houses  and  carriacres. 


History  and  Uses  of  Limestones  and  Mar- 
bles. By  S.  M.  BuRNHAM.  Boston : 
S.  E.  Cassino  &  Co.  Pp.  392,  with  Forty- 
eight  Chromo-lithographs. 

The  modest  aim  of  the  author  of  this 
book  has  been,  in  the  absence  of  any  work 
exclusively  devoted  to  limestones  and  mar- 
bles known  to  him,  to  present  the  facts  and 
speculations  of  original  writers  "  so  selected 
and  arranged  as  to  illustrate  the  value  of 
limestones  in  some  departments  of  geology, 
but  more  especially  their  use  in  the  me- 
chanic and  fine  arts,  and  their  history  in 
civilization."  These  stones  are  so  abun- 
dant and  so  diversified,  their  uses  are  so  mul- 
tifarious, and  they  play  so  important  a  part 
in  every  field,  that  there  is  certainly  room 
and  use  for  a  book  of  this  kind.  Mr.  Burn- 
ham  does  not  claim  that  he  has  entirely 
filled  the  vacant  place.  That  would  be 
more  than  it  were  possible  for  one  compiler 
to  do  at  a  first  effort.  But  he  has  made  a 
creditable  attempt,  and  has  produced  a  book 
embodying  a  large  amount  of  authentic  in- 
formation concerning  limestones  in  all  parts 
of  the  globe,  and  their  uses  in  all  periods  of 
history.  The  first  chapters  are  devoted  to 
a  scientific  consideration  of  limestones,  de- 
scribing the  different  classes,  the  fossils  so 
abundant  in  them,  and  of  which  many  of 
them  are  so  largely  composed,  and  the  gen- 
eral divisions  of  geological  time.  The 
more  particular  account  of  the  several 
classes  of  limestones  and  marbles  follows, 
beginning  with  those  of  the  United  States, 
which  are  grouped  by  "  regions  " — Atlantic, 
Mississippi,  and  the  Rocky  Mountains  and 
Pacific  coast.  Other  limestones  are  classi- 
fied and  described  as  those  of  British  Ameri- 
ca, the  West  India  Islands,  Mexico,  and  South 
America.  European  stones  are  similarly 
described,  by  countries,  as  well  as  those  of 
Asia,  Australia,  and  Africa.  The  descrip- 
tion of  the  Grecian  marbles  is  accompanied 
with  a  few  remarks  on  their  application  in 
Greek  art ;  and  in  the  later  chapters  are 
given  accounts  of  the  "  Antique  Marbles," 
"  Antique  Alabasters,  Serpentines,  Basalts, 
Granites,  and  Porphyries,"  "  Antique  Stones 
and  Works  of  Art  in  Modern  Rome,"  and 
"  Antique  Stones  used  to  decorate  Roman 
Churches."  The  appendix  gives  tabular 
views  of  the  "  Age  and  Locality  of  the  Prin- 
cipal Limestones,"  "French  Marbles,"  and 


420 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


"  Marbles  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland, 
Germany,  etc."  The  ehromo-lithographs 
give  clear  and  brilliant  representations  of 
the  color  and  grain  of  some  of  the  finer 
European,  African,  antique,  and  American 
stones. 

MCSTER  ALTITALIENISCHER    LeINENSTICKEREI 

(Patterns  of  Old  Italian  Linen-Embroid- 
ery). Collected  by  Frieda  Lipperheide. 
First  Part.  Pp.  32,  with  30  Plates. 
Second  Part.  Pp.  36,  with  30  Plates. 
Berlin:  Franz  Lipperheide.  Price,  six 
marks  each  part. 

The  custom  of  embroidering  articles  of 
household  linen  with  designs  in  colored  silk 
or  wool  went  nearly  out  of  vogue  in  the  last 
century,  but  still  survives  in  parts  of  Italy, 
and  traces  of  it  may  be  found  elsewhere. 
An-  attempt  is  now  made  to  revive  it  and 
commend  it.  The  publication  in  the  Berlin 
"  Modenwelt,"  and  afterward  in  books,  of  a 
collection  of  patterns  of  old  German  em- 
broideries revealed  a  richness  in  beautiful 
specimens  of  art  of  this  kind  that  the  world 
was  not  aware  it  possessed.  The  publisher 
might  have  supplemented  his  collection  with 
another,  as  large,  of  additional  patterns, 
in  the  same  style,  but  he  has  preferred  to 
vary  it  by  presenting  a  second  one  in  a  dis- 
tinct style,  the  old  Italian.  In  the  German 
embroideries,  the  figure  is  brought  out  in 
stitch-work,  while  the  ground  is  left  in  plain 
linen.  In  the  older  Italian  work  the  oppo- 
site  motive  generally  prevails,  and  it  is  the 
figure  that  is  left  plain,  and  is  embroidered 
around ;  yet  there  are  variations,  and  both 
styles  may  sometimes  be  found  in  the  same 
piece.  The  Italian  patterns  are  gracefully 
drawn,  evenly  parceled  off,  and  always  con- 
ventionalized and  wholly  ornamental.  Some 
of  them  may  be  ultimately  of  Grecian  ori- 
gin, but  they  all  come  to  the  collectors 
from  Italy.  They  seem  to  have  enjoyed  an 
extensive  diffusion,  for  works  in  Italian 
stitch  may  be  found  among  nearly  all  na- 
tionalities ;  and  we  are  given  in  these  vol- 
umes, besides  the  Italian  and  Grecian  de- 
signs proper,  Moroccan,  Persian,  and  Span- 
ish-Moorish groups,  all  congenial  in  motive, 
but  having  each  traits  and  beauties  peculiar 
to  themselves.  The  designs  reproduced  by 
Frau  Lipperheide  are  taken  from  authen- 
ticated specimens  of  from  the  sixteenth  to 
the  eighteenth  centuries,  or  from  Italian 


pattern-books  of  the  sixteenth  century.  The 
letterpress  preceding  the  plates  furnishes 
full,  clearly  illustrated  instructions  for  exe- 
cuting the  work  in  the  various  stitches. 

THE  BEKLIN  EEPOET. 

The  Question  of  a  Division  of  the  Philo- 
sophical Facultv.  Inaugural  Address 
on  assuming  the  Rectorship  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Berlin.  Delivered  in  the  Aula 
of  the  University,  on  October  15,  1880, 
by  Dr.  August  Wilhelm  IIofmann,  Pro- 
fessor of  Chemistry.  Second  edition, 
with  an  Appendix  containing  Two  Opin- 
ions on  the  Admission  to  the  University 
of  Graduates  of  Realschulen,  presented 
to  his  Excellency  the  Royal  Minister  of 
Public  Instruction,  by  the  Philosophical 
Faculty  of  the  Royal  Frederick  William 
University,  in  the  Years  1869  and  1880. 
Boston :  Ginn,  Heath  &  Co.  1883.  Pp. 
11. 

This  is  the  somewhat  formidable  title 
under  which  the  celebrated  "  Berlin  Report " 
on  classical  and  scientific  education  appears 
in  English.  The  first  part  of  it,  embracing 
thirty-five  pages,  consists  of  the  elaborate 
inaugural  address  of  Dr.  Hofmann,  delivered 
October  15,  1880,  devoted  to  a  general  dis- 
cussion of  the  policy  of  dividing  the  Philo- 
sophical Faculty  of  the  German  universities 
so  as  to  create  a  new  faculty  of  the  natural 
sciences.  Dr.  Hofmann  opposes  this  on  va- 
rious grounds,  and  then  passes  to  the  ques- 
tion as  to  the  admission  for  graduates  of  the 
j  real  schools  to  the  university,  which  he  re- 
{  sists,  and  which  is  also  a  part  of  the  gen- 
eral question  of  the  unity  of  the  Philosophi- 
j  cal  Faculty.  Following  the  address  is  the 
I  opinion  of  the  Philosophical  Faculty  of  the 
Berlin  University,  given  in  1869,  against  the 
proposed  admission  of  the  real-school  grad- 
uates, and  then  comes  the  adverse  report 
of  the  same  faculty,  made  in  1880,  after 
the  real-school  students  had  been  admitted. 
The  remainder  of  the  appendix  consists  of 
notes  and  extracts  from  various  authorities 
confirmatory  of  the  views  taken  in  the  re- 
ports. The  pamphlet  contains  a  preface  by 
John  Williams  White,  of  Harvard  College, 
giving  various  interesting  explanations.  As 
the  subject  is  one  of  considerable  promi- 
nence just  now,  the  appearance  of  this  doc- 
ument in  an  English  form  will  be  helpful 
in  the  discussion,  and  will  be  welcomed  by 
many  readers. 


LITERARY  NOTICES, 


421 


Bulletin  of  the  United  States  Fish  Com- 
mission. Vol.  I,  for  1881,  pp.  466; 
Vol.  II,  for  1882,  pp.  46 Y.  Washington : 
Government  Printing-Office. 

The  "  Bulletin "  is  now  published  by 
the  authority  of  an  act  of  Congress,  in  two 
forms,  a  part  of  the  edition  being  distrib- 
uted signature  by  signature  as  the  matter  is 
collected  and  put  in  type,  while  the  other 
part  is  bound  up  at  the  end  of  the  year  in 
an  annual  volume.  Two  classes  of  readers 
are  thus  accommodated — those  who  wish  to 
get  the  matter  as  fast  as  it  appears,  as  news, 
and  those  who  prefer  to  have  it  in  permanent 
form,  in  bound  volumes.  The  two  volumes 
now  before  us,  being  the  first  published 
under  the  new  system,  contain  numerous 
articles  on  a  variety  of  subjects  relating 
to  the  description,  propagation,  catching, 
habits,  and  care  of  fish,  the  value  of  which 
is  both  scientific  and  practical ;  of  American 
and  of  foreign  origin ;  and  original,  relating 
to  the  home  observations  of  the  agents  or 
direct  correspondents  of  the  commission,  or 
selected  from  an  extensive  range  of  living 
ichthyological  literature,  and  the  reports  of 
other  countries.  We  regret  the  absence  of 
an  adequate  classified  index  to  the  volumes. 
A  copious  general  alphabetical  index  is 
given,  and  an  index  by  authors,  and  they 
should  not  be  dispensed  with ;  but,  in  a 
work  marked  by  the  fullness  of  matter  that 
characterizes  these  volumes,  another  index 
seems  to  be  needed,  giving  the  titles  of  ar- 
ticles. 

Animal  Life:  Being  the  Natural  His- 
tory OF  Animals.  By  E.  Perceval 
Wright,  M.  D.  London,  Paris,  and  New 
York :  Cassel,  Petter,  Galpin  &  Co.  Pp. 
618.     $2.50. 

The  author  of  this  attractive  work  is 
Professor  of  Botany  in  the  University  of 
Dublin.  He  has  prepared  his  book  espe- 
cially in  view  of  "  that  class  of  readers  who, 
while  they  take  an  intelligent  interest  in 
the  study  of  natural  history,  have  but  little 
taste  for  the  technical  details  which  would 
naturally  form  the  bulk  of  a  scientific  man- 
ual on  the  subject.  With  this  view,  nearly 
two  thirds  of  the  contents  have  been  devoted 
to  the  mammals  and  birds.  Nevertheless,  the 
other  classes  have  not  been  neglected,  but 
a  fair  degree  of  consideration  is  given  to 
the  reptiles,  fishes,  insects,  mollusks,  and 


the  lower  divisions  of  the  animal  kingdom. 
The  book  has  grown  to  its  present  form  out 
of  the  series  of  lectures  on  zoology  which 
Dr.  Wright  delivered  several  years  ago  to 
the  natural  history  classes  of  his  univer- 
sity, and  the  matter  of  it,  enriched  with 
copious  citations  from  travelers  distin- 
guished for  their  researches  in  natural  his- 
tory, has  been  systematized  and  reduced  to 
its  present  comprehensive  and  connected 
form,  under  advantages  which  only  long- 
maturing  thought  can  confer,  and  which  a 
book  prepared  to  meet  a  present  demand 
can  not  so  well  ecjoy.  The  systematic 
method  is  faithfully  followed,  and  the  ani- 
mals are  described  by  classes,  orders,  fami- 
lies, and  the  other  related  groups,  in  regular 
order,  with  the  scientific  distinctions  care- 
fully noted,  so  that  a  clear  view  is  given  of 
all  that  comes  within  the  scope  of  the  work. 
The  adaptation  of  the  style  to  the  mind  not 
familiar  with  technical  language,  the  beauty 
of  the  broad  pages  with  their  clean  paper, 
sharp  type,  and  the  profusion  of  appropri- 
ate and  excellently  executed  illustrations, 
make  the  work  eminently  pleasant  and  suit- 
able to  the  family  and  to  general  readers, 
and  one  which  should  attract  all  the  young, 
who  have  any  taste  in  that  direction,  to  the 
study  of  natural  history. 

Mineral  Resources  of  the  United  States. 
By   Albert  Williams,  Jr.     Washing- 


ton:   Government  Printinjr-Office. 
813. 


Pp. 


This  volume  represents  one  of  the  di- 
visions of  the  United  States  Geological  Sur- 
vey under  the  direction  of  the  Hon.  J.  W. 
Powell.  It  is  intended  to  furnish  an  ac- 
count of  every  mineral,  whether  a  metallic 
ore,  a  useful  salt,  a  building  material,  or  a 
fertilizer,  that  is  economically  mined  in  the 
United  States,  with  notes  of  the  localities 
where  they  are  found,  and  estimates  of  the 
production  and  trade  value  of  the  stuff. 

Ueber   das    galvanische  Verhalten   der 
Amalgame  des    Zinkes   und  des   Cad- 
miums (On  the  Galvanic  Behavior  of  the 
Amalgams  of  Zinc  and  of  Cadmium). 
By  William  L.  Robb,  A.  B.     Berlin : 
Gustav  Schade.     Pp.  30. 
This  is  the  inaugural  dissertation  by  the 
author,  an  American  student,  on  receiving 
at  the  University  of  Berlin,  in  August  last, 
the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy. 


422 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


The  Physician's  Visiting  List  for  1884. 

Philadelphia :  P.  Blakiston  &  Co.   Price, 

$1. 

This,  as  the  title  implies,  is  a  sort  of 
annual  hand-book  or  note-book  for  doctors, 
which  now  reappears  in  the  thirty-third  year 
of  its  publication.  It  is  in  a  compact  and 
convenient  form,  and  is  arranged  for  twenty- 
five  patients  weekly.  Its  dose -table  has 
been  revised  to  accord  with  the  late  changes 
in  the  Pharmacopoeia,  and  has  a  list  ap- 
pended with  suggestions  for  their  exhibition. 
There  are  several  other  tables  for  ready 
reference,  and  aids  for  calculation,  and  the 
leaves  for  addresses,  memoranda,  etc.,  are 
arranged  upon  a  plan  at  once  simple  and 
comprehensive.  There  are  more  advertise- 
ments included  than  it  seems  necessary  for 
a  physician  to  carry  round  in  his  pocket. 

Tece    Handy    Book    of    Object  -  Lessons. 

From  a  Teacher's   Note-Book.     By  J. 

Walker.      Philadelphia:  J.  B.  Lippin- 

cott  &  Co.     Pp.  129.     $1.25. 

This  work  is  intended  as  an  aid  to 
teachers,  in  furnishing  them  with  material 
for  their  lessons,  and  suggestions  as  to  the 
way  it  may  be  used.  The  matter  is  ruled 
into  two  columns — one,  headed  "Matter," 
containing  the  information  to  be  imparted, 
while  the  other,  headed  "Method,"  is  in- 
tended, not  to  be  dogmatically  adhered  to, 
but  to  furnish  what  may  serve  as  specimens 
of  the  various  expedients  to  which  teachers 
may  resort.  Two  series  of  lessons  are  fur- 
nished. In  the  first  scries  are  given  lessons 
on  the  animal,  vegetable,  and  mineral  king- 
doms, and,  in  the  second  series,  lessons  on 
physiology,  physical  geography,  and  manu- 
factures ;  besides  which,  each  series  con- 
tains a  department  of  "  Miscellaneous  "  les- 
sons. 

King's  Hand-Book  of  Boston.    Cambridge, 
Mass. :  Moses  King.     Pp.  360.     $1. 

This  work  is  designed  to  describe  every 
noteworthy  feature  and  institution  of  Bos- 
ton. The  subjects  are  systematically  ar- 
ranged, beginning  with  a  sketch  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  city,  after  which  are  described 
the  "  Arteries,"  the  "  Arras  "  (railroads, 
steamers,  etc.),  the  "  Hotels  and  Restau- 
rants," the  "  Public  Buildings,"  and  so  on, 
through  the  list.  The  matter  is  periodically 
revised,  so  as  to  brins  the  successive  edi- 


tions of  the  book  up  to  the  time  of  their 
issue.  The  whole  furnishes  a  comprehen- 
sive and  useful  account  of  a  very  interest- 
ing city,  presented  in  the  best  typographical 
style,  with  illustrations  worthy  of  their  sub- 
ject. 


PUBLICATIONS  KECEIVED. 

Johns  Hopkins  University.  Studies  from  the 
Biological  Laboratory.  Professors  H .  Newell  Mar- 
tin and  W.  K.  Brooks,  editors.  Yol.  II,  No.  8. 
Baltimore  :  N.  Murray.    Pp.  96. 

The  Geology  and  Topography  of  Iowa  in  a  Sani- 
tary Point  of  View.  By  P.  J.  Famsworth,  M.  D. 
Pp.  12.  Typhoid  Fever  of  America :  Its  Nature, 
Causes,  and  Prevention.  By  E.  J.  Farquharson, 
M.  D.  Pp.  12.  Hospitals  for  Contagious  Diseases, 
and  their  Proper  Location.  By  E.  J.  Farquharson, 
M.D.  Pp.  12.  Ventilation.  Bv  Justin  M.  Hull, 
M.  D.  Pp.  48.  All  published  at  l)es  Moines,  Iowa, 
by  the  Iowa  State  Board  of  Health. 

The  Oyster  Epicure.  New  York:  White, 
Stokes  &  Allen.    Pp.  61.    80  cents. 

English  as  She  is  Spoke.  "  Her  Seconds  Part." 
New  York:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  Pp.  56.  20 
cents. 

The  Antipyretic  Treatment  of  Tvphoid  Fever. 
By  G.  C.  Smythe,  M.  D.,  Indianapohs,  Ind.  Pp. 
24. 

Annual  Eeport  of  the  Kansas  City  Public  Schools, 
1882-'83.  Kansas  City,  Mo. :  Eamsey,  Millett  «fe 
Hudson.    Pp.  157. 

The  Despotism  of  "Words  in  Eelation  to  Sci- 
ence. By  Orpheus  Eveils,  M.  D.,  College  Hill, 
Ohio.    Pp.  8. 

An  Examination  of  Some  Controverted  Points  on 
the  Physiology  of  the  Voice.  By  T.  Wesley  Mills, 
London.     Pp.  28. 

Description  of  a  Eevolvlng  Astigmatic  Disk.  By 
Charles  A.  Oliver,  M.  D.,  Philadelphia.    Pp.  7. 

Ocean  Grove  Camp-Meeting  Association.  Four- 
teenth Annual  Eeport.  Ocean  Grove,  N.  J.  Pp. 
76. 

Experimental  and  Inductive  Chemistry.  Pro- 
spectus and  Proot-sheets.  By  Charles  E.  Dreyer, 
Fort  Wayne,  Ind.     Pp.  32. 

Chicago  Astronomical  Society  and  Dearborn  Ob- 
servatory Eeports,  1S63.  Chicago :  Knight  &  Leon- 
ard.   Pp.15. 

Universitv  of  Georgia,  Medical  College,  Closing 
Exercises.     Pp.  4. 

The  Treatment  of  Wounds,  as  based  on  Evolu- 
tionary Laws.  By  C.  Pitfield  Mitchel.  Now  York  : 
J.  H.  Vail  &  Co.     Pp.  29.    50  cents. 

"  Scandinana :  A  Monthlv  Journal,"  29  N.  Clark 
Street,  Chicago.    Pp.  24.    20  cents ;  $3  a  year. 

Diccionario  Tecnol6pico  :  Ingk^s-Espafiol  y  Es- 
panol-Ingles.  (Technological  Dictionary  :  English- 
Spanish  and  Spanish-English.)  By  Nestor  Ponce 
de  Leon.  In  Twelve  Parts.  New  York  :  N.  Ponce 
de  Leon.    Pp.  48  each  part.    50  cents  each. 

Hi.storical  Essav  on  the  Art  of  Bookbinding.  By 
n.  P.  DuBois.  New  York :  Brad  street  Press. 
Pp.  42. 

The  Evolutionary  Significance  of  Human  Char- 
acter.   By  Professor  E.  D.  Cope.    Pp.  12. 

State  Asvlum  for  Insane  Criminals.  Twenty- 
third  Annual  Eeport.  Auburn,  N.  Y.  :  W.  J. 
Moses.    Pp.40. 

Calendar  of  American  History,  1 884.  By  Delia 
W.  Lyman.  New  York  :  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons. 
865  Leaflets  and  Index.    $1. 

Directory  to  the  Charitable  and  Beneficent  So- 
cieties and  Institutions  of  the  City  of  New  York. 
New  York :  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.    Pp.  169. 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


423 


Felicitas.  A  Romance.  By  Felix  Dahn,  Xew 
York:  William  S.  Gottsberger.    Pp.  208. 

Explosive  Materials.  By  M.  P.  E.  Bertholet. 
New  York:  D.  Van  Nostrand.    Pp.  ISO.    50  cents. 

Wonders  of  Plant-Life  under  the  Microscope. 
By  Sophie  Bledsoe  Herrick.  New  York:  G.  P. 
Putnam's  Sons.    Pp.  248.    $1.50. 

A  Hand-Book  of  Hyeiene  and  Sanitary  Science. 
By  George  Wilson.  Philadelphia:  P.  Blakiston, 
Son  &  Co.    Pp.  510.    $2.75. 

Manual  of  Chemistry,  Physical  and  Inorganic. 
By  Henry  Watts,  F.  K.  S.  Philadelphia:  P. 
Bhkiston,  Son  «fe  Co.    Pp.  595.    $2.25. 

The  Organs  of  Speech.  By  G.  H.  von  Meyer. 
New  York  :  D.  Appleton  &  Co.    Pp.  349. 

Queen  Victoria.  Her  Girlhood  and  Woman- 
hood. By  Grace  Greenwood.  New  York  :  John 
E.  Anderson  &  Henry  S.  Allen.    Pp.  401. 

The  Human  Body.  By  H.  Newell  Martin, 
D.  Sc.  New  York :  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  Pp.  355. 
$1.50. 

Text-Book  of  Popular  Astronomy.  By  William 
G.  Peck,  Ph.  B.  New  York :  A.  S.  Barnes  &  Co. 
Pp.  330. 

Zo51ogy.  By  A.  S.  Packard,  Jr.  New  York: 
Henry  Holt  &  Co.     Pp.334.     $1.40. 

Destructive  Influence  of  the  Tariff.  By  J. 
Schoenhof.  New  York:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons. 
Pp.  112. 

World-Life,  or  Comparative  Geolosry.  By  Al- 
exander Winchell,  LL.  D.  Chicago :  S.  0.  Griggs 
&  Co.    Pp.  642.    $2.50. 

Dangers  to  Health.  A  Pictorial  Guide  to  Do- 
mestic Sanitary  Defects  By  T.  Pridgin  Teale. 
New  York  :  D.  Appleton  &  Co.    Pp.  1T2. 

History  of  the  Literature  of  the  Scandinavian 
North.  By  Frederik  Winkel  Horn,  Ph.  D.  Chi- 
cago :  S.  C.  Griggs  &  Co.     Pp.  507.    $3.50. 

The  Natural  Genesis.  By  Gerald  Massey.  New 
York:  Scribner  «fe  Welford.     2  vols.    Pp.  552,  535. 

Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Fish  and  Fisher- 
ies, ISSO.  Washington :  Government  Printing-Office. 
Pp.  1060,  with  Plates. 

A  Practical  Treatise  on  Materia  Medica  and 
Therapeutics.  By  Roberts  Bartholow.  New  York : 
D.  Appleton  &  Co.    Pp.  733. 

Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Education,  1S81. 
Pp.  840. 

Cruise  of  the  Revenue  Steamer  Corwin  in  Alas- 
ka and  the  Northwest  Arctic  Ocean  in  1331.  Notes 
and  Memoranda.  Washington  :  Government  Print- 
ing-Office.   Pp.  120,  with  Plates. 


POPULAR   MISCELLANY. 

Origin  of  the  Eastern  Eod  of  Lake  Erie. 

— Mr.  Julius  Poblman,  starting  with  the 
h}-pothesis  that  the  beds  of  the  Great  Lakes 
were  excavated  by  water  in  pre-glacial  times, 
has  sought  for  the  river  which  washed  out 
the  eastern  end  of  Lake  Erie.  The  discov- 
ery of  the  many  large  pre-glacial  rivers,  in 
Pennsylvania  and  Ohio,  running  into  the 
lake-basin,  explains  well  enough  how  the 
erosion  in  general  has  taken  place.  "  But  the 
most  easterly  of  these  ancient  water-courses 
yet  discovered,  the  Alleghany,  which  ran 
northerly  past  Dunkirk,  does  not  account  for 
the  forty  miles  of  lake-valley  between  that 
place  and  Buffalo,  and  another  pre-glacial 


river  emptying  into  the  lake-basin  near 
Buffalo  was  necessary  to  complete  the  river 
system  which  occupied  and  excavated  the 
valley  of  Lake  Erie."  The  maps  of  the 
lake  survey  show  that  there  are  no  indica- 
tions of  rocks  on  the  shore  of  the  lake  be- 
tween the  southern  limit  of  the  city  of  Buf- 
falo and  the  Horseshoe  Reef  of  the  Niagara 
River,  and  that  the  land  is  low  and  level  for 
some  distance  back.  The  northern  and 
eastern  parts  of  the  city  and  the  bed  of 
Buffalo  Creek  are  underlain  by  a  reef  of 
corniferous  limestone,  which  gradually  as- 
cends toward  the  north.  Testings  that  have 
been  made  during  the  course  of  excavations 
for  canals,  of  the  depth  of  this  rockless  land, 
show  that  no  rock  can  be  found  at  a  less 
depth  than  eighty  feet  below  the  surface. 
This  probable  fact  points  to  the  bed,  and 
indicates  the  depth  of  the  ancient  river  which 
we  are  seeking  for.  That  river  could  not 
go  north  or  east,  on  account  of  the  out- 
cropping corniferous  limestone,  but  *'  it  must 
have  taken  a  westerly  course  through  the 
soft  shales  of  the  Devonian  epoch ;  and  if 
we  trace  an  imaginary  line  along  the  deep- 
est portion  of  the  eastern  end  of  the  lake 
from  this  ancient  valley,  in  a  direction  a 
little  southerly  of  west,  we  can  connect  our 
pre-glacial  river  with  the  ancient  outlet  of 
the  river  system  of  the  Erie  Valley  opposite 
Dunkirk,  and  have  a  fair  explanation  of  the 
origin  of  the  eastern  end  of  Lake  Erie." 

The  New  Standards  of  Time,— On  the 

Yth  of  October  a  number  of  the  railroads 
of  the  New  England  States,  and  on  the 
18th  of  November  nearly  all  the  impor- 
tant railroads  of  the  Atlantic  slope  and 
the  Mississippi  Valley,  adopted  a  new  sys- 
tem of  time-standards  for  the  movement  of 
their  trains.  The  object  of  the  change 
was  to  secure  a  more  simple  and  harmoni- 
ous way  of  calculating  the  time  at  the  dif- 
ferent stations  on  East  and  West  lines. 
Under  the  time-system  previously  prevailing, 
the  managers  of  each  railroad  endeavored 
to  conform  to  the  local  time  of  the  most 
important  stations  on  its  line.  The  result 
of  this  method  of  accommodation  was  that 
seventy-five  different  standards  of  time, 
varying  apparently  at  hap-hazard  from  each 
other,  were  used  in  operating  the  railroads 
of  the  United  States  ;  and  it  was  only  with 


424 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


extreme  diflBculty  that  the  traveler  between 
the  East  and  the  West  could  keep  an  ac- 
count of  the  hour.  The  new  system  which 
has  been  adopted  contemplates  the  estab- 
lishment, for  the  whole  United  States,  of 
four  principal  meridians,  distant  from  each 
other  exactly  one  hour  of  solar  time,  to  the 
nearest  one  of  which  the  local  time  of  every 
point  in  the  country  shall  be  ref ened.  These 
meridians  are  selected  so  as  to  bear  an  ex- 
act relation,  in  even  hours,  with  the  me- 
ridian of  Greenwich,  whence  most  of  the 
world  computes  its  longitude.  "Eastern 
time,"  to  which  the  hour  from  Maine  to 
Florida  and  in  the  region  of  the  lower  lakes 
is  adjusted,  conforms  to  the  time  of  the  sev- 
enty -  fifth  meridian,  which  is  five  hours 
slower  than  Greenwich  time.  Its  region 
begins  at  67^"  longitude,  or  as  near  there 
as  is  convenient,  and  ends  at  or  about  82^°. 
West  of  this  is  the  region  of  Central  time, 
which  is  governed  by  the  time  at  the  nine- 
tieth meridian,  and  extends  to  longitude 
97i°,  including  the  Mississippi  and  Missouri 
Valleys,  the  upper  lakes  and  Texas.  The 
next  division  will  conform  to  the  one  hun- 
dred and  fifth  meridian,  and  will  include 
the  Rocky  Mountain  region ;  and  the  next, 
for  the  Pacific  coast,  to  the  one  hundred 
and  twentieth  meridian.  To  the  east  of  the 
"  Eastern  time  "  region  of  the  United  States 
the  maritime  British  provinces  are  expected 
to  set  their  clocks  by  the  time  of  the  six- 
tieth meridian,  one  hour  ahead  of  any  part 
of  the  United  States.  As  the  clocks  in  the 
United  States  have  for  many  years  been 
practically  regulated  by  the  railroads,  it  will 
probably  not  be  long  before  the  whole 
country,  and  every  interest  in  it,  will  be  com- 
puting its  hours  so  as  to  conform  with  the 
new  standards.  The  movement  of  which 
this  is  the  first  and  a  very  important  prac- 
tical step  was  begun  in  1875  by  the  Ameri- 
can Metrological  Society,  and  is  designed 
to  embrace  the  whole  world.  It  has  been 
approved,  in  principle  at  least,  by  numerous 
learned  societies  and  international  associa- 
tions. The  complete  scheme  involves  the 
division  of  the  whole  earth  into  time-sec- 
tions of  15°  of  longitude,  or  one  hour  each, 
with  standards  of  time  determined  at  every 
fifteenth  meridian ;  the  establi-shment  of  a 
point  where  for  the  purposes  of  the  month- 
ly calendar  the  day  shall  end  and  the  next 


day  begin,  at  the  one  hundred  and  eightieth 
meridian  from  Greenwich ;  and  a  number- 
ing, for  scientific  purposes  at  least,  of  the 
hours  of  the  day  from  one  to  twenty-four 
without  interruption. 

Greek  in  the  Colleges.— The  "Boston 
Globe  "  says  that  "  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  ad- 
dress of  Charles  Francis  Adams,  Jr.,  is 
bearing  fruit  sooner  and  more  plentifully 
than  even  he  could  have  expected.  The 
meeting  of  college  presidents  from  nearly 
all  the  Xew  England  colleges,  held  in  Bos- 
ton the  other  evening  for  the  purpose  of 
discussing  the  question,  indicated  a  very 
general  agreement  with  the  less  sweeping 
of  his  propositions.  A  number  of  the  gen- 
tlemen were  ready  to  make  a  beginning  of 
refoi-m.  Mr.  Adams  touched  a  fuse  that 
was  all  ready  to  go  off."  This  presents  the 
case  about  as  it  is.  The  colleges  were  all 
represented  at  the  meeting  by  the  modern- 
language  men,  who  naturally  argued  the 
claims  of  their  department  with  earnest- 
ness. President  Porter,  of  Yale,  was  absent, 
but  President  Robinson,  of  Brown,  who  was 
present,  believes  in  the  ancient  languages 
for  a  foundation ;  and  Presidents  Bartlett,  of 
Dartmouth,  Carter,  of  Williams,  and  proba- 
bly Scelye,  of  Amherst,  are  rather  conserva- 
tive in  this  matter.  President  Eliot,  of  Har- 
vard, on  the  other  hand,  means  to  give  an 
A.  M.  ultimately  without  regard  to  Greek. 
He  hopes  neither  to  require  it  in  college 
nor  in  preparation,  but  to  make  modern 
languages  an  equivalent.  Yale,  too,  pro- 
poses to  require  either  French  or  German 
for  examination,  and  will  probably  lessen 
its  requirements  of  the  ancient  languages 
in  order  to  make  the  preliminary  work  no 
more  severe  than  now.  The  fact  is,  that 
Mr.  Adams  drew  the  attention  of  the  coun- 
try to  a  subject  which  had  been  receiving 
much  consideration  in  the  colleges,  and  his 
address  will  do  much  to  hasten  action  in  re- 
gard to  the  study  of  the  ancient  languages. 
President  Eliot  plans  a  revolution  in  this 
matter,  while  the  other  colleges  will  all  give 
more  attention  to  modern  languages.  At 
Williams,  President  Carter  means  in  time 
to  make  German  a  required  study  running 
through  sophomore  year,  leaving  it  optional 
the  rest  of  the  course. — Springfield  Repvb- 
lican. 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY, 


425 


Tbe  March  of  FcTer  and  Ague. — Dr.  G. 

H.  Wilson,  of  Meriden,  Connecticut,  review- 
ing the  history  of  epidemic  intermittent 
fever  in  Connecticut  and  other  parts  of  New 
England,  traces  in  it  the  evidence  of  a  regu- 
lar progress  in  a  particular  direction,  and  by 
successive  advances  from  year  to  year.  The 
advance  appears  to  be  "  independent  of  any 
known  or  recognized  influence,  whether  at- 
mospheric, telluric,  magnetic,  or  climatic, 
and  through  the  most  diverse  conditions  of 
surface,  soil,  humidity,  and  temperature, 
general  and  local."  The  direction  of  the  1 
movement  appears  to  be  toward  the  north-  \ 
east ;  and  in  its  invasion  of  Connecticut 
"  the  ague  crossed,  diagonally  but  decided-  1 
ly,  every  one  of  our  main  rivers.  Starting  ■ 
on  the  coast,  west  of  the  Housatonic,  it  ■ 
crossed  its  valley  the  next  year,  but  did 
not  ascend  it  more  than  about  fifteen  miles  ' 
in  as  many  years.  It  next  crossed  the  Nau- 
gatuck,  within  five  miles  of  its  mouth. 
The  Quinepiac  it  first  reached  and  crossed 
in  South  Meriden,  sixteen  miles  from  East 
Haven;  the  Connecticut  at  Middletown, 
twenty-five  miles  from  the  Sound ;  and  the 
tributaries  of  the  Thames  in  Coventry,  forty 
miles  from  the  sea."  In  Rhode  Island,  also, 
it  entered  at  Westerly  and  passed  through 
the  State  to  the  northeast,  leaving  the  south- 
east and  northwest  parts  unaffected.  The 
northeast  course  was  pursued  during  fifteen 
years,  or  till  18*75,  when  the  malarial  influ- 
ence had  reached  Windsor,  on  the  Connect- 
icut, After  that  time,  the  radiation,  or 
lateral  spread  of  the  disease,  became  more 
decided,  and  it  finally  covered  every  town 
in  the  State,  passing  the  line  of  Massachu- 
setts at  Agawam  in  1878.  In  the  next  four 
years  it  had  attacked  all  the  towns  in  West- 
em  Massachusetts,  and  a  few  scattered  over 
the  eastern  part  of  that  State,  and  had  in- 
vaded Vermont  and  New  Hampshire,  as 
well  as  Rhode  Island.  "  It  is  not  too  much 
to  suppose  that  it  came  over  from  Long 
Island  and  New  Jersey,  and  possibly  far- 
ther south,  as  well  as  from  the  same  region 
over  Westchester  County ;  that  its  front 
extends  from  the  Hudson  on  the  west  to 
Buzzard's  Bay  on  the  east;  that  it  has 
moved  a  hundred  miles  north  and  east,  and 
still  reaches  out  its  favors  to  those  belated 
north-men  and  down-Easters  who  have  hith- 
erto mocked  us." 


Hygiene  in  Schools. — An  article  on  this 
subject  in  "  The  Sanitary  Record,"  by  John 
W.  Tripe,  M.  D.,  contains  the  following : 
"  Children  are  now  taught,  m  public,  ele- 
mentary, and  other  schools,  a  number  of  facts 
concerning  the  rivers,  mountains,  coasts, 
etc.,  of  foreign  countries,  and  many  other 
things  which  do  not  immediately  concern 
them,  while  the  merest  outlines  of  the  rela- 
tions existing  between  the  blood  and  the 
various  organs  of  the  body,  and  of  the 
changes  occurring  therein,  rarely  form  any 
part  of  their  education.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  tell  children  about  the  size  of  the  liver, 
the  average  weight  and  muscular  power  of 
the  heart,  the  diameter  and  length  of  the 
great  vessels  of  the  body,  the  structure  of 
the  eye,  or  any  other  similar  facts ;  but 
surely  it  would  be  better  for  children,  at 
any  rate  in  the  advanced  classes,  to  be  taught 
as  to  the  action  of  fermented  liquors  on  the 
system,  and  on  the  organs  by  which  they 
are  excreted  from  the  body,  the  injurious- 
ness  of  excesses  in  eating  and  drinking,  and 
such  like  facts,  than  commit  to  memory  a 
mass  of  information  which  they  forget  al- 
most as  soon  as  learned.  They  would  also 
be  the  better  for  being  instructed  in  the 
relations  that  exist  between  health  and  the 
social  habits  and  customs  of  those  among 
whom  they  will  pass  their  lives.  Tliey  might 
also  be  told  the  reasons  why  high-heeled 
boots,  constricted  waists,  unwashed  skins, 
accumulations  of  refuse,  and  many  other 
things,  are  injurious  to  health  as  well  as 
opposed  to  comfort." 

How    Bnzzards  find  their  Prey, — On 

the  debated  question  as  to  the  particular 
sense  by  which  turkey-vultures  are  directed 
to  their  prey  from  great  distances,  Mr.  Sam- 
uel N.  Rhoads  brings  strong  evidence  in  the 
"  American  Naturalist "  in  favor  of  the 
sense  of  smell.  In  digging  some  sweet-po- 
tatoes, he  partly  uncovered  a  spot  where  a 
horse  and  cow  had  been  buried  some  years 
before.  In  a  few  hours  afterward  the  spot 
became  the  center  over  which  buzzards  hov- 
ered by  scores,  during  the  whole  of  the  fol- 
lowing day,  and  less  numerously  for  several 
days  afterward.  It  was  a  strangely  inter- 
esting spectacle,  he  says,  "  to  behold  them 
swoop  within  a  few  feet  of  the  horse-hades, 
and  rise  again  with  slow,  reluctant  flaps, 


4^6 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


indicative  of  disappointment,  then  return  to 
deliberately  '  beat '  and  '  quarter '  the  ground 
aerially  speaking,  with  all  the  tact  and  per- 
severing sagacity  of  their  canine  compeers." 
Gosse  relates  an  instance  that  occurred  in 
Jamaica,  where  vultures  circled  around  a 
house  in  which  some  meat  had  been  allowed 
to  spoil,  though  they  could  detect  nothing 
by  sight.  The  smelling  power  which  ena- 
bles them  thus  to  detect  their  prey  must 
be  very  delicate ;  for  Mr.  Rhoads  could  not 
detect  any  taint  in  the  atmosphere  while  he 
was  working  over  the  burial-place.  Doubt- 
less the  birds  also  use  their  eyes,  but  these 
instances  prove  that  the  olfactory  sense 
alone  is  sufficient  to  guide  them. 

Pond-Mnd  as   a   Diarrhoea-Breeder,— 

A  fact  is  related  in  the  report  of  the  State 
Board  of  Health  of  Connecticut  that  illus- 
trates the  effect  upon  health  of  exposing 
the  bottom  of  a  pond.  A  small  village  in 
the  town  of  Union  was  situated  close  upon 
the  borders  of  a  pond  that  was  drawn  down 
entirely  during  the  summer  and  fall,  for 
several  years  in  succession,  in  order  to  get 
the  water  from  another  pond  lying  above  it 
and  communicating  with  it.  When  the  pond 
was  first  drawn  down,  while  the  decaying 
materials  at  its  bottom,  which  probably  ex- 
tended over  twenty  or  thirty  acres  at  least, 
were  drying,  offensive  odors  were  complained 
of,  and  it  was  stated  that  they  caused  nausea 
and  vomiting ;  and  diarrhoeal  and  dysenteric 
troubles  were  stated  to  be  unusually  fre- 
quent. But  no  cases  of  malaria  were  re- 
ported as  having  originated  in  any  part  of 
the  town.  Several  large  ponds  between 
Palmer,  Massachusetts,  and  Union,  have  been 
completely  drawn  down  and  had  their  beds 
exposed,  without  any  cases  of  malaria  being 
known  to  have  originated  in  the  region. 

Pigs  as  Wine-Bibbers.— Mr.  W.  Mattieu 
■Williams  says  that  he  once  witnessed  a  dis- 
play of  drunkenness  among  three  hundred 
pigs,  which  had  been  given  a  barrel  of 
spoiled  eldcrbcrry-wine  all  at  once  with 
their  swill.  "  Their  behavior  was  intensely 
human,  exhibiting  all  the  usual  manifesta- 
tions of  jolly  good-fellowship,  including  that 
advanced  stage  where  a  group  were  rolling 
over  each  other  and  grunting  affectionately 
in  tones  that  were  distinctly  expressive  of 


swearing  good-fellowship  all  around.  Their 
reeling  and  staggering,  and  the  expression 
of  their  features,  all  indicated  that  alcohol 
had  the  same  effect  on  pigs  as  on  men  ; 
that  under  its  influence  both  stood  precisely 
on  the  same  zoological  level."  He  quotes 
also  MM.  Dujardin-Beaumetz  and  Audig6's 
account  to  the  French  Academy  of  Sciences 
of  their  experiments  during  three  years  on 
the  effects  of  alcoholic  diet  on  pigs.  "  Eight- 
een of  these  animals  were  treated  sumptu- 
ously, according  to  old-fashioned  notions  of 
hospitality,  by  mixing  various  alcohols  with 
their  food,  in  proportions  about  correspond- 
ing to  a  modest  half -pint  of  wine  at  dinner. 
The  alcohols  that  we  drink  in  wine,  malt- 
liquors,  whisky,  hollands,  brandy,  etc.,  in- 
variably produced  sleep,  prostration,  and 
general  lassitude,  while  absinthe  (included 
as  another  variety  of  alcohol)  produced  an 
excitation  resembling  epilepsy.  Some  of 
the  animals  died  from  the  effects  of  alco- 
holic poison.  The  survivors  were  killed, 
and  subjected  to  post-mortem  examination. 
All  were  found  to  be  injured,  but  the  mis- 
chief was  greatest  when  crude  spirit  was 
used,  less  when  it  was  carefully  redistilled 
and  purified. 

Food-Fislies  of  Lalte  Erie. — In  a  paper 
read  before  the  Buffalo  Naturalists'  Field 
Club  it  is  stated  that  Lake  Erie  and  the 
Niagara  River  furnish  thirty-seven  market- 
able varieties  of  fish.  But  their  numbers 
are  becoming  rapidly  reduced  in  those  wa- 
ters, owing  in  great  measure  to  so  many 
fish  being  taken  when  they  are  full  of  roe. 
Some  fish  spawn  late  in  the  fall ;  the  east- 
em  salmon,  salmon-trout,  whitefish,  brook- 
trout,  and  lake-herring,  belong  to  this  class, 
but  the  majority  spawn  in  April,  May,  or 
early  June.  Black  bass  choose  a  place  for 
their  spawn-beds  where  the  water  is  shal- 
low and  the  bottom  is  a  sandy  gravel.  They 
leave  their  winter  quarters  in  deep  water  a 
month  or  six  weeks  previous  to  spawning. 
The  eggs  hatch  in  from  one  to  two  weeks, 
according  to  the  temperature.  Bass  are 
very  prolific,  yielding  fully  one  fourth  their 
weight  of  spawn.  The  bass  and  the  mus- 
kallonge  {Esox  nobilior)  are  the  recognized 
game-fish  of  the  lakes.  Whitefish  do  not 
take  the  bait  readily,  but  are  caught  in  gill- 
nets,  and  can  be  taken  in  great  numbers 


POPULAR  3ns  CELL  ANY. 


427 


just  at  the  time  they  are  ready  to  spawn. 
They  average  three  and  a  half  pounds  in 
weight,  though  some  are  taken  weighing  ten 
to  eighteen  pounds.  Sturgeon  average  fifty 
pounds,  but  occasionally  one  is  caught  that 
weighs  a  hundred  pounds  or  over.  Fish 
differ  greatly  in  rapidity  of  growth.  Some 
grow  in  one,  two,  or  three  years  to  a  definite 
size,  and  then  growth  seems  to  be  arrested. 
Such  fish  are  short-lived.  Other  kinds, 
which  slowly  and  steadily  increase  in  size, 
attain  a  great  age.  Pike  have  been  known 
to  be  over  a  hundred  years  old.  There  is 
some  confusion  as  to  the  names  pike  and 
pickerel.  In  England,  where  there  is  but 
one  species  of  Esox^  a  young  pike  is  called  a 
pickei'el.  The  pike  of  our  Great  Lakes  is 
the  true  pike  {E.  luciui).  The  pickerel  {E. 
reticulatus)  is  more  common  in  small  lakes 
and  ponds.  An  easy  way  to  distinguish  them 
is  to  look  at  the  gill-covers.  If  they  are  en- 
tirely covered  with  scales,  it  is  a  pickerel ; 
but,  if  the  lower  half  of  the  opercula  is  bare 
of  scales,  it  is  a  pike. 

Karen  Funeral- Weddings.— Among  the 

Shan  Karens  of  Farther  India,  funerals  are 
made  the  occasions  of  grand  wedding  fes- 
tivals, in  which  all  the  marriageable  young 
men  and  women  of  the  village  are  prvileged 
to  participate.  As  it  is  not  always  conven- 
ient to  hold  these  interesting  ceremonies 
at  the  exact  time  when  a  villager  may  die, 
it  is  customary  to  deposit  the  corpse  of  the 
deceased  in  some  temporary  resting-place, 
or  to  burn  it  and  preserve  the  ashes  till 
the  times  and  the  marriage-market  are  more 
favorable  to  giving  it  obsequies  worthy  of 
its  former  estate.  Consequently,  six  months, 
or  a  year,  or  more,  may  frequently  pass  be- 
fore the  memory  of  the  dead  Karen  re- 
ceives the  honor  which  is  its  due.  When 
a  good  time  for  weddings  comes,  the  re- 
mains are  taken  from  their  temporary  rest- 
ing-place and  set  upon  a  platform  or  mat 
which  has  been  prepared  for  them,  and  the 
eligible  bachelors  and  marriageable  young 
women  of  the  neighborhood  having  been 
invited  to  come  and  compete  in  a  marrying- 
match,  arrange  themselves,  dressed  in  their 
gayest,  in  two  choirs  on  opposite  sides  of 
them.  The  "  funeral  service  "  is  then  be- 
gun with  a  chorus  of  the  men  celebrating 
the  beauties  of  the  Karen  maidens  in  gen- 


eral. The  girls  respond  in  their  drawling 
falsetto,  "calmly  accepting  the  eulogy  of 
their  graces."  These  overtures  are  usually 
set  pieces,  handed  down  from  antiquity,  or 
taken  and  translated  from  some  popular 
Burmese  play.  Next,  the  bachelors,  each 
in  his  turn,  beginning  usually,  for  the  sake 
of  peace,  with  the  most  muscular  one,  "  de- 
liver themselves  of  love-stricken  solos,"  di- 
rected by  name  to  the  several  damsels  whom 
they  have  chosen ;  if  one  of  them  is  rejected, 
he  waits  till  his  turn  comes  again,  and  ad- 
dresses, if  he  sees  fit,  some  other  girl.  The 
girls  receive  the  proposals  in  perfect  self- 
possession,  and  respond  to  them  in  phrases 
like  those  with  which  they  have  been  ad- 
dressed,  the  models  of  which  have  come 
down  from  the  old  times.  All  the  praise 
the  maiden  has  received,  s|je  appropriates 
as  only  her  just  due,  and  continuing,  she 
declares  that  it  is  a  shameful  thing  not  to 
be  married,  but  that  it  is  worse  to  be  di- 
vorced afterward,  "  to  be  like  a  dress  that 
has  been  washed,"  but  that  she  will  do  what 
she  is  bid.  If  the  girl  rejects  the  address, 
she  may  do  so  in  a  tone  indicating  that  she 
does  not  consider  she  has  been  praised 
enough,  or  with  some  such  indirect  phrase 
as  "  Come  to  me  when  the  full  moon  ap- 
pears on  the  first  day  of  the  month ;  come 
dressed  in  clothes  that  have  never  been 
stitched.  Dress  and  come  before  you  wake. 
Eat  your  rice  before  it  is  cooked,  and  come 
before  daylight."  Rejections,  however,  sel- 
dom occur,  except  when  some  young  man 
makes  a  mistake  and  applies  to  a  girl  who 
is  known  to  be  reserving  herself  for  another. 
The  "  funeral  service  "  goes  on  in  this  way 
till  it  is  plain  that  no  more  alliances  can  be 
made,  when  it  is  closed,  all  the  crockery 
that  belonged  to  the  deceased  is  broken, 
and  the  body  is  permanently  buried.  The 
matches  thus  made  are  binding,  and  no 
other  way  of  making  them  is  in  favor  ;  and, 
if  any  preliminary  private  courting  takes 
place,  it  is  subsidiary  to  the  funereal  occa- 
sion. 

Steel-Iron. — Professor  M.  Keil  has  pro- 
duced a  composite  material  of  iron  and 
steel  in  which  the  valuable  qualities  of  the 
two  substances  are  combined,  and  the  com- 
bination is  made  available  for  a  variety  of 
uses.     The  principle  of  his  process  is  ex- 


428 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


emplified  in  a  cast-iron  mold  divided  cen- 
trally by  a  thin  sheet  of  iron,  on  one  side 
of  which  sheet  fluid  iron  is  poured,  and  on 
the  other  side  fluid  steel.  The  dividing 
plate  should  be  thick  enough  to  prevent  the 
glowing  masses  on  either  side  from  burning 
through  it,  and  yet  so  thin  that  those  masses 
and  it  shall  become  thoroughly  welded  to- 
gether. The  combination  has  been  pro- 
duced in  five  shapes :  steel  by  the  side  of 
iron ;  steel  between  two  layers  of  iron ;  iron 
between  two  layers  of  steel ;  a  core  of  steel 
with  the  surrounding  shell  of  iron ;  and  a 
core  of  iron  with  the  surrounding  shell  of 
steel.  This  steel-iron  may  be  used  for  a 
great  variety  of  purposes  in  which  the  hard 
qualities  of  steel,  enabling  it  to  resist  wear 
and  tear,  or  adapting  it  to  cutting  pur- 
poses, need  to  be  backed  by  a  tougher  ma- 
terial competent  to  resist  strains  and  great 
vibration. 

Hedgehogs  and  their  History, — Profess- 
or Grant  Allen,  writing  in  an  EngUsh  paper 
of  the  structure  and  habits  of  the  hedge- 
hog, observes  that  the  curious  spines  the 
animal  wears  on  his  back  are  a  feature  very 
apt  to  recur  among  animals  of  different 
classes  the  world  over,  which  are  much  ex- 
posed to  carnivorous  enemies.  The  porcu- 
pine, a  rodent  in  no  way  related  to  the 
hedgehog,  and  the  Australian  echidna,  al- 
lied to  the  ornithorhynchus,  have  precisely 
similar  spines.  "The  fact  is,  almost  all 
surviving  members  of  very  low  and  early 
groups  are  extremely  likely  to  have  such 
peculiar  spiny  or  armor-plated  bodies,  be- 
cause only  those  which  happened  to  be  so 
protected  have  managed  to  escape  the  per- 
sistent attention  of  a  million  generations  of 
vermin-eating  carnivores.  Hence  they  are 
apt  to  be  either  prickly,  as  in  these  in- 
stances, or  else  protected  by  a  regular  cov- 
ering of  bone-like  hardness,  as  in  the  ar- 
madillo, the  poyou,  the  pangolin,  and  the 
scaly  ant-eaters.  The  spines  of  the  hedge- 
hog are  in  reality  very  hard,  bristly  hairs, 
specially  developed  for  purposes  of  defense. 
Of  course,  however,  he  did  not  get  these 
most  effective  chevaux-de-frhe  all  at  a  sin- 
gle blow.  They  are  the  result  of  slow  and 
constant  modification  in  a  long  line  of  an- 
cestors, and  not  a  few  intermediate  forms 
are  still  in  existence  to  show  us,  either  di- 


rectly or  by  analogy,  the  fashion  in  which 
the  defensive  prickles  were  originally 
evolved.  The  bulau,  of  Sumatra,  has  a  few 
stout  bristly  hairs  scattered  among  the  fur 
of  its  back,  and  gives  the  first  indication  of 
a  tendency  toward  the  production  of  spines. 
It  can  not,  however,  roll  itself  up  into  a 
ball,  like  the  hedgehog.  The  tanree,  of 
Madagascar,  is  covered  with  a  mixture  of 
hairs,  bristles,  and  true  spines ;  while  an- 
other animal  of  the  same  island  still  more 
closely  approaches  the  hedgehog  in  the 
greater  spininess  of  its  body  and  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  power  of  rolling  itself  up. 
"  Finally,  we  get  in  Europe  and  Asia  sev- 
eral kinds  of  genuine,  fully  developed  hedge- 
hogs, of  which  our  own  English  specimen 
here  in  the  ditch  is  a  typical  example.  It 
is  not  often  that  all  the  intermediate  stages 
between  two  distinct  animal  types  have  been 
so  well  preserved  for  us  by  nature  as  in  this 
interesting  instance." 

Seienee  in  Brazil. — M.  de  Quatrefages 
recently  improved  the  occasion  of  presenting 
to  the  French  Academy  of  Sciences  a  num- 
ber of  documents  from  the  Brazilian  muse- 
um at  Rio  Janeiro,  to  speak  in  praise  of  the 
scientific  progress  that  has  been  made  in  that 
country  under  the  wise  encouragement  of 
the  Emperor  Dom  Pedro  II.  The  govern- 
ment, societies,  municipalities,  and  a  host  of 
individuals,  are  rivaling  one  another  in  their 
zeal  for  the  multiplication  of  educational 
establishments  and  for  endowing  them  as 
richly  as  possible.  Nearly  one  sixth  of  the 
revenue  of  the  country  is  applied  to  pur- 
poses of  public  instruction.  The  first  four 
volumes  of  the  archives  of  the  National  Mu- 
seum are  marked  by  many  valuable  essays, 
among  which  were  spoken  of,  as  particularly 
deserving  attention,  the  studies  of  Dr.  Pizzar- 
ro  on  a  curious  batrachian,  and  of  M.  Fred- 
erick MuUer  on  insects ;  of  M.  Lacerda  on 
the  poison  of  different  snakes  and  of  a  toad ; 
the  anthropological  labors  of  MM.  Lacerta 
and  Peixoto  on  the  tribe  of  the  Botocudos, 
and  on  some  skulls  found  in  ancient  funeral 
urns ;  and  a  memoir  by  M.  Ladislau  Nctto 
regarding  American  origins  and  migrations. 
The  last  study  is  based  upon  the  strange 
custom,  which  is  observed  in  a  large  num- 
ber of  tribes  from  the  extreme  northwestern 
part  of  the  continent  to  Brazil,  of  boring  the 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY, 


429 


lower  lip  and  hanging  from  it  ornaments  of 
different  forms  and  natures.  A  paper  also 
appears  in  this  volume  by  M.  Fireira  Penna 
on  the  ceramios  of  Para,  low  tumuli,  which 
are  wholly  composed  of  urns  or  other  ves- 
sels of  terra -cotta,  laid  together  and  ar- 
ranged in  beds.  The  recent  Brazilian  An- 
thropological Exhibition,  which  was  very 
successful,  is  to  be  followed  by  another,  in 
which  it  is  hoped  the  whole  American  Con- 
tinent will  be  represented. 

Magnetism  of  a  Great  City.— Mr.  Rich- 
ard Jeffries,  in  his  essays  on  "  Nature  near 
London,"  remarks  upon  the  way  in  which 
the  magnetism  of  London  is  a  force  in  its 
remotest  suburbs,  and  the  influence  of  the 
mighty  city  is  felt  in  its  most  rural  environ- 
ments. "In  the  shadiest  lane,"  he  says, 
"  in  the  still  pine-woods,  on  the  hills  of 
purple  heath,  after  brief  contemplation 
there  arose  a  restlessness,  a  feeling  that  it 
was  essential  to  be  moving.  In  no  grassy 
mead  was  there  a  nook  where  I  could  stretch 
myself  in  slumberous  ease  and  watch  the 
swallows  ever  wheeling,  wheeling  in  the  sky. 
The  something  wanting  in  the  fields  was  the 
absolute  quiet,  peace,  and  rest  which  dwell 
in  the  meadows,  and  under  tne  trees,  and 
on  the  hill-tops  in  the  country."  The  inev- 
itable end  of  every  foot-path  round  about 
London  is  London ;  the  proximity  of  the 
immense  city  induces  a  mental,  a  nerve 
restlessness  ;  and,  as  you  sit  and  dream,  you 
can  not  dream  for  long,  for  something  plucks 
at  the  mind  with  constant  reminder  "  that 
the  inland  hills,  and  meads,  and  valleys,  are 
like  Sindbad's  ocean,  but  that  London  is  like 
the  magnetic  mountain  which  draws  all  ships 
to  it." 

Bacteria  and  Cliolera. — Dr.  Koch,  of 
the  German  Cholera  Commission,  has 
made  a  report  of  the  commission's  exami- 
nations  of  cholera  cases  in  Egypt.  The  dis- 
ease was  on  the  decline  when  the  commis- 
sion began  its  work,  and  this  may  partly 
account  for  the  unsatisfactory  character  of 
the  results.  Twelve  unquestionable  cholera 
patients  were  examined,  and  autopsies  were 
held  on  the  bodies  of  ten  persons  who  had 
died  of  cholera.  No  micro-organisms  were 
found  in  the  blood  of  the  patients,  and 
but  few  in  the  matters  vomited  up,  but  a 


considerable  number  were  found  in  the 
dejections.  In  the  autopsies,  no  infectious 
organic  matter,  except  a  few  probably  ac- 
cidental bacteria  in  the  lungs,  was  noticed 
in  the  lungs,  the  spleen,  the  kidneys,  or  the 
liver.  A  well-determined  species  of  bac- 
teria was,  however,  found  in  the  walls  of 
the  intestines,  and  in  some  cases  had  pene- 
trated to  the  tubular  glands  of  the  mucous 
coat,  and  provoked  an  irritation  there,  and 
had  even  reached  the  deeper  layers  of  the 
mucous  coat,  and  sometimes  the  muscular 
coat.  It  seemed  evident  that  they  had  a 
connection  with  cholera,  but  whether  as 
cause  or  merely  as  an  accompaniment  or 
result  was  still  uncertain.  To  test  this 
question,  inoculations  were  made  upon  mice 
and  monkeys,  and  a  few  dogs  and  chickens, 
and  the  bacterial  poison  was  administered 
to  some  of  the  animals,  but  without  effect 
in  producing  symptoms  of  cholera ;  although 
in  a  few  of  the  cases  septic  affections  fol- 
lowed. The  results  actually  obtained,  how- 
ever, seem  to  Dr.  Koch  to  afford  a  good 
reason  why  the  experiments  should  be  con- 
tinued. 

Superstitions    about   Infants. — Dr.   H, 

Ploss  remarks,  in  his  book  (in  German)  on 
"  The  Child  in  the  Customs  and  Usages  of 
Peoples,"  that  the  birth  of  a  child  impresses 
its  relatives  with  the  feeling  that  they  are 
brought  into  the  immediate  presence  of  one 
of  the  mysterious  powers  of  Nature,  whose 
kindness  in  conferring  the  gift  is  acknowl- 
edged, and  whose  favor  is  invoked  with  ob- 
servances in  which  feasts  and  offerings  near- 
ly always  have  a  place ;  and  the  ceremonies 
observed  on  such  occasions,  and  the  toys 
that  are  given  the  child,  have  frequently 
an  ingenious,  sometimes  an  educational 
significance.  The  natural  process  of  birth 
is  brought,  in  the  imagination  of  the  people, 
into  relation  with  hidden  or  supernatural 
causes  :  by  many  tribes  it  is  supposed  to  be 
superintended  by  particular  divinities  ;  and 
the  dangers  and  diseases  to  which  the  child 
is  subject  are  ascribed  to  similar  mysterious 
agencies.  The  accidents  of  pregnancy,  the 
cries  and  calls,  the  influence  of  the  evil-eye, 
the  substitution  of  a  changeling  for  the 
child,  the  ill-omened  significance  attached  to 
certain  acts,  form  a  stock  of  superstitions 
deeply  impressed  in  the  popular  imagina- 


430 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


tion.  From  the  search  for  supernatural 
means  of  driving  away  the  evil  spirits  sup- 
posed to  be  working  harm  to  the  child  have 
arisen  very  curious  and  wide-spread  doc- 
trines which  are  of  great  value  in  the  history 
of  customs.  The  little  being  who  has  come 
into  the  world  is  not  always  believed  to  be 
pure,  and  to  have  a  clear  right  to  existence. 
Many  peoples  regard  it  as  "  unclean "  and 
not  to  be  touched  for  a  certain  time.  Others 
require  it  to  be  expressly  recognized  by  the 
father ;  and  some  give  the  parents  a  right 
to  expose  or  kill  it  immediately.  Among 
most  people  it  is  considered  essential  to  per- 
form some  kind  of  ceremony  for  formally 
adopting  the  child  into  the  family  and  so- 
ciety. Such  ceremonies  are  generally  dietetic, 
or  relate  to  washing  and  bathing,  anoint- 
ing the  skin,  giving  the  first  food,  circum- 
cision, putting  on  clothing,  or  cutting  the 
hair,  and  are  observed  as  important  mys- 
teries favorable  to  bodily  endurance  and 
mental  vigor.  Here  we  approach  the  tran- 
sition from  the  instinctive  hygiene  of  popu- 
lar customs  to  religious  ceremonies.  Sur- 
vivals of  the  notions  here  pointed  to  are 
traced  by  Herr  Ploss  among  popular  cus- 
toms that  have  not  yet  died  out  in  the  more 
retired  districts  of  Europe. 

Use  of  Salt. — Among  other  follies  of  the 
day,  some  indiscreet  persons  are  objecting 
to  the  use  of  salt,  and  propose  to  do  without 
it.  Nothing  could  be  more  absurd.  Com- 
mon salt  is  the  most  widely-distributed  sub- 
stance in  the  body ;  it  exists  in  every  fluid 
and  in  every  solid  ;  and  not  only  is  it  every- 
where present,  but  in  almost  every  part  it 
constitutes  the  largest  portion  of  the  ash 
when  any  tissue  is  burned.  In  particular,  it 
is  a  constant  constituent  of  the  blood,  and 
it  maintains  in  it  a  proportion  that  is  almost 
wholly  independent  of  the  quantity  that  is 
consumed  with  the  food.  The  blood  will 
take  up  60  much  and  no  more,  however 
much  we  may  take  with  our  food ;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  if  none  be  given,  the  blood 
parts  with  its  natural  quantity  slowly  and  un- 
willingly. Under  ordinary  circumstances,  a 
healthy  man  loses  daily  about  twelve  grains 
by  one  channel  or  the  other,  and,  if  he  is  to 
maintain  his  health,  that  quantity  must  be 
introduced.  Common  salt  is  of  immense 
importance  in  the  processes  ministering  to 


the  nutrition  of  the  body,  for  not  only  is  it 
the  chief  salt  in  the  gastric  juice,  and  essen- 
tial for  the  formation  of  bile,  and  may  hence 
be  reasonably  regarded  as  of  high  value  in 
digestion,  but  it  is  an  important  agent  in 
promoting  the  processes  of  diffusion,  and 
therefore  of  absorption.  Direct  experiment 
has  shown  that  it  promotes  the  decomposi- 
tion of  albumen  in  the  body,  acting,  proba- 
bly, by  increasing  the  activity  of  the  trans- 
mission of  fluids  from  cell  to  cell.  Nothing 
can  demonstrate  its  value  better  than  the 
fact  that,  if  albumen  without  salt  is  intro- 
duced into  the  intestine  of  an  animal,  no 
portion  of  it  is  absorbed,  while  it  all  quickly 
disappears  if  salt  be  added.  If  any  further 
evidence  were  required,  it  would  be  found 
in  the  powerful  instinct  which  impels  ani- 
mals to  obtain  salt.  Buffaloes  will  travel 
for  miles  to  reach  a  "  salt-lick "  ;  and  the 
value  of  salt  in  improving  the  nutrition  and 
the  aspect  of  horses  aud  cattle  is  well  known 
to  every  farmer.  The  popular  notion  that 
the  use  of  salt  prevents  the  development  of 
worms  in  the  intestine  has  a  foundation  in 
fact,  for  salt  is  fatal  to  the  small  thread- 
worms, and  prevents  their  reproduction  by 
improving  the  general  tone  and  the  charac- 
ter of  the  secretions  of  the  alimentary  canal. 
The  conclusion,  therefore,  is  obvious  that 
salt,  being  wholesome,  and  indeed  necessary, 
should  be  taken  in  moderate  quantities,  and 
that  abstention  from  it  is  likely  to  be  inju- 
rious.—  Lancet. 

Intelligence  of  a  Tnrret-Spider,— The 

nest  of  the  Tarentula  arenicoJa^  or  Ameri- 
can turret-spider,  is  a  vertical  tube,  extend- 
ing twelve  or  more  inches  into  the  ground, 
and  projecting  half  an  inch  to  an  inch  above 
the  surface.  The  projecting  portion,  or  tur- 
ret, is  in  the  form  of  a  pentagon,  more  or 
less  regular,  and  is  built  up  of  bits  of  grass 
and  straw,  small  twigs,  etc.,  cemented  with 
mud,  like  a  miniature  old-fashioned  chim- 
ney. The  upper  part  of  the  tube  has  a  thin 
lining  of  web-silk.  A  nest  was  exhibited 
by  Vice-President  H.  C.  McCook,  D.  D.,  at  a 
meeting  of  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences, 
of  Philadelphia,  which,  during  its  journey 
from  Vineland,  New  Jersey,  where  it  was 
found,  had  been  plugged  at  top  and  bottom 
with  cotton.  Upon  the  arrival  of  the  nest 
in  Philadelphia,  the  plug  guarding  the  en- 


NOTES. 


431 


trance  had  been  removed,  but  the  other  had 
been  forgotten.  The  spider,  which  still  in- 
habited the  tube,  immediately  began  remov- 
ing the  cotton  from  the  lower  end,  and  cast 
some  of  it  out.  But  guided,  apparently  by 
its  sense  of  touch,  to  the  knowledge  that 
the  soft  fibers  would  be  an  excellent  mate- 
rial with  which  to  line  its  tube,  it  speedily 
put  in  a  cotton  padding  for  about  four  inches 
downward  from  the  opening.  Dr.  McCook 
pointed  out  the  very  manifest  inference  that 
the  spider  must,  for  the  first  time,  have  come 
in  contact  with  such  a  material  as  cotton,  and 
had  immediately  utiUzed  its  new  experience 
by  adding  the  soft  fiber  to  the  ordinary  silken 
lininjc. 


NOTES. 

The  Franklin  Institute  will  open  an  In- 
ternational Exhibition  of  Electricity  and 
Electrical  Appliances  in  Philadelphia,  on 
the  2d  day  of  September  next.  By  a  spe- 
cial act  of  Congress,  all  articles  "  imported 
solely  for  exhibition"  on  this  occasion  will 
be  admitted  free  of  duty ;  but,  if  they  are 
sold  or  withdrawn  for  consumption,  the  reg- 
ular duties  must  be  paid  upon  them. 

Victor-Alexandre  Puiseux,  a  French 
astronomer,  died  in  September  last.  He 
was  the  author  of  numerous  memoirs  on 
astronomical  subjects  to  the  Academy  of 
Sciences,  and  had  been  occupied  very  indus- 
triously with  calculations  based  upon  the 
transits  of  Venus  of  1874  and  1882. 

Dr.  J.  B.  Sutton,  of  Middlesex  Hospital, 
in  a  communication  to  the  "Lancet,"  dis- 
proves the  current  opinion  that  monkeys  j 
die  chiefly  from  tubercle.  Having  been  per-  | 
mitted  to  attend  the  post-mortem  examina-  ' 
tions  of  animals  dving  in  the  Zoological 
Gardens,  Regent's  Park,  he  personally  in- 
spected the  remains  of  ninety-three  monk- 
eys. Of  this  number,  three  were  found 
to  have  died  of  tubercle,  twenty-two  of 
bronchitis,  three  of  lobar  pneumonia,  seven 
of  lobular  pneumonia,  one  of  septic  pneu- 
monia, twenty-three  of  other  diseases,  in- 
cluding three  of  scrofula  and  four  of  typhoid 
fever,  while  in  thirty-four  cases  no  lesion 
was  met  with  sufficient  to  explain  the  deaths 
of  the  creatures. 

Dr.  Conrad  Bursian,  a  distinguished 
German  philologist,  died  on  the  21st  of  Sep- 
tember, having  just  a  few  days  before  fin- 
ished his  great  work  on  the  '*  History  of  Phi- 
lology." He  had  been  a  professor  succes- 
sively in  the  Universities  of  Leipsic,  Tiibin- 
gen,  Zurich,  and  Munich,  and  was  a  member 
of  several  learned  societies. 


M.  Cheyreul,  the  "  dean  "  of  the  French 
Academy  of  Sciences,  reached  his  ninety- 
eighth  year  on  the  last  day  of  August,  and 
was  still  physically  vigorous  and  fresh  of 
heart.  The  President  of  the  Academy,  in 
taking  notice  of  the  fact,  remarked :  "  M. 
Chevreul  has  belonged  to  the  Academy 
which  he  has  so  much  honored  by  his  labors 
for  fifty-seven  years ;  and  he  would,  in  fact, 
have  counted  it  sixty-seven  years,  if  by  an 
extremely  rare  sentiment  of  generosity  he 
had  not  allowed  himself  to  be  passed  over 
in  1816,  to  give  place  to  a  chemist  (M. 
Proust)  whom  he  called  his  master," 

Statisticians  have  pronounced  the  Uni- 
ted States  to  be  not  only  potentially  but 
actually  richer  than  the  United  Kingdom. 
Counting  the  houses,  furniture,  manufac- 
tures, railways,  shipping,  bullion,  lands,  cat- 
tle, crops,  investments,  and  roads,  it  is  esti- 
mated that  there  is  a  grand  total  in  the 
United  States  of  $49,770,000,000.  Great 
Britain  is  credited  with  something  less  than 
$40,000,000,000,  or  nearly  $10,000,000,000 
less  than  the  United  States.  The  wealth  per 
;  inhabitant  in  Great  Britain  is  estimated  at 
'  $1,160,  and  in  the  United  States  at  $995. 
With  regard  to  the  remuneration  of  labor, 
assuming  the  produce  of  labor  to  be  100,  in 
Great  Britain  56  parts  go  to  the  laborer,  21 
to  capital,  and  23  to  government.  In  France 
j  41  parts  go  to  labor,  36  to  capital,  and  23 
I  to  government.  In  the  United  States  72 
I  parts  go  to  labor,  23  to  capital,  and  five  to 
;  government. — London  Times. 

M.  Joseph  -  Antoine  -  Ferdinand  Pla- 
teau, an  eminent  physicist  and  emeritus 
professor  at  the  University  of  Ghent,  died 
September  15th,  in  his  eighty-second  year. 


M.  A.  Milne-Edwards  reports  that  he 
met  with  great  success  near  Teneriffe  on 
his  deep-sea  expedition  in  the  steamer  Talis- 
man. The  dredging  apparatus  is  strong 
enough  to  bring  up  rocks  weighing  a  hun- 
dred kilogrammes  from  the  depth  of  a  thou- 
sand metres.  The  collections  promise  to  be 
immense,  greater  than  it  will  be  possible  to 
bring  home.  Among  the  species  gathered 
are  crustaceans  of  forms  resembling  those 
of  the  Antilles,  curious  fishes  with  luminous 
organs,  crinoids,  asterias,  strange  holuthu- 
rians,  numerous  sponges,  and  mollusks,  ex- 
hibiting a  novel  mingling  of  African  with 
Mediterranean  and  Polar  forms.  On  the 
Island  of  Branco,  which  had  never  been 
scientifically  visited  before,  the  expedition 
found  large  lizards,  such  as  are  not  known  to 
occur  anywhere  else,  and  which  appear  to 
have  a  good  living  of  herbaceous  food,  al- 
though the  island  is  nearly  destitute  of 
vegetation. 

Dr.  j.  Lawrence  Smith,  of  Louisville, 
Kentucky,  died  on  the  12th  of  October  last, 
in  the  sixty-fifth  year  of  his  age.  He  had  dis- 


432 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


tinguished  himself  by  many  valuable  ehemi- 
cal  researches  and  publications  respecting 
them,  particularly  by  his  investigations  into 
the  composition  and  nature  of  meteoric 
stones.  A  portrait  and  sketch  of  Dr.  Smith 
were  given  in  "  The  Popular  Science  Month- 
ly" for  December,  1874. 

Mr.  Morgan  J.  Roberts  tells  in  *'  Na- 
ture "  of  a  collie-dog  owned  by  him  which 
was  accustomed  to  go  with  him  fishing,  and 
took  great  interest  in  the  business.  She 
learned  that  there  existed  a  close  connec- 
tion between  the  bobbing  and  final  disap- 
pearance of  the  float  and  the  pulling  up  of 
a  fish,  and  would  become  very  much  excited 
whenever  she  saw  the  float  in  agitation.  On 
one  occasion  when  her  master  was  away 
from  the  rods,  observing  a  float  disappear- 
ing, she  uttered  one  or  two  sharp  yelps,  and, 
her  master  faiUng  to  come,  herself  seized 
the  rod,  and,  "backing"  with  it,  attempted 
to  pull  the  line  from  the  water.  The  hook 
held  "  a  goodly  eel." 

Professor   Oswald    Heer,   the   distin- 
guished Swiss  paleontologist  and  botanist, 
died  at  Lausanne,  September  27th.    He  was 
director  of  the  Botanical  Garden  at  Zurich,  | 
and  editor  of  the  Swiss  "  Journal  of  Agri- 
culture and  Horticulture  " ;  and  was  the  au-  | 
thor  of  the  "Urwelt  der  Schweitz  "  ("  Primi-  [ 
tive  World  of  Switzerland  "),  which  has  been  ! 
translated  into  many  foreign  languages ;  of  ! 
a  work  on  Swiss    Coleoptera ;  and,  in  con-  ! 
nection  with  Hegetschweiler,  of  the  "  Flora  \ 
of  Switzerland." 

MiLLEMAiNE  is  the  name  of  a  new  cereal 
which  has  been  introduced  into  South  Caro- 
lina, from  Colombia,  South  America.  It  is 
allied  to  sorghum  and  Guinea  corn,  and  has 
the  merit  of  an  almost  unlimited  capacity  to 
endure  di'ought.  Cakes  made  from  the 
meal  have  been  described  as  better  than 
corn  -  cakes,  and  the  grain  has  been  pro- 
nounced by  the  chemist  of  the  Savannah 
Guano  Company  superior  in  food  qualities 
to  wheat. 

M.  Alfred  Niaudet,  who  died  in  Octo- 
ber last,  is  pronounced  by  "  La  Nature  "  to 
have  been  the  person  who,  more  than  any 
other  one,  contributed  to  the  development 
in  France  of  the  industries  dependent  on 
electricity.  He  did  valuable  service  to  the 
country  in  his  special  line  during  the  Franco- 
Prussian  War,  and,  besides  numerous  papers 
on  dynamo-electric  machines,  telephony,  and 
telegraphy,  was  the  author  of  two  works 
that  are  authorities  on  electric  piles  and 
dynamo-electric  motors. 

The  death  is  reported  of  M.  F.  S.  Cloez, 
an  industrious  French  chemist,  who  assisted 
M.  Chevreul  some  thirty-six  years  ago,  and 
was  afterward  Professor  of  Physics  in  the 
School  of  the  Fine  Arts.  He  was  author  of 
several  memoirs  of  considerable  value. 


According  to  Dr.  Sach,  of  Buenos 
Ayres,  there  is  no  danger  of  an  exhaustion 
of  the  quinine-supply.  The  experimental 
plantations  in  Java  and  the  Island  of  Re- 
union have  been  very  successful ;  and,  be- 
sides these  nurseries,  the  trees  have  been 
cultivated  in  Bolivia  by  the  million  for  ten 
years.  At  three  places  in  the  last-named 
country,  taken  as  they  come,  the  number  of 
trees  growing  is  given,  severally,  at  70,000, 
200,000,  and  3,500,000. 

Dr.  Charles  William  Siemens,  the  dis- 
tinguished engineer  and  electrician,  died  in 
London,  November  20th,  of  rupture  of  the 
heart.  He  was  born  in  Lenthe,  Hanover, 
in  1823,  and  has  given  the  world  the  re- 
generative gas-furnace,  with  an  improved 
process  for  making  steel ;  has  been  greatly 
instrumental  in  the  extension  of  telegraphic 
cables,  and  has  produced  a  series  of  valua- 
ble improvements  in  the  saving  and  utiliza- 
tion of  heat  and  in  applications  of  elec- 
tricity. 

M.  Jules  Carret  has  found,  by  com- 
paring the  statistics  of  conscripts  furnished 
from  a  certain  region  of  France  during  ten 
years  of  the  first  empire  with  those  for 
1872-'79,  that  in  every  commune  an  in- 
crease is  apparent  in  the  average  height  of 
the  inhabitants.  If  this  is  established,  the 
fact  will  tend  to  contradict  Broca's  view 
that  stature  is  almost  wholly  a  matter  of 
ethnic  heredity,  and  to  show  that  improve- 
ment in  the  conditions  of  life  has  something 
to  do  with  it. 

With  the  death  of  M.  Louis  Breguet, 
which  took  place  suddenly  on  the  27th  of 
October,  is  ''  effaced  for  the  moment,"  says 
M.  Blanchard,  President  of  the  French 
Academy  of  Sciences,  "  a  name  celebrated 
in  the  mechanic  arts  from  the  eighteenth 
century."  He  was  the  grandson  and  busi- 
ness successor  of  Abraham  Breguet,  who 
founded  the  watch-making  house  of  that 
name  in  1780,  and  was  the  father  of  the  late 
Antoine  Breguet,  of  the  "Revue  Scienti- 
fiquc."  He  was  himself  distinguished  for 
services  in  the  applications  of  electricity 
and  in  the  advancement  of  telegraphy,  and 
was  a  member  of  several  learned  societies. 
He  was  sixty-nine  years  old. 

A  -WAT  has  been  found  for  utilizing  the 
bodies  of  animals  that  have  died  of  anthrax. 
They  are  treated  with  sulphuric  acid,  and 
then  converted  into  superphosphates.  The 
germs  are  destroyed  during  the  process. 

Dr.  John  L.  Le  Conte,  one  of  the  most 
eminent  American  entomologists,  died  at 
his  home  in  Philadelphia,  November  15th. 
He  presided  at  the  Hartford  meeting  of  the 
American  Association  in  1874.  A  portrait 
and  sketch  of  him  were  given  in  "The  Popu- 
lar Science  Monthly"  for  September,  1874. 


CHARLES  WILLIAM   SIEMENS. 


THE 

POPULAR    SCIENCE 
MONTHLY. 


FEBBUABT,   1884. 


THE    ISTEW   TOKYISM. 

Br  HERBERT  SPENCEE. 

MOST  of  those  who  now  pass  as  Liberals,  are  Tories  of  a  new 
type.  This  is  a  paradox  which  I  propose  to  justify.  That  I 
may  justify  it,  I  must  first  point  out  what  the  two  political  parties 
originally  were  ;  and  I  must  then  ask  the  reader  to  bear  with  me  while 
I  remind  him  of  facts  he  is  familiar  with,  that  I  may  impress  on  him 
the  intrinsic  natures  of  Toryism  and  Liberalism  properly  so  called. 

Dating  back  to  an  earlier  period  than  their  names,  these  two  po- 
litical parties  at  first  stood  respectively  for  two  opposed  types  of  social 
organization,  broadly  distinguishable  as  the  militant  and  the  indus- 
trial— types  which  are  characterized,  the  one  by  the  regime  status, 
almost  universal  in  ancient  days,  and  the  other  characterized  by  the 
regime  of  contract,  which  has  become  general  in  modern  days,  chiefly 
among  the  Western  nations,  and  especially  among  ourselves  and  the 
Americans.  If,  instead  of  using  the  word  "  co-operation  "  in  a  limited 
sense,  we  use  it  in  its  widest  sense,  as  describing  the  combined  activi- 
ties of  citizens  under  whatever  system  of  regulation,  then  these  two 
are  definable  as  the  system  of  compulsory  co-operation  and  the  system 
of  voluntary  co-operation.  The  typical  structure  of  the  one  we  see 
in  an  army  formed  of  conscripts,  in  which  the  units  in  their  several 
grades  have  to  fulfill  commands  under  pain  of  death,  and  receive  food 
and  clothing  and  pay  arbitrarily  apportioned  ;  while  the  typical  struct- 
ure of  the  other  we  see  in  a  body  of  producers  or  distributors,  who 
severally  agree  to  specified  salaries  and  wages  in  return  for  specified 
services,  and  may  at  will,  after  due  notice,  leave  the  organization  if 
they  do  not  like  it. 

During  social  evolution  in  England,  the  distinction  between  these 
two  fundamentally-opposed  forms  of  co-operation  made  its  appearance 
VOL.  XXIV. — 28 


434  TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

gradually  ;  but  long  before  the  names  Tory  and  "Whig  came  into  use, 
the  parties  were  becoming  traceable,  and  their  connections  with  mili- 
tancy and  industrialism  respectively  were  vaguely  shown.  The  truth 
is  familiar  that  here,  as  elsewhere,  it  was  habitually  by  town-popula- 
tions, formed  of  workers  and  traders  accustomed  to  co-operate  under 
contract,  that  resistances  were  made  to  that  coercive  rule  which  char- 
acterizes co-operation  under  status.  While  conversely,  support  of  co- 
operation under  status,  arising  from,  and  adjusted  to,  chronic  warfare, 
came  from  rural  districts,  originally  peopled  by  military  chiefs  and 
their  dependents,  which  retained  the  primitive  ideas  and  traditions. 
Moreover,  this  contrast  in  political  leanings,  shown  before  Whig  and 
Tory  principles  became  clearly  distinguished,  continued  to  be  shown 
afterward.  At  the  period  of  the  Revolution,  "  while  the  villages  and 
smaller  towns  were  monopolized  by  Tories,  the  larger  cities,  the  manu- 
facturing districts,  and  the  ports  of  commerce,  formed  the  strongholds 
of  the  Whigs"  ;  and  that,  spite  of  exceptions,  the  like  general  relation 
still  exists,  needs  no  proving. 

Such  were  the  natures  of  the  two  parties  as  indicated  by  their  ori- 
gins. Observe,  now,  how  their  natures  were  indicated  by  their  early 
doctrines  and  deeds.  Whiggism  began  with  resistance  to  Charles  II 
and  his  cabal,  in  their  efforts  to  re-establish  unchecked  monarchical 
power.  The  Whigs  "regarded  the  monarchy  as  a  civil  institution,- 
established  by  the  nation  for  the  benefit  of  all  its  members  "  ;  while 
with  the  Tories  "  the  monarch  was  the  delegate  of  Heaven."  And  these 
doctrines  involved  the  beliefs,  the  one  that  subjection  of  citizen  to 
ruler  was  conditional,  and  the  other  that  it  was  unconditional.  De- 
scribing Whig  and  Tory  as  conceived  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  some  fifty  years  before  he  wrote  his  "  Dissertation  on  Par- 
ties," Bolingbroke  says  : 

The  power  and  majesty  of  the  people,  an  original  contract,  the  authority  and 
independency  of  Parliaments,  liberty,  resistance,  exclusion,  abdication,  deposi- 
tion ;  these  were  ideas  associated,  at  that  time,  to  the  idea  of  a  Whig,  and  sup- 
posed by  every  Whig  to  be  incommunicable,  and  inconsistent  with  the  idea  of  a 
Tory. 

Divine,  hereditary,  indefeasible  right,  lineal  succession,  passive-obedience, 
prerogative,  non-resistance,  slavery,  nay,  and  sometimes  popery  too,  were  asso- 
ciated in  many  minds  to  the  idea  of  a  Tory,  and  deemed  incommunicable  and 
inconsistent,  in  the  same  manner,  with  the  idea  of  a  Whig  ("Dissertation  on 
Parties,"  p.  5). 

And  if  we  compare  these  descriptions,  we  see  that  in  the  one  party 
there  was  a  desire  to  resist  and  decrease  the  coercive  power  of  the  ruler 
over  the  subject,  and  in  the  other  party  to  maintain  or  increase  his 
coercive  power.  This  distinction  in  their  aims — a  distinction  which 
transcends  in  meaning  and  importance  all  other  political  distinctions — 
was  displayed  in  their  early  doings.  Whig  principles  were  exempli- 
fied in  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act,  and  in  the  measure  by  which  judges 


THE  NEW  TORYISM,  435 

were  made  independent  of  the  Crown  ;  in  defeat  of  the  Non-Resisting 
Test  Bill,  which  proposed  for  legislators  and  officials  a  compulsory- 
oath,  that  they  would  in  no  case  resist  the  king  by  arms  ;  and  later, 
they  were  exemplified  in  the  Bill  of  Rights,  framed  to  secure  subjects 
against  monarchical  aggressions.  These  acts  had  the  same  intrinsic 
nature.  The  principle  of  compulsory  co-operation  throughout  social 
life  was  weakened  by  them,  and  the  principle  of  voluntary  co-opera- 
tion strengthened.  That  at  a  subsequent  period  the  policy  of  the 
party  had  the  same  general  tendency  is  well  shown  by  a  remark  of 
Mr.  Green  concerning  the  period  of  Whig  power  after  the  death  of 
Anne  : 

Before  the  fifty  years  of  their  rule  had  passed,  Englishmen  had  forgotten 
that  it  was  possible  to  persecute  for  differences  of  religion,  or  to  put  down  the 
liberty  of  the  press,  or  to  tamper  with  the  administration  of  justice,  or  to  rule 
without  a  ParUament  (Green,  705). 

And  now,  passing  over  the  war-period  which  closed  the  last  cen- 
tury and  began  this,  during  which  the  extension  of  individual  freedom 
previously  gained  was  lost,  and  the  retrograde  movement  toward  the 
social  type  proper  to  militancy  was  shown  by  all  kinds  of  coercive 
measures,  from  those  which  took  by  force  the  persons  and  property 
of  citizens  for  war  purposes  to  those  which  suppressed  public  meetings 
and  sought  to  gag  the  press,  let  us  recall  the  general  characters  of 
those  changes  effected  by  Whigs,  or  Liberals,  after  the  re-establishment 
of  peace  permitted  revival  of  the  industrialism  regime,  and  return  to 
its  appropriate  type  of  structure.  Under  growing  Whig  influence 
there  came  repeal  of  the  laws  which  forbade  combination  among 
artisans  as  well  as  of  those  which  interfered  with  their  freedom  of 
traveling.  There  was  the  measure  by  which,  under  Whig  pressure. 
Dissenters  were  allowed  to  believe  as  they  pleased  without  suffering 
certain  civil  penalties  ;  and  there  was  the  Whig  measure,  carried  by 
Tories  from  compulsion,  which  enabled  Catholics  to  profess  their  re- 
ligion without  losing  part  of  their  civil  freedom.  The  area  of  liberty 
was  extended  by  acts  which  forbade  the  buying  of  negroes  and  the 
holding  them  in  bondage.  The  political  serfdom  of  the  unrepresented 
was  narrowed  in  area,  both  by  the  Reform  Bill  and  the  Municipal 
Reform  Bill ;  so  that,  both  generally  and  locally,  the  many  were  less 
under  the  coercion  of  a  few.  Later  came  diminution  and  removal  of 
restraints  on  the  buying  of  foreign  commodities  and  the  employment 
of  foreign  vessels  ;  J'nd  later  still  the  removal  of  those  burdens  on  the 
press,  which  were  originally  imposed  to  hinder  the  diffusion  of  opinion. 
And  of  all  these  changes  it  is  unquestionable  that,  whether  made  or 
not  by  Liberals  themselves,  they  were  made  in  conformity  with  the 
principles  professed  and  urged  by  Liberals. 

But  why  do  I  enumerate  facts  so  well  known  to  all  ?  Simply  be- 
cause, as  intimated  at  the  outset,  it  seems  needful  to  remind  every- 


436  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

body  what  Liberalism  was  in  the  past,  that  they  may  perceive  its 
unlikeness  to  the  so-called  Liberalism  of  the  present.  It  would  be 
inexcusable  to  name  these  various  measures  for  the  purpose  of  point- 
ing out  the  character  common  to  them,  were  it  not  that  in  our  day 
men  have  forgotten  their  common  character.  They  do  not  remember 
that  in  one  or  other  way  all  these  truly  Liberal  changes  diminished 
compulsory  co-operation  throughout  social  life  and  increased  voluntary 
co-operation.  They  have  forgotten  that,  in  one  direction  or  other, 
they  diminished  the  range  of  governmental  authority,  and  increased 
the  area  within  which  each  citizen  may  act  unchecked.  They  have 
lost  sight  of  the  truth  that  in  past  times  Liberalism  habitually  stood 
for  individual  freedom  versus  state  coercion. 

And  now  comes  the  inquiry,  How  is  it  that  Liberals  have  lost 
sight  of  this  ?  How  is  it  that  Liberalism,  getting  more  and  more  into 
power,  has  grown  more  and  more  coercive  in  its  legislation  ?  How  is 
it  that,  either  directly  through  its  own  majorities  or  indirectly  through 
aid  given  in  such  cases  to  the  majorities  of  its  opponents,  Liberalism 
has,  to  an  increasing  extent,  adopted  the  policy  of  dictating  the  actions 
of  citizens,  and,  by  consequence,  diminishing  the  range  throughout 
which  their  actions  remain  free  ?  How  are  we  to  explain  this  spread- 
ing confusion  of  thought  which  has  led  it,  in  pursuit  of  what  appears 
to  be  public  good,  to  invert  the  method  by  which  in  earlier  days  it 
achieved  public  good  ? 

Unaccountable  as  at  first  sight  this  unconscious  change  of  policy 
seems,  we  shall  find  that  it  has  arisen  quite  naturally.  Given  the  un- 
analytical  thought  ordinarily  brought  to  bear  on  political  matters,  and 
under  existing  conditions,  nothing  else  was  to  be  expected.  To  make 
this  clear,  some  parenthetic  explanations  are  needful. 

From  the  lowest  to  the  highest  creatures,  intelligence  progresses  by 
acts  of  discriminations  ;  and  it  continues  so  to  progress  among  men, 
from  the  most  ignorant  to  the  most  cultured.  To  class  rightly — to 
put  in  the  same  group  things  which  are  of  essentially  the  same  natures, 
and  in  other  groups  things  of  natures  essentially  different — is  the  fun- 
damental condition  to  right  guidance  of  actions.  Beginning  with  rudi- 
mentary vision,  which  gives  warning  that  some  large  opaque  body  is 
passing  near  (just  as  closed  eyes  turned  to  the  window,  perceiving  the 
shade  caused  by  a  hand  put  before  them,  tell  us  of  something  moving 
in  front),  the  advance  is  to  developed  vision,  which,  by  exactly-appre- 
ciated combinations  of  forms,  colors,  and  motions,  identifies  objects  at 
great  distances  as  prey  or  enemies  of  this  or  that  kind,  and  so  makes 
possible  adjustments  of  conduct  for  securing  food  or  evading  death. 
That  progressing  perception  of  differences  and  consequent  greater  cor- 
rectness of  classing  constitutes  under  one  of  its  chief  aspects  the  de- 
velopment of  mind,  is  equally  seen  when  we  pass  from  the  relatively 
simple  physical  vision  to  the  relatively  complex  intellectual  vision — 


THE  NEW  TORYISM.  437 

tlie  vision  through  the  agency  of  which  things  previously  grouped  by 
certain  external  resemblances  or  by  certain  extrinsic  circumstances 
come  to  be  more  truly  grouped  in  conformity  with  their  intrinsic 
structures  or  natures.  Undeveloped  intellectual  vision  is  just  as  indis- 
criminating  and  erroneous  in  its  classings  as  undeveloped  physical  vis- 
ion. Instance  the  early  arrangement  of  plants  under  the  heads  trees, 
shrubs,  and  herbs  :  size,  the  most  conspicuous  trait,  being  the  ground 
of  distinction,  and  the  assemblages  formed  being  such  as  united  many 
plants  extremely  unlike  in  their  natures,  and  separated  others  that  are 
near  akin.  Or  still  better,  take  the  popular  classification  which  puts 
together  under  the  same  general  name  fish  and  shell-fish,  and  under 
the  sub-name,  shell-fish,  puts  together  crustaceans  and  mollusks  ;  nay, 
which  goes  further,  and  regards  as  fish  the  cetacean  mammals.  Partly 
because  of  the  likeness  in  their  modes  of  life  as  inhabiting  the  water, 
and  partly  because  of  some  general  resemblance  in  their  tastes,  creat- 
ures that  are  in  their  essential  natures  far  more  widely  separated  than 
a  fish  is  from  a  bird,  are  grouped  under  the  same  class  and  under  the 
same  sub-class. 

Now,  the  general  truth  thus  exemplified  holds  throughout  those 
higher  ranges  of  intellectual  vision  concerned  with  things  not  present- 
able to  the  senses,  and,  among  others,  such  things  as  political  institu- 
tions and  political  measures.  For  among  these,  too,  we  shall  find  that 
the  results  of  inadequate  intellectual  faculty,  or  inadequate  culture  of 
it,  or  both,  are  erroneous  classings  and  consequent  erroneous  conclu- 
sions. Indeed,  the  liability  to  error  is  here  much  greater,  since  the 
thinors  with  which  the  intellect  is  concerned  do  not  admit  of  examina- 
tion  in  the  same  easy  way.  You  can  not  touch  or  see  a  political  insti- 
tution :  it  can  be  known  only  by  an  effort  of  constructive  imagination. 
Neither  can  you  apprehend  by  physical  perception  a  political  measure  : 
this  still  more  requires  a  process  of  mental  representation  by  which  its 
elements  are  put  together  in  thought,  and  the  essential  nature  of  the 
combination  conceived.  Here,  therefore,  still  more  than  in  the  cases 
above  named,  defective  intellectual  vision  is  shown  in  grouping  by 
external  characters  or  extrinsic  circumstances.  How  institutions  are 
wrongly  classed  from  this  cause,  we  see  in  the  common  notion  that 
the  Roman  Republic  was  a  popular  form  of  government.  Look  into 
the  early  ideas  of  the  French  revolutionists  who  aimed  at  an  ideal  state 
of  freedom,  and  you  find  that  the  institutions  and  doings  of  the  Ro- 
mans were  their  models  ;  and  even  now  an  historian  might  be  named 
who  instances  the  corruptions  of  the  Roman  Republic  as  showing  us 
what  popular  government  leads  to.  Yet  the  resemblance  between  the 
institutions  of  the  Romans  and  free  institutions  properly  so  called  was 
less  than  that  between  a  shark  and  a  porpoise — a  resemblance  of  gen- 
eral external  form  accompanying  widely  different  internal  structures. 
For  the  Roman  Government  was  that  of  a  small  oligarchy  within  a 
larger  oligarchy,  the  members  of  each  being  unchecked  autocrats.     A 


438  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

society  in  which  the  only  men  who  had  political  power,  and  were  in  a 
qualified  sense  free,  were  so  many  petty  despots,  holding  not  only 
slaves  and  dependents  but  even  children  in  the  same  absolute  bondage 
as  they  held  their  cattle,  is,  in  its  intrinsic  nature,  more  nearly  allied 
to  an  ordinary  despotism  than  it  is  to  a  society  of  citizens  politically 
equal. 

Passing  now  to  our  special  question,  we  may  understand  the  kind 
of  confusion  in  which  Liberalism  has  lost  itself,  and  the  origin  of 
those  mistaken  classings  of  political  measures  which  have  misled  it — 
classings,  as  we  shall  see,  by  conspicuous  external  traits  instead  of 
by  internal  natures.  For  what,  in  the  popular  apprehension  and  in 
the  apprehension  of  those  who  effected  them,  were  the  changes  made 
by  Liberals  in  the  past  ?  They  were  abolitions  of  grievances  suffered 
by  the  people,  or  by  portions  of  them  :  this  was  the  common  trait  of 
them  which  most  impressed  itself  on  men's  minds.  They  were  miti- 
gations of  evils  which  had  directly  or  indirectly  been  felt  by  large 
classes  of  citizens,  as  causes  of  misery  or  as  hindrances  to  happiness. 
And  since  in  the  minds  of  most  a  rectified  evil  is  equivalent  to  an 
achieved  good,  these  measures  came  to  be  thought  of  as  so  many  posi- 
tive benefits  ;  and  the  welfare  of  the  many  came  to  be  conceived  alike 
by  Liberal  statesmen  and  Liberal  voters  as  the  aim  of  Liberalism. 
Hence  the  confusion.  The  gaining  of  a  popular  good  being  the  ex- 
ternal conspicuous  trait  common  to  Liberal  measures  in  earlier  days 
(then  in  each  case  gained  by  a  relaxation  of  restraints),  it  has  hap- 
pened that  popular  good  has  come  to  be  sought  by  Liberals,  not  as  an 
end  to  be  indirectly  gained  by  such  relaxations,  but  as  the  end  to  be 
directly  gained.  And,  seeking  to  gain  it  directly,  they  have  used  meth- 
ods intrinsically  opposed  to  those  originally  used. 

And  now,  having  seen  how  this  reversal  of  policy  has  arisen  (or  par- 
tial reversal,  I  should  say,  for  the  recent  Burials  Act,  and  the  efforts  to 
remove  all  remaining  religious  inequalities,  show  continuance  of  the 
original  policy  in  certain  directions),  let  us  proceed  to  contemplate  the 
extent  to  which  it  has  been  carried  during  recent  times,  and  the  still 
greater  extent  to  which  the  future  will  see  it  carried  if  current  ideas 
and  feelings  continue  to  predominate. 

Before  proceeding,  it  may  be  well  to  say  that  no  reflections  are 
intended  on  the  motives  which  have  prompted  one  after  another  of 
these  various  restraints  and  dictations.  These  motives  were  doubtless 
in  nearly  all  cases  good.  It  must  be  admitted  that  the  restrictions, 
placed  by  an  act  of  1870  on  the  employment  of  women  and  children 
in  Turkey-red  dye-works,  were,  in  intention,  no  less  philanthropic  than 
those  of  Edward  VI,  which  prescribed  the  minimum  time  for  which  a 
journeyman  should  be  retained.  Without  question,  the  Seed  Supply 
(Ireland)  Act  of  1880,  which  empowered  guardians  to  buy  seed  for 
poor  tenants,  and  then  to  see  it  properly  planted,  was  moved  by  a  de- 


THE  NEW  TORYISM,  439 

sire  for  public  welfare  no  less  great  than  that  which  in  1533  prescribed 
the  number  of  sheep  a  tenant  might  keep,  or  that  of  1597,  which  com- 
manded that  decayed  houses  of  husbandry  should  be  rebuilt.  Nobody 
will  dispute  that  the  various  measures  of  late  years  taken  for  restrict- 
ing the  sale  of  intoxicating  liquors,  have  been  taken  as  much  with  a 
view  to  public  morals  as  were  the  measures  taken  of  old  for  checking 
the  evils  of  luxury,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  fourteenth  century,  when 
diet  as  well  as  dress  was  restricted.  Every  one  must  see  that  the  edicts 
issued  by  Henry  VIII,  to  prevent  the  lower  classes  from  playing  dice, 
cards,  bowls,  etc.,  were  not  more  prompted  by  desire  for  popular  wel- 
fare than  were  the  acts  passed  of  late  to  check  gambling. 

Further,  it  is  no  part  of  my  present  purpose  to  question  the  wisdom 
of  these  modern  interferences,  which  Conservatives  and  Liberals  vie 
with  one  another  in  multiplying,  any  more  than  the  wisdom  of  those 
ancient  ones  which  they  in  many  cases  resemble.  We  will  not  here 
consider  whether  the  plans  of  late  adopted  for  preserving  the  lives  of 
sailors  are  or  are  not  more  judicious  than  that  sweeping  Scotch  measure 
which,  in  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century,  prohibited  vessels  from 
sailing  during  the  winter.  For  the  present,  it  shall  remain  an  open 
question  whether  there  is  a  better  warrant  for  giving  the  police  pow- 
ers to  search  certain  provision-dealers'  premises  for  unfit  food  than 
there  was  for  the  law  of  Edward  III,  under  which  innkeepers  at  sea- 
ports were  sworn  to  search  their  guests  to  prevent  the  exportation  of 
money  or  plate.  We  will  assume  that  there  is  no  less  wisdom  in  that 
clause  of  the  Canal-boat  Act,  which  forbids  an  owner  to  gratuitously 
board  the  children  of  the  boatmen,  than  there  was  in  the  Spitalfields 
Acts,  which  up  to  1824,  for  the  benefit  of  the  aritsans,  forbade  the 
manufacturers  to  fix  their  factories  more  than  ten  miles  from  the 
Royal  Exchange. 

We  exclude,  then,  these  questions  of  philanthropic  motive  and  wise 
judgment,  taking  both  of  them  for  granted,  and  have  here  to  con- 
cern ourselves  solely  with  the  compulsory  nature  of  the  measures 
which,  for  good  or  evil,  as  the  case  may  be,  have  been  put  in  force 
during  periods  of  Liberal  ascendency. 

To  bring  the  illustrations  within  compass,  let  us  commence  with 
1860,  under  the  second  administration  of  Lord  Palmerston.  In  that 
year,  the  restrictions  of  the  Factory  Act  were  extended  to  bleaching 
and  dyeing  works  ;  authority  was  given  to  provide  analysts  to  be  paid 
out  of  local  rates  ;  there  was  an  act  providing  for  inspection  of  gas- 
works, as  well  as  for  fixing  quality  and  limits  of  price  ;  there  was  the 
act  which,  in  addition  to  further  mine-inspection,  made  it  penal  to 
employ  boys  under  twelve  unable  to  read  and  write  ;  and  there  were 
further  provisions  for  cheap  locomotion  on  railways.  In  1861  oc- 
curred an  extension  of  the  compulsory  provisions  of  the  Factory  Act 
to  lace-works  ;  power  was  given  to  poor-law  guardians,  etc.,  to  enforce 
vaccination  ;  local  boards  were  authorized  to  make  improvements  in 


440 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


private  property,  and  charge  to  the  owner  ;  and  certain  locally-formed 
bodies  had  given  them  power  of  taxing  the  locality  for  rural  drainage 
and  irrigation  works,  and  for  supplying  water  to  cattle.  In  1862  an 
act  was  passed  for  restricting  the  employment  of  women  and  children 
in  open-air  bleaching,  and  an  act  for  making  illegal  a  coal-mine  with 
a  single  shaft,  or  with  shafts  separated  by  less  than  a  specified  space. 
In  1863  came  the  extension  of  compulsory  vaccination  to  Scotland, 
and  also  to  Ireland  ;  there  came  the  empowering  of  certain  boards  to 
take  from  rate-payers  money  to  employ  and  pay  those  out  of  work  ; 
there  came  the  empowering  of  town  authorities  to  take  possession  of 
neglected  ornamental  spaces,  and  rate  the  inhabitants  for  their  sup- 
port ;  and  there  came  the  Bakehouses  Regulation  Act,  which,  besides 
specifying  minimum  age  of  employes  occupied  between  certain  hours, 
prescribed  periodical  lime-w^ashing,  three  coats  of  paint  when  painted, 
and  washing  with  hot  water  and  soap  at  least  once  in  six  months. 
Of  compulsory  legislation  dating  from  1864,  may  be  named  an  exten- 
sion of  the  Factory  Act  to  various  additional  trades,  including  regula- 
tions for  cleansing  and  ventilation,  and  specifying  of  certain  employes 
in  match-works  that  they  might  not  take  meals  on  the  premises  except 
in  the  wood-cutting  places.  Also  there  were  passed  the  Chimney- 
sweepers Act,  the  act  for  further  regulating  public-house  closing,  the 
act  for  compulsory  testing  of  cables  and  anchors,  and  the  Contagious 
Diseases  Act,  which  last  gave  the  police,  in  specified  places,  powers 
which,  in  respect  of  certain  classes  of  women,  abolished  sundry  of 
those  safeguards  to  individual  freedom  established  in  past  times.  The 
year  1865  witnessed  further  provision  for  the  reception  and  temporary 
relief  of  wanderers  at  the  cost  of  rate-payers  ;  and  another  public-house 
closing  act  containing  sixty-four  amendments.  Then,  under  the  min- 
istry of  Lord  John  Russell,  in  1866,  have  to  be  named  an  act  to 
regulate  cattle-sheds,  etc.,  in  Scotland,  giving  local  authorities  power 
to  inspect  sanitary  condition,  and  fix  number  of  cattle  ;  an  act  forcing 
hop-growers  to  label  their  bags  with  the  year  and  place  of  growth,  and 
the  true  weight,  and  giving  police  power  of  inspection  ;  an  act  to 
facilitate  the  building  of  lodging-houses  in  Ireland,  and  providing  for 
regulation  of  the  inmates  ;  a  Public  Health  Act,  under  which  there  is 
registration  of  lodging-houses  and  limitation  of  occupants,  with  in- 
spection and  directions  for  lime-w^ashing,  etc.  ;  and  a  Public  Libraries 
Act,  giving  local  powers  by  which  a  majority  can  tax  a  minority  for 
their  books. 

Passing  now  to  the  legislation  under  the  first  ministry  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, we  have,  in  1870,  the  establishment  of  state-telegraphy,  with 
the  accompanying  interdict  on  telegraphing  by  any  other  agency  ;  we 
have  inspection,  not  only  of  endowed  schools  but  of  registered  private 
schools,  and  dismissal,  without  appeal,  of  teachers  and  oflficials  not  ap- 
proved ;  we  have  a  law  authorizing  the  Board  of  Public  Works  to  give 
compensation  for  landlord's  improvements  ;  we  have  the  act  which 


THE  KEW  TORYISM.  441 

enables  the  Education  Department  to  provide  school-boards,  purchase 
sites  for  schools,  provide  free  schools  supported  by  local  rates,  and 
enabling  school-boards  to  pay  a  child's  fees,  to  compel  parents  to  send 
their  children,  etc.,  etc.  ;  we  have  a  further  Factories  and  Workshops 
Act,  making,  among  other  restrictions,  some  on  the  employment  of 
women  and  children  in  fruit-preserving  and  fish-curing  works.  In 
1871  we  meet  with  an  amended  Merchant  Shipping  Act,  directing 
officers  of  the  Board  of  Trade  to  record  the  draught  of  sea-going  ves- 
sels leaving  port ;  there  is  another  Factory  and  Workshops  Act,  mak- 
ing further  restrictions  ;  there  is  a  Peddlers'  Act,  inflicting  penalties 
for  hawking  without  a  certificate,  and  limiting  the  police-district  with- 
in which  the  certificate  holds,  as  well  as  giving  the  police  power  to 
search  peddlers'  packs  ;  and  there  are  further  measures  for  enforcing 
vaccination.  The  year  1872  had,  among  other  acts,  one  which  makes 
it  illegal  to  take  for  hire  more  than  one  child  to  nurse,  unless  in  a 
house  registered  by  authorities,  who  prescribe  the  number  of  infants 
to  be  received  ;  it  had  a  Licensing  Act,  interdicting  sale  of  spirits  to 
those  under  sixteen  ;  and  it  had  another  Merchant  Shipping  Act,  estab- 
lishing an  annual  survey  of  passenger-vessels,  as  well  as  an  interdict 
against  pilots  who  are  not  licensed.  Then,  in  1875,  was  passed  the 
Agricultural  Children's  Act,  which  made  it  illegal  for  a  farmer  to  em- 
ploy a  child  who  has  no  certificate  of  elementary  education  ;  and  there 
was  passed  a  Merchant  Shipping  Act,  requiring,  on  each  vessel,  a  scale 
showing  draught,  requiring  examination  of  officers,  and  prescribing  the 
number  of  boats  and  life-preservers.  Turn  now  to  Liberal  law-making 
under  the  present  ministry.  We  have,  in  1880,  a  law  which  forbids 
conditional  advance-notes  in  payment  of  sailors'  wages  ;  and  also  a  law 
which  dictates  certain  arrangements  for  the  safe  carriage  of  grain-car- 
goes. In  1881  comes  legislation  to  prevent  trawling  over  clam-beds 
and  bait-beds,  and  an  interdict  making  it  impossible  to  buy  a  glass  of 
beer  on  Sunday  in  Wales.  In  1882  corn-factors  were  required,  under 
a  penalty  of  twenty  pounds,  to  furnish  for  publication  a  weekly  return 
of  their  transactions  ;  municipal  bodies  were  enabled  to  levy  rates  for 
electric  lighting  ;  further  exactions  from  rate-payers  were  authorized 
for  facilitating  more  accessible  baths  and  wash-houses  ;  and  local  au- 
thorities were  empowered  to  make  by-laws  for  securing  the  decent 
lodging  of  persons  engaged  in  hop-picking,  or  picking  fruit  and  vege- 
tables. Then,  finally,  of  such  legislation  during  the  last  session  may 
be  named  the  Cheap  Trains  Act,  which,  partly  by  taxing  the  nation  to 
the  extent  of  £400,000  a  year  (in  the  shape  of  relinquished  passenger 
duty),  and  partly  at  the  cost  of  railway-proprietors,  still  further  cheap- 
ens traveling  for  workmen  :  the  Board  of  Trade,  through  the  Railway 
Commissioners,  being  empowered  to  insure  sufficiently  good  and  fre- 
quent accommodation.  Again,  there  is  the  act  which,  under  penalty 
of  ten  pounds  for  disobedience,  forbids  the  payment  of  wages  to  work- 
men at  or  within  public-houses  ;  there  is  another  Factory  and  Work- 


442  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

shops  Act,  commanding  inspection  of  white-lead  works  and  bake- 
houses, regulating  times  of  employment  in  both,  and  prescribing  in 
detail  some  constructions  for  the  last,  which  are  to  be  kept  in  a  con- 
dition satisfactory  to  the  inspectors. 

But  we  are  far  from  forming  an  adequate  conception  if  we  look 
only  at  the  compulsory  legislation  which  has  actually  been  established 
of  late  years.  We  must  look  also  at  that  which  is  advocated,  and 
which  threatens  to  be  far  more  sweeping  in  range  and  stringent  in 
character.  We  have  lately  had  a  cabinet  minister,  one  of  the  most 
advanced  Liberals,  so  called,  who  pooh-poohs  the  plans  of  the  late  Gov- 
ernment for  improving  industrial  dwellings  as  so  much  "  tinkering  "  ; 
and  contends  for  eifectual  coercion  to  be  exercised  over  owners  of 
small  houses,  over  land-owners,  and  over  rate-payers.  Here  is  another 
cabinet  minister  who,  addressing  his  constituents,  speaks  slightingly  of 
the  doings  of  philanthropic  societies  and  religious  bodies  to  help  the 
poor,  and  (apparently  ignoring  the  Poor  Law)  says  that  "  the  whole  of 
the  people  of  this  country  ought  to  look  upon  this  work  as  being  their 
own  work "  ;  that  is  to  say,  some  wholesale  government  measure  is 
called  for.  Here,  again,  is  a  radical  member  of  Parliament,  who  leads 
a  large  and  powerful  body,  aiming,  with  annually-increasing  promise 
of  success,  to  enforce  sobriety  by  giving  to  local  majorities  power  to 
prevent  freedom  of  exchange  in  respect  of  certain  commodities.  There 
is  a  rising  demand,  too,  that  education  shall  be  made  gratis  for  all :  the 
payment  of  school-fees  is  beginning  to  be  denounced  as  a  wrong — the 
state  must  take  the  whole  burden.  Moreover,  it  is  proposed  by  many 
that  the  state,  regarded  as  an  undoubtedly  competent  judge  of  what 
constitutes  good  education  for  the  poor,  shall  undertake  also  to  pre- 
scribe good  education  for  the  middle  classes — shall  stamp  the  children 
of  these,  too,  after  a  state  pattern,  concerning  the  goodness  of  which 
they  have  no  more  doubt  than  the  Chinese  had  when  they  fixed  theirs. 
Then  there  is  the  "endowment  of  research,"  of  late  energetically  urged. 
Already  the  Government  gives  every  year  the  sum  of  many  thousand 
pounds  for  this  purpose,  to  be  distributed  through  the  Royal  Society  ; 
and,  in  the  absence  of  those  who  have  much  interest  in  resisting,  the 
pressure  of  the  interested,  backed  by  those  they  easily  persuade,  may 
by-and-by  establish  that  paid  "  priesthood  of  science  "  long  ago  advo- 
cated by  Sir  David  Brewster.  Once  more,  plausible  proposals  are  made 
that  there  should  be  organized  a  system  of  compulsory  insurance,  by 
which  men  during  their  early  lives  shall  be  forced  to  provide  for  the 
time  when  they  will  be  incapacitated. 

Nor  does  enumeration  of  these  further  measures  of  coercive  rule, 
looming  upon  us  near  at  hand  or  in  the  distance,  complete  the  ac- 
count. Nothing  more  than  cursory  allusion  has  yet  been  made  to  that 
accompanying  compulsion  which  takes  the  form  of  increased  taxation, 
general  and  local.  Partly  for  defraying  the  costs  of  carrying  out 
those  ever-multiplying  coercive  measures,  each  of  which  requires  an 


THE  NEW  TORYISM.  443 

additional  staff  of  officers,  and  partly  to  meet  the  outlay  for  new  pub- 
lic institutions,  such  as  board-schools,  free  libraries,  public  museums, 
baths  and  wash-houses,  recreation-grounds,  etc.,  local  rates  are  year 
after  year  increased,  as  the  general  taxation  is  increased  by  grants  to 
the  departments  of  science  and  art,  etc.  Every  one  of  these  involves 
further  coercion — restricts  still  more  the  free  action  of  the  citizen. 
For  the  implied  address  accompanying  every  additional  exaction  is  : 
"  Hitherto  you  have  been  free  to  spend  this  portion  of  your  earnings 
in  any  way  which  pleased  you  ;  hereafter  you  shall  not  so  spend  it, 
but  we  will  spend  it  for  the  general  benefit."  Thus,  either  directly 
or  indirectly,  and  in  most  cases  both  at  once,  the  citizen  is,  at  each 
further  stage  in  the  growth  of  this  compulsory  legislation,  deprived 
in  one  or  other  way  of  some  liberty  which  he  previously  had. 

Such,  then,  are  the  doings  of  the  party  which  claims  the  name  of 
Liberal,  and  which  calls  itself  Liberal  as  being  the  advocate  of  ex- 
tended freedom. 

I  doubt  not  that  many  a  so-called  Liberal  will  have  read  the  pre- 
ceding section  with  impatience,  wanting,  as  he  does,  to  point  out  an 
immense  oversight  which  he  thinks  destroys  the  validity  of  the  argu- 
ment. "  You  forget,"  he  wishes  to  say,  "  the  fundamental  difference 
between  the  power  which,  in  the  past,  established  those  restraints  that 
Liberalism  abolished,  and  the  power  which,  in  the  present,  establishes 
the  restraints  you  call  anti-Liberal.  You  forget  that  the  one  was  an 
irresponsible  power,  while  the  other  is  a  responsible  power.  You  for- 
get that,  if  by  the  recent  legislation  of  Liberals  people  are  variously 
regulated,  the  body  which  regulates  them  is  of  their  own  creating, 
and  has  their  warrant  for  its  acts." 

My  answer  is,  that  I  have  not  forgotten  this  difference,  but  am 
prepared  to  contend  that  the  difference  is  in  large  measure  irrelevant 
to  the  issue. 

In  the  first  place,  the  real  issue  is  whether  the  lives  of  citizens  are 
more  interfered  with  than  they  were  ;  not  the  nature  of  the  agency 
which  interferes  with  them.  Take  a  simpler  case.  A  member  of  a 
trades-union  has  joined  others  in  establishing  an  organization  of  a 
purely  representative  character.  By  it  he  is  compelled  to  turn  out 
if  a  majority  so  decide  ;  he  is  forbidden  to  accept  work  save  under 
the  conditions  they  dictate  ;  he  is  prevented  from  profiting  by  his 
superior  ability  or  energy  to  the  extent  he  might  do  were  it  not  for 
their  interdict.  And  he  can  not  disobey  without  abandoning  those 
pecuniary  benefits  of  the  organization  for  which  he  has  subscribed, 
and  bringing  on  himself  the  persecution,  and  perhaps  violence,  of  his 
fellows.  Is  he  any  the  less  coerced  because  the  body  coercing  him 
is  one  which  he  had  an  equal  voice  with  the  rest  in  forming  ? 

In  the  second  place,  if  it  be  objected  that  the  analogy  is  faulty, 
since  the  governing  body  of  a  nation,  to  which,  as  protector  of  the 


444  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

national  life  and  interests,  all  must  submit  under  penalty  of  social 
disorganization,  has  a  far  higher  authority  over  citizens  than  the  gov- 
ernment of  any  private  organization  can  have  over  its  members  ;  then 
the  reply  is  that,  granting  the  difference,  the  answer  made  continues 
valid.  If  men  use  their  liberty  in  such  a  way  as  to  surrender  their 
liberty,  are  they  thereafter  any  the  less  slaves  ?  If  people  by  a  ple- 
biscite elect  a  man  despot  over  them,  do  they  remain  free  because  the 
despotism  was  of  their  own  making  ?  Are  the  coercive  edicts  issued 
by  him  to  be  regarded  as  legitimate  because  they  are  the  ultimate 
outcome  of  their  own  votes  ?  As  well  might  it  be  argued  that  the 
savage  who  breaks  a  spear  in  another's  presence  that  he  may  so  be- 
come bondsman  to  him,  still  retains  his  liberty  because  he  freely  chose 
his  master. 

Finally,  if  any — not  without  marks  of  irritation,  as  I  can  imagine — 
protest  against  this  reasoning,  and  say  that  there  is  no  true  parallelism 
between  the  relation  of  people  to  government  where  an  irresponsible 
single  ruler  has  been  permanently  elected,  and  the  relation  where  a 
responsible  representative  body  is  maintained,  and  from  time  to  time 
re-elected,  then  there  comes  the  ultimate  reply — an  altogether  hetero- 
dox reply — by  which  most  will  be  greatly  astonished.  This  reply  is, 
that  these  multitudinous  restraining  acts  are  not  defensible  on  the 
ground  that  they  proceed  from  a  popularly  chosen  body  ;  for  that  the 
authority  of  a  popularly  chosen  body  is  no  more  to  be  regarded  as  an 
unlimited  authority  than  the  authority  of  a  monarch  ;  and  that  as  true 
Liberalism  in  the  past  disputed  the  assumption  of  a  monarch's  unlim- 
ited authority,  so  true  Liberalism  in  the  present  will  dispute  the  as- 
sumption of  unlimited  parliamentary  authority.  Of  this,  however, 
more  anon.     Here  I  merely  indicate  it  as  an  ultimate  answer. 

Meanwhile  it  suffices  to  point  out  that  until  recently,  just  as  of  old, 
true  Liberalism  was  shown  by  its  acts  to  be  moving  toward  the  theory 
of  a  limited  parliamentary  authority.  All  these  abolitions  of  the  re- 
straints over  religious  beliefs  and  observances,  over  exchange  and  tran- 
sit, over  trade  combinations  and  the  traveling  of  artisans,  over  the 
publication  of  opinions,  theological  or  political,  etc.,  etc.,  were  tacit 
recognitions  of  the  propriety  for  limitation.  In  the  same  way  that  the 
final  abandonment  of  sumptuary  laws,  of  laws  forbidding  this  or  that 
kind  of  amusement,  of  laws  dictating  modes  of  farming,  and  many 
others  of  like  meddling  nature,  which  took  place  in  early  days,  was  an 
implied  admission  that  the  state  ought  not  to  interfere  in  such  mat- 
ters ;  so  were  those  removals  of  hindrances  to  individual  activities  of 
one  or  other  kind,  which  the  Liberalism  of  the  last  generation  effected, 
practical  confessions  that  in  these  directions,  too,  the  sphere  of  govern- 
mental action  should  be  narrowed.  And  this  recognition  of  the  pro- 
priety of  narrowing  governmental  action  was  a  preparation  for  nar- 
rowing it  in  theory.  One  of  the  most  familiar  political  truths  is  that, 
in  the  course  of  social  evolution,  usage  precedes  law,  and  that,  when 


THE  NEW  TORYISM,  445 

usage  has  become  well  established,  it  becomes  law  by  receiving  au- 
thoritative recognition  and  defined  form.  Manifestly,  then,  Liberalism 
in  the  past,  by  its  practice  of  limitation,  was  preparing  the  way  for  the 
principle  of  limitation. 

But,  returning  from  these  more  general  considerations  to  the  special 
question,  I  emphasize  the  reply  that  the  liberty  which  a  citizen  enjoys 
is  to  be  measured,  not  by  the  nature  of  the  governmental  machinery 
he  lives  under,  whether  representative  or  other,  but  by  the  number 
and  degree  of  the  restraints  it  imposes  on  him  ;  and  that,  whether  this 
machinery  is  or  is  not  one  which  he  has  shared  in  making,  its  actions 
are  not  of  the  kind  proper  to  Liberalism  if  they  increase  such  restraints 
beyond  those  which  are  needful  for  preventing  him  from  directly  or 
indirectly  aggressing  on  his  fellows — needful,  that  is,  for  maintaining 
the  liberties  of  his  fellows  against  his  invasions  of  them  ;  restraints 
which  are,  therefore,  to  be  distinguished  as  negatively  coercive,  not 
positively  coercive. 

I  doubt  not,  however,  that  the  Liberal,  and  still  more  the  sub- 
species Radical,  who  more  than  any  other  in  these  latter  days  seems 
under  the  impression  that  so  long  as  he  has  a  good  end  in  view  he  is 
warranted  in  exercising  over  men  all  the  coercion  he  is  able,  will  con- 
tinue to  protest.  Knowing  that  his  aim  is  popular  benefit  of  some 
kind,  to  be  achieved  in  some  way,  and  believing  that  the  Tory  is,  con- 
trariwise, prompted  by  class-interest  and  the  desire  to  maintain  class- 
power,  he  will  regard  it  as  palpably  absurd  to  group  him  as  one  of 
the  same  genus — will  scorn,  as  mere  chop-logic,  the  reasoning  used  to 
prove  this. 

Perhaps  an  analogy  will  help  him  to  see  its  validity.  If,  away  in 
the  far  East,  where  personal  government  is  the  only  form  of  govern- 
ment known,  he  heard  from  the  inhabitants  the  account  of  a  struggle 
by  which  they  had  deposed  a  cruel  and  vicious  despot,  and  put  in 
his  place  one  whose  acts  proved  his  desire  for  their  welfare — if,  after 
listening  to  their  self-gratulations,  he  told  them  that  they  had  not  es- 
sentially changed  the  nature  of  their  government,  he  would  greatly 
astonish  them  ;  and  probably  he  would  have  difiiculty  in  making  them 
understand  that  the  substitution  of  a  benevolent  despot  for  a  malevo- 
lent despot  still  left  the  government  a  despotism.  Similarly  with  Tory- 
ism as  rightly  conceived.  Standing  as  it  does  for  coercion  by  the 
state  versus  the  freedom  of  the  individual,  Toryism  remains  Toryism, 
whether  it  extends  this  coercion  for  selfish  or  unselfish  reasons.  As 
certainly  as  the  despot  remains  a  despot,  whether  his  motives  are  good 
or  bad,  so  certainly  does  the  Tory  remain  a  Tory,  whether  he  has 
egoistic  or  altruistic  motives  for  using  state-power  to  restrict  indi- 
vidual liberty,  beyond  the  degree  required  for  maintaining  the  liber- 
ties of  other  individuals.  The  altruistic  Tory  as  well  as  the  egoistic 
Tory  belongs  to  the  genus  Tory,  though  he  forms  a  new  species  of  the 
genus.   And  both  stand  in  distinct  contrast  with  the  Liberal  as  defined 


446  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

in  the  days  when  Liberals  were  rightly  so  called,  and  when  the  defini- 
tion was,  "  one  who  advocates  greater  freedom  from  restraint,  espe- 
cially in  political  institutions." 

Thus,  then,  is  justified  the  paradox  I  set  out  with.  As  we  have 
seen,  Toryism  and  Liberalism  originally  emerged,  the  one  from  mili- 
tancy, and  the  other  from  industrialism.  The  one  stood  for  the  regime 
of  status,  and  the  other  for  the  regime  of  contract — the  one  for  that 
system  of  compulsory  co-operation  which  accompanies  the  legal  ine- 
quality of  classes,  and  the  other  for  that  voluntary  co-operation  which 
accompanies  their  legal  equality ;  and  beyond  all  question  the  early 
acts  of  the  two  parties  were  respectively  for  the  maintenance  of  agen- 
cies which  effect  this  compulsory  co-operation,  and  for  the  diminution 
of  them.  Manifestly  the  implication  is  that,  in  so  far  as  it  has  been 
extending  the  system  of  compulsion,  what  is  now  called  Liberalism  is 
a  new  form  of  Toryism. 

How  truly  this  is  so,  we  shall  see  still  more  clearly  on  looking  at 
the  facts  the  other  side  upward,  which  we  will  presently  do. 


COLLEGE  ATHLETICS. 

By  EUGENE  L.  EICHAEDS, 

ASSISTANT  PKOFESSOB  OF  MATHEMATICS   IN   YALE   COLLEGE. 
I. ADVANTAGES. 

YERY  few  persons  will  dissent  from  the  proposition  that  stu- 
dents should  exercise  their  bodies.  If  called  upon  to  state  the 
amount  and  kind  of  exercise  needed,  most  people  would  be  at  a  loss  to 
prescribe  these  particulars,  and  would  content  themselves  with  the 
usual  generalities  about  its  being  essential  to  health  ;  that  it  should  be 
so  regulated  as  to  be  recreative,  but  not  so  excessive  as  to  be  exhaust- 
ing. There  are  numbers  of  intelligent  men  who,  even  assenting  to 
these  generalities,  never  wake  to  the  real  truth  of  them  till  a  violated 
law  of  nature  inflicts  its  penalty  in  their  own  ill  health.  However,  we 
must  assume  that  we  shall  have  the  assent  of  sensible  people  if  we 
start  with  two  principles  :  first,  that  young  men  who  study  need  exer- 
cise ;  and,  second,  that  exercise,  to  be  beneficial,  should  be  regular  and 
systematic.  If  we  can  show  that  college  athletics  supply  this  need  to 
quite  a  large  body  of  students,  and  supply  it  regularly  and  systemati- 
cally, we  may  secure  a  patient  consideration  of  their  good  effects  long 
enough  to  add  a  discussion  of  their  accompanying  evils.  In  this  dis- 
cussion we  hope  to  prove  that  the  evils  have  been  exaggerated  ;  that 
they  are  not  so  great  as  would  be  the  evils  of  a  college-life  without  a 
system  of  athletics  ;  and,  lastly,  that  such  evils  as  do  inhere  in  the 
present  system  are  capable  of  remedy. 


COLLEGE  ATHLETICS.  4,^7 

In  order  to  give  foundation  and  strength  to  our  belief  in  the  bene- 
fits of  physical  exercise,  let  us  consider  what  it  does,  and  how  really- 
necessary  it  is.  Though  we  admit  the  truth  of  all  the  wise  sayings 
with  regard  to  a  "  sane  mind  in  a  sound  body,"  we  are  yet  too  apt  to  re- 
gard the  sound  body  as  a  mere  accident  of  inheritance  or  environment. 
So  we  read  the  proposition  as  an  hypothetical  one,  viz.,  "  If  the  body  is 
sound,  the  mind  will  be  sane."  Few  but  physicians  read  it  as  indicat- 
ing a  connection  between  body  and  mind,  by  means  of  which  we  can 
make,  or  help  to  make,  a  good  healthy  brain  by  making  a  good  sound 
body.  In  the  fact  that  the  brain  always  seems  to  direct  the  body,  we 
are  prone  to  forget  that  the  body  carries  the  brain  and  feeds  it  with 
its  own  life.  If  the  body  has  good  blood,  the  brain  will  have  good 
blood  also.  If  the  body  does  not  furnish  good  material,  the  brain  will 
do,  according  to  its  capacity,  poor  work,  or  will  not  work  at  all.  That 
many  men  of  weak  bodies  have  done  good  brain-work  in  their  day  is 
true,  but  many  such  men  have  been  hindered  from  doing  better  work 
by  physical  weakness.  Moreover,  can  any  man  eay  that  the  work 
done  would  not  have  been  greater  or  better  if  the  men  doing  it  had 
had  better  bodies  ?  After  the  body  has  attained  maturity,  most  men 
recognize  the  connection  and  sympathy  between  mind  and  body.  Dur- 
ing the  time  of  growth,  however,  this  interdependence  is  often  taken 
into  small  account.v\^>s}^^V 

There  are  two  kin"ds  of  brain- work — one  which  we  may  very  prop- 
erly call  body  brain-work,  and  the  other  mind  brain- work.*  Most 
people,  including  a  great  many  educators  of  youth,  consider  mind 
brain-work  to  be  the  only  kind  of  brain-work.  But  body  brain-work 
is  quite  as  essential  to  the  healthy  existence  of  the  brain,  and  really 
comes  first  in  the  order  of  brain-growth.  The  child,  too  young  to 
know  anything  except  its  bodily  wants,  and  conscious  of  them  only 
when  the  denial  of  them  causes  pain,  develops  brain  every  time  it 
makes  a  will-directed  effort  to  grasp  the  thing  it  wants.  The  move- 
ment of  its  hand  is  as  necessary  to  the  development  of  its  brain  as  the 
guidance  and  government  of  the  brain  are  to  the  growth  of  the  hand. 
What  is  true  of  the  hand  is  true  of  the  other  bodily  organs  whose  mo- 
tion is  under  the  control  of  the  will.  They  and  the  brain  are  devel- 
oped by  reciprocal  action.  Interfere  with  this  body  brain-work  in 
childhood,  or  at  any  period  of  growth,  either  by  repressing  it  or  by 
diverting  from  it  too  much  vital  energy  to  mind  brain-work,  such  as 
is  involved  in  the  acquisition  of  knowledge,  and  you  not  only  stunt 
the  body,  but  also  enfeeble  the  brain,  by  depriving  both  of  their  proper 
growth.  The  worst  feature  of  such  interference,  at  such  a  time,  is 
that  the  evil  then  done  can  not  be  remedied,  and  the  power  lost  to 
body  and  brain  can  never  be  regained. 

Care  to  guard  against  this  interference  is  all  the  more  necessary  in 
cases  in  which  the  brain  is  large  or  sensitive.  Now,  will  any  man  say 
*  Dr.  Clarke,  "Building  of  a  Brain." 


448  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

that  at  the  time  of  life  when  young  men  come  to  our  American  colleges, 
when,  in  fact,  all  their  bodily  organs  are  approaching  maturity,  this 
body  brain-work  ought  to  cease,  or  can,  without  danger,  be  neglected  ? 
Is  it  not  most  essential  that  at  this  very  period  the  reciprocal  action 
between  body  and  brain  should  be  steadily  maintained,  in  order  that 
both  should  be  able  to  endure  the  strain  put  upon  them  by  the  various 
stimulants  of  thought  and  feeling  to  be  found  in  college-life  ?  The 
great  pressure  brought  to  bear  upon  them  is  toward  conscious  cerebra- 
tion. Acquisitions  of  knowledge,  scholarships,  the  ambitious  desires  of 
parents,  and  prizes,  all  incite  them  to  neglect  body  brain-work,  under 
the  mistaken  impression  that  time  given  to  that  is  time  lost  to  the 
other.  Many  a  fine  scholar  has  left  college  with  great  honors,  to  ex- 
perience in  his  subsequent  career  the  serious  results  of  the  mistake 
made  in  college,  and  has  discovered,  often  too  late,  that  a  vigorous 
body  to  carry  his  brain  is  more  essential  to  success  in  life  than  a 
well-trained  brain  full  of  knowledge  but  lacking  a  strong  body  from 
which  to  draw  its  nourishment  and  strength. 

Again,  exercise,  to  be  beneficial,  should  be  regular  and  systematic. 
To  be  most  beneficial  it  should  be  in  the  open  air.  The  oxygena- 
tion of  the  blood  is  not  the  least  important  effect  of  exercise.  In  con- 
sequence of  the  reciprocal  action  of  mind  and  body,  to  be  as  bene- 
ficial as  possible  it  should  be  accompanied  by  mental  occupation.  The 
mind  should  be  interested  in  the  exercise  while  the  body  is  engaged. 
How  shall  all  these  requisites  of  the  best  kind  of  exercise  be  secured  ? 
First,  a  regularly  set  time  for  exercise  ;  next,  a  fixed  amount  of  time 
devoted  to  it ;  then  a  place  where  the  lungs  should  breathe  fresh  air  ; 
and,  lastly,  a  Mnd  of  exercise  which  should  engage  the  mind  as  well 
as  the  body.  By  the  present  system  of  college  athletics  these  requi- 
sites are  met,  if  not  perfectly,  at  least  as  well  as  it  is  possible  for  them 
to  be  met.  If  the  millennium  had  come,  and  all  men,  and  especially 
young  men,  would  do  right,  without  any  compulsion,  and  simply  be- 
cause it  is  the  only  thing  to  do,  we  might  come  to  a  settlement  of  these 
important  particulars  of  exercise  for  our  students.  The  regularity  of 
the  exercise,  and  the  amount  of  time  devoted  to  it,  could  easily  be  ar- 
ranged. There  could  be  no  question  as  to  the  expediency  of  taking  it 
in  the  open  air.  But  how  secure  the  co-operation  of  the  mind  ?  How 
make  bodily  exercise  interesting,  so  that  a  man  will  desire  to  take  it 
and  will  take  it  with  gladness,  not  making  a  burden  of  it,  and  not 
considering  it  as  a  duty  merely  ?  That  is  the  real  problem  to  solve, 
when  we  set  ourselves  to  the  task  of  prescribing  the  right  kind  of 
exercise.  Very  few  can  be  induced  to  exercise  from  a  sense  of  duty. 
The  majority  go  without  it  till  they  suffer  illness  from  the  want  of  it, 
and  then  prefer  a  doctor's  remedies  to  Nature's.  Here  athletics  accom- 
plish the  greatest  good.  They  do  furnish  a  mental  stimulus.  They 
set  up  an  object  to  be  striven  for,  and  an  ideal  of  strength  or  skill. 
The  object  is  honor — honor  of  no  great  worth,  perhaps,  but  still  honor 


COLLEGE  ATHLETICS.  449 

to  the  student-mind.  In  boating,  the  object  is  a  victory  over  a  crew 
of  a  rival  class  or  a  rival  college.  In  lacrosse,  base-ball,  and  foot-ball, 
besides  working  for  the  ultimate  object  of  the  championship,  the  mind 
of  the  player  has  continual  occuj)ation  in  the  game  itself.  To  secure 
a  victory  in  any  of  these  sports,  good  brains  in  the  players  contribute 
quite  as  much  as  good  muscles.  In  fact,  it  is  the  skilled  muscles 
rightly  directed  by  good  brains  which  win,  and  not  the  players  most 
skilled  in  the  use  of  their  muscles.  Mind  as  well  as  body  has  to  be 
considered  by  the  successful  captains  in  the  selection  of  their  men. 
Then  there  are  minor  considerations  which  keep  students  in  steady 
training,  and  help  to  induce  more  men  to  work  than  finally  appear  in 
the  great  contests,  such,  for  instance,  as  the  ambition  to  secure  an 
office  or  position  in  one  of  the  university  organizations,  and  thus  an 
honorable  standing  as  a  college  man.  These  various  considerations 
not  only  accompany  the  men  into  the  field  or  at  the  oar,  but  also, 
when  they  are  prevented  from  taking  out-door  practice,  send  them 
into  the  gynmasium  to  prepare  for  the  later  work. 

The  following  brief  account  of  the  exercise  taken  by  the  students  is 
offered  in  order  to  insure  a  better  understanding  of  the  system  of  col- 
lege athletic -J  : 

Almost  as  soon  as  the  college  opens  in  the  fall,  the  various  class 
nines  begin  their  games  for  the  college  championship.  At  the  same  time 
the  class  crews,  the  foot-ball  and  lacrosse  teams  put  their  men  into 
training.  This  means  regular  exercise  in  the  open  air  from  four  to  six 
weeks  for  about  one  hundred  and  forty  men.  Quite  as  many  more  are 
benefited,  some  by  actual  participation  in  the  games,  in  order  to  fur- 
nish opponents  to  the  teams  in  practice,  and  others  by  training  for 
the  Athletic  Association  contests.  After  the  class  base-ball  champion- 
ship is  decided,  and  the  Athletic  Association  meetings  have  terminated, 
fewer  men  exercise.  The  interest  of  the  college  then  centers  in  the 
Foot-ball  Elevens,  one  selected  from  the  whole  university,  and  the 
other  from  the  freshman  classes  of  the  academic  and  scientific  depart- 
ments. To  give  these  teams  practice,  all  the  college  is  urged  to  go  to 
the  field  and  play  against  them  ;  and  though,  of  course,  the  invitation 
is  not  accepted  as  extensively  as  it  is  given,  yet  it  does  induce  quite  a 
large  number  of  men  to  exercise.  But  this  is  not  the  only  good  effect 
of  the  existence  of  these  teams.  Catching  the  enthusiasm  of  the  sport, 
often  the  men  of  different  dormitories  and  of  different  eating-clubs 
send  out  teams  for  matches.  The  foot-ball  season  terminates  at  the 
thanksgiving  recess.  The  two  or  three  weeks  intervening  between 
this  recess  and  the  winter  examinations  see  very  little  exercise  taken 
by  the  students,  except  by  the  few  who  regularly  use  the  gymnasium. 
Immediately  on  the  opening  of  the  winter  term  activity  in  athletics 
manifests  itself  again.  The  captain  of  the  University  Crew,  the  cap- 
tain of  the  University  Base-ball  Nine,  the  captains  of  the  different 
class  crews,  and  the  captain  of  the  Freshman  Base-ball  Nine^  call 
VOL.  XXIV. — 29 


45©  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

for  men  who  wish  to  try  for  positions  on  these  organizations.  The 
candidates  are  put  into  regular  training  in  the  gymnasium,  while  the 
season  prevents  exercise  out-of-doors.  Nearly  a  hundred  men  come 
forward,  who  are  actually  in  training  for  at  least  one  hour  a  day. 
They  are  required  to  live  rightly  in  all  respects.  Each  man  is  bound 
to  avoid  excesses  of  all  kinds.  The  force  of  a  public  opinion  created 
by  the  sight  of  these  men  attending  to  their  physical  development, 
and  living  according  to  laws  and  rules,  acts  upon  the  college  world  to 
encourage  regularity  of  life  and  obedience  to  authority.  It  is  a  moral 
power  in  the  community.  As  soon  as  the  season  permits,  the  men  are 
sent  out-of-doors.  The  crews  take  their  seats  in  the  boats.  The  nines 
take  their  positions  in  the  field.  The  spring  regatta  terminates  the 
practice  of  the  class  crews,  but,  as  that  event  occurs  about  three  weeks 
before  the  June  examinations,  and  five  weeks  before  the  close  of  the 
college  year,  it  does  not  leave  the  young  men  a  long  time  without  ex- 
ercise. The  University,  Consolidated,  and  Freshman  Nines,  the  La- 
crosse Team,  and  the  University  Crew  (with  sometimes  a  second  eight), 
continue  their  practice  much  longer,  some  of  them  stopping  work 
only  after  the  close  of  the  college  year. 

Now,  it  may  be  said  that  the  writer  has  only  shown  that  regular 
exercise  has  been  secured  during  a  few  weeks  of  the  first  term  to  one 
hundred  and  forty  men  at  the  most,  and  during  the  whole  winter  term 
to  one  hundred  men  ;  and  in  the  spring  and  summer  to  one  hundred 
men  part  of  the  term,  and  to  half  that  number  during  the  whole  of 
the  term.  Granted.  But  there  are  other  organizations  which  induce 
men  to  exercise.  The  Athletic  Association  has  already  been  men- 
tioned. This  gives  three  exhibitions  ;  one  during  the  winter  or  early 
spring  in  the  gymnasium,  and  two  in  the  open  air,  one  in  the  summer 
and  one  in  the  fall.  The  Dunham  Rowing  Club  has  a  membership  of 
forty-four  men.  Then  there  are  canoe  clubs,  tennis  clubs,  and  gun 
clubs.  It  would  be  putting  the  estimate  too  low  to  say  that  at  least 
half  of  the  undergraduate  members  of  the  academic  and  scientific  de- 
partments get  quite  a  regular  amount  of  systematic  out-door  exercise 
from,  or  in  consequence  of,  the  present  system  of  college  athletics. 
This  activity,  too,  has  been  mainly  the  outgrowth  of  the  attention 
given  to  boating  and  to  base-ball.  They  had  the  first  regular  organi- 
zations, and  the  others  have  taken  pattern  from  them.  It  is  no  argu- 
ment against  the  system  that  all  the  members  of  the  university  do 
not  take  advantage  of  it.  The  need  of  exercise  is  met,  and  oppor- 
tunities for  regular  and  systematic  exercise  are  given,  with  induce- 
ments to  take  it,  which  do  act  upon  at  least  half  of  the  membership  of 
the  two  departments  most  in  need  of  it.  The  system  might  do  more 
good  if  time  were  set  apart  by  the  various  Faculties  for  the  purpose  of 
encouraging  exercise,  but  in  considering  the  system  it  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  it  has  grown  up  in  a  continual  struggle  for  existence  ; 
and,  until  within  a  few  years,  without  either  help  from  graduates  or 


COLLEGE  ATHLETICS.  451 

favor  from  the  college  authorities.  But,  in  view  of  the  good  already- 
done  by  it  as  a  voluntary  system  proceeding  from  the  students  them- 
selves, no  candid  man  can  maintain  that  it  should  be  put  aside  without 
a  fair  consideration  of  its  merits.  In  addition  to  those  already  men- 
tioned, we  claim  for  it  the  following  advantages  : 

1.  The  college  is  sending  out  a  better  breed  of  men.  College  ath- 
letics send  their  healthy  influence  into  the  schools,  and  in  them  conse- 
quently increased  attention  is  given  to  physical  development.  Thus 
the  material  coming  from  the  schools  is  improved.  In  college  this 
material  is  better  preserved  and  better  developed  under  the  present 
system  of  athletics.  More  well-trained  minds  in  more  forceful  bodies 
are  graduated  from  college  than  in  former  years.  What  President 
Eliot  says  on  this  subject  is  as  applicable  to  Yale  as  to  Harvard  :  "  It 
is  agreed  on  all  hands  that  the  increased  attention  given  to  physical 
exercise  and  athletic  sports  within  the  past  twenty-five  years  has  been, 
on  the  whole,  of  great  advantage  to  the  university  ;  that  the  average 
physique  of  the  mass  of  students  has  been  sensibly  improved,  the  dis- 
cipline of  the  college  been  made  easier  and  more  effective,  the  work 
of  many  zealous  students  been  done  with  greater  safety,  and  the  ideal 
student  been  transformed  from  a  stooping,  weak,  and  sickly  youth, 
into  one  well-formed,  robust,  and  healthy." 

2.  The  system  of  college  athletics  gives  opportunity  for  the  devel- 
opment of  certain  qualities  of  mind  and  character  not  all  provided  for 
in  the  college  curriculum,  but  qualities  nevertheless  quite  as  essential 
to  true  success  in  life  as  ripe  scholarship  or  literary  culture.  Courage, 
resolution,  and  perseverance  are  required  in  all  the  men  who  excel  in 
athletic  sports.  The  faculty  for  organization,  executive  power,  the 
qualities  which  enable  men  to  control  and  lead  other  men,  and  again 
those  other  qualities  by  which  men  yield  faithful  obedience  to  recog- 
nized authority,  are  all  called  into  action  in  every  boat-race,  in  every 
ball  contest,  and  through  all  the  preliminary  training.  In  athletics 
the  college  world  is  a  little  republic  of  young  men  with  authority  for 
government  delegated  to  presidents,  captains,  and  commodores,  and 
loyally  supported  by  the  resources  and  bodies  of  the  governed.  Is  the 
system  not  worth  something  as  a  means  of  preparation  for  the  respon- 
sibilities of  life  in  the  larger  republic  outside  the  campus  ? 

3.  The  system  is  conducive  to  the  good  order  of  the  college.  It 
conduces  to  good  order  in  furnishing  occupation  for  the  physically  ac- 
tive. There  are  men  in  every  class  who  seem  to  require  some  outlet  for 
their  superabundant  animal  life.  Before  the  day  of  athletics,  such  men 
supplied  the  class  bullies  in  fights  between  town  and  gown,  and  were 
busy  at  night  in  gate-stealing  and  in  other  pranks  now  gone  out  of 
fashion.  A  number  of  them  were  dissipated  men,  and  had  to  diversify 
the  monotony  of  their  class-room  life  by  a  spree  and  a  row.  Many  such 
men,  under  the  present  system,  find  occupation  for  all  this  activity  in 
regular  training.     A  man  who  goes  into  training  can  not  go  on  sprees, 


452  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

and  must  economize  and  systematize  his  time  in  order  to  both  study 
and  train.  Having  steadied  their  nerves  by  hard  work  of  the  muscles, 
many  such  men  settle  down  to  study  and  often  make  fair  scholars. 
Any  instructor  who  has  kept  track  of  the  ways  of  college  during 
the  past  fifteen  years  can  not  fail  to  be  struck  by  the  decreasing 
number  of  the  really  great  disorders,  by  the  mildness  of  those  which 
remain,  and  by  the  increasing  regard  on  the  part  of  the  students 
for  college  authority,  college  proj^erty,  and  for  the  rights  of  fellow- 
students. 

The  system  is  conducive  to  the  good  order  of  the  college,  because 
it  furnishes  a  healthy,  interesting  topic  of  conversation  out  of  study- 
hours.  Dr.  McCosh  has  been  reported  to  be  alarmed  by  the  very  ab- 
sorbing nature  of  this  topic  of  conversation.  The  reporter  makes  him 
say,  "  When  one  walks  across  the  campus,  the  conversation  he  over- 
hears bears  no  relation  to  the  science  and  knowledge  which  we  come 
here  to  pursue,  but  it  is  this  game  and  that  game,  this  record  and  that 
record."  Does  the  gentleman  suppose  that,  if  there  were  no  athl,etics, 
members  of  the  college  who  meet  one  another  on  the  campus  would 
fall  into  conversation  on  the  absorbing  questions  of  science  and  knowl- 
edge ?  The  college  world  is  like  the  world  in  general,  in  that  its  in- 
habitants, when  off  duty,  find  their  recreation  in  talking  of  other  sub- 
jects than  those  of  regular  business.  The  campus  is  the  place  where 
the  students  discuss  other  themes  than  those  of  the  class-room,  for  the 
reason  that  they  come  together  on  the  campus  for  diversion.  They 
rightly  regard  the  study  and  the  lecture-room  as  the  places  in  which 
the  themes  of  knowledge  and  science  are  properly  considered.  It  is 
not  to  be  expected,  neither  would  it  be  wise  nor  desirable,  that  young 
men  should  spend  all  their  time  in  thinking  and  talking  of  their  stud- 
ies. Since  they  must  have  something  else  for  their  leisure  hours,  it  is 
well  for  them  to  have  some  such  healthy  topics  of  conversation  as  the 
athletic  sports  furnish.  They  naturally  seek  some  excitement  with 
which  to  vary  the  monotony  of  recitations  and  lectures.  Their  manly 
contests  supply  this  want,  and  prevent  many  a  man  from  looking  to 
dissipation  and  disorder  as  reliefs  from  the  daily  drudgery  of  the  study 
and  the  class-room. 

Again,  the  system  conduces  to  good  order  in  its  effects  upon  class- 
feeling.  It  acts  upon  this  class-feeling  in  two  ways  :  first,  in  the  con- 
tests between  class  organizations  furnishing  a  safety-valve  for  it ;  and, 
second,  in  the  university  organizations  tending  to  moderate  it.  The 
esprit  de  corps  of  a  class  is  not  bad  in  itself.  It  often  furnishes 
a  motive  to  combined  action  which  can  be  made  powerful  for  good. 
In  the  contests  between  the  class  organizations,  and  in  all  the  athletic 
exhibitions  of  the  college,  there  are  legitimate  opportunities  for  the 
free  play  and  development  of  this  feeling.  But  it  is  possible  for 
it  to  become  excessive,  so  that  a  class,  as  a  body,  may  have  a  danger- 
ous feeling  of  actual  enmity  to  another  class.     It  is  this  excessive 


COLLEGE  ATHLETICS,  453 

class  -  feeling  wliicli  is  the  active  power  in  the  disorders  between 
classes.  It  is  at  this  point  that  the  influence  of  the  university  organiza- 
tions acts  as  a  check.  Since  these  organizations  are  composed  of  men 
of  all  classes,  it  is  impossible  for  all  college  to  be  enthusiastic  for  its 
crew,  team,  or  nine,  without  a  common  sympathy  binding  all  the  classes 
together.  Moreover,  it  is  observable  that  the  time  of  the  year  when  the 
athletic  contests  are  not  absorbing  the  attention  of  the  college  is  the 
very  time  when  the  disorders  between  classes  and  the  persecutions  of 
freshmen  are  most  prevalent.  Besides,  the  captains  of  the  university 
organizations  command  their  men  to  keep  out  of  disorders,  because 
they  know  that  they  might  lose  their  services  if  these  men  came  under 
the  discipline  of  the  college  authorities.  The  writer  has  seen  the  cap- 
tain of  the  University  Foot-ball  Eleven  personally  restraining  his  men 
from  particij)ation  in  a  "  rush."  Formerly  it  was  the  strong  men  who 
incited  and  took  the  chief  part  in  disorders.  Now  all  their  interests 
and  all  their  efforts  are  against  them. 

4.  The  system  furnishes  to  instructors  an  opportunity  of  meeting 
their  pupils  as  men  interested  in  a  common  good,  without  the  chilling 
reserve  of  the  recitation-room.  It  does  not  require  a  great  effort  to 
be  a  spectator  of  their  contests.  An  interest  in  the  contestants  is  a 
very  natural  result  of  witnessing  their  struggles.  The  college  oiScer 
who  gives  a  little  of  his  time  even  to  the  boys'  play  soon  finds  his 
sympathies  widen,  and,  by  learning  from  actual  observation  how  young 
men  feel  and  think,  becomes  able  to  deal  more  wisely  with  those  under 
his  charge,  from  a  fuller  knowledge  of  them. 

5.  The  power  of  the  athletic  contests  to  awaken  enthusiasm  ought 
not  to  be  held  of  small  account.  The  tendency  of  academic  life  is 
toward  dry  intellectualism.  However  desirable  such  a  tendency  may 
be  for  those  who  are  training  to  be  investigators,  there  can  be  no  ques- 
tion that  it  is  lamentable  for  a  young  man  to  begin  life  without 
enthusiasm.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  in  many  a  student,  while 
passing  from  freshman  to  the  end  of  senior  year,  this  spirit  would 
die  for  lack  of  culture  were  it  not  for  athletics.  There  is  training  for 
it  in  every  contest  witnessed.  These  contests  affect  graduates  as 
well  as  undergraduates,  and  go  far  toward  accounting  for  the  warm 
interest  which  the  alumni  of  all  of  the  larger  colleges  feel  in  their 
Alma  Mater. 

6.  The  system  of  athletics,  by  its  intercollegiate  contests,  brings 
the  students  into  a  wider  world.  They  are  no  longer  "  home-keeping 
youths,"  "with  homely  wits."  They  measure  themselves  by  other 
standards  than  those  they  find  in  the  limits  of  their  own  campus. 

In  the  next  paper  the  writer  proposes  to  discuss  the  accompanying 
evils  of  the  present  system  of  college  athletics,  and  to  present  some 
statistics  bearing  upon  the  general  Bubject. 


454  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

THE  EEMEDIES  OF  :N^ATUEE. 

Bt  FELIX  L.  OSWALD,   M.  D. 
NERVOUS  MALADIES. 

HYGIENIC  pathology,  or  the  plan  of  curing  the  disorders  of  the 
human  organism  by  the  aid  of  the  remedial  agencies  of  Nature, 
is  founded  on  the  fact  that  disease  is  not  only  a  wholly  abnormal  con- 
dition, but  that,  within  the  years  allotted  to  the  individuals  of  our 
species,  there  is  a  strong  healthward  tendency  in  the  constitution  of 
the  human  system,  which  tendency  does  not  fail  to  assert  itself  as  soon 
as  the  predisposing  cause  of  the  disorder  has  been  removed.  In  the 
treatment  of  consumption  and  scrofula,  the  principles  of  this  theory 
have  been  generally  recognized  ;  but  I  believe  that  their  application  to 
the  nervous  diseases  {asthenia^  neurosis,  chlorosis,  hysteria,  nervous 
debility)  is  destined  to  effect  a  still  greater  reform  in  the  present  sys- 
tem of  therapeutics. 

The  study  of  biology  is  largely  a  study  of  hereditary  influences. 
In  the  form  and  structure,  in  all  the  peculiar  life-habits  of  each  or- 
ganic being,  we  can  trace  the  outcome  of  ancestral  transmissions,  and, 
as  a  general  rule,  the  persistence  of  such  peculiarities  corresponds  to 
the  length  of  time  during  which  the  influence  of  their  causes  was 
impressed  upon  the  character  of  the  species.  The  period  of  artificial 
civilization,  even  if  considered  as  coeval  with  the  era  of  recorded  his- 
tory, is  but  a  moment  compared  with  the  ages  during  which  man -like 
creatures,  the  ancestors  of  our  domestic  animals  and  the  prototypes  of 
our  cultivated  plants,  existed  in  the  warmer  zones  of  our  planet.  After 
six  thousand  years  of  cultivation  on  parched  hill-sides,  the  vine  is  still 
by  preference  a  tree-shade  plant.  After  many  thousand  generations 
of  cats  have  been  fed  and  petted  in  daytime  and  neglected  after  dark, 
puss  is  still  a  night-prowler.  Barn-yard  fowl  have  still  a  predilection 
for  thorny  jungles,  and  in  the  plains  of  Russia  the  descendants  of  the 
mountain-goat  climb  wood-piles  and  cottage-roofs.  In  the  constitution 
of  all  organic  beings  there  is  a  tendency  to  revert  to  the  original  life- 
habits  of  the  species.  Biologists  have  long  recognized  the  significance 
of  that  law,  but  its  hygienic  importance  has  hardly  begun  to  be  under- 
stood. For  it  implies  not  less  than  this  :  That  the  vital  functions  of 
every  living  being  are  performed  more  easily  and  more  vigorously 
under  the  conditions  to  which  the  constitution  of  its  organism  was 
originally  adapted.  A  swamp-boa  may  subsist  for  years  in  a  dry 
board  cage  ;  eagles  have  been  chained  to  a  post  for  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury, and  lost  the  gloss  of  their  feathers,  their  vigor,  their  courage, 
though  not  their  lives.  No  drugs  would  cure  the  ailments  of  such 
captives ;  but  restore  them  to  their  native  haunts,  and  see  how  fast 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE.  455 

they  will  regain  their  native  vigor  !  Their  infirmities  could  not  have 
been  traced  to  any  single  cause,  but  were  due  to  the  combined  influ- 
ence of  numerous  unnatural  conditions. 

A  similar  combination  of  abnormal  circumstances  causes  thousands 
of  the  perplexing  complaints  known  as  nervous  diseases — nervous  de- 
bility, languor,  want  of  vital  vigor.  The  introduction  of  narcotic 
drinks  is  no  sufficient  explanation  for  the  present  increase  of  such  dis- 
orders. Prince  Piickler-Muskau  describes  an  iron-fisted  Arab  chieftain 
of  Southern  Tunis  who,  in  his  eightieth  year,  could  manipulate  a  bow 
that  would  have  nonplused  the  champions  of  our  archery  clubs,  who 
undertook  an  expedition  that  kept  him  in  the  saddle  for  three  days 
and  two  nights,  and  who  could  abstain  from  food  for  the  same  length 
of  time,  but  always  traveled  with  a  skinful  of  moist  coffee-paste, 
which  he  sucked  and  chewed  like  tobacco.  West  China  mountaineers, 
able  to  contest  the  prize  of  any  weight-lifting  match  or  wrestling-bout, 
and  of  otherwise  most  abstemious  habits,  can  not  subsist  without  a  daily 
dose  of  the  national  beverage.  No  sensible  person  Vv^ould  maintain 
that  such  people  owe  their  vigor  to  their  narcotic  tipples  ;  no  patholo- 
gist would  deny  that  it  deprives  them  of  part  of  their  strength,  but 
that  its  use  alone  could  cause  the  premature  decrepitude  of  millions  of 
Indo-Germanic  invalids  would  be  an  equally  untenable  assertion.  It 
is  merely  an  additional  factor  in  the  multitude  of  unnatural  habits 
that  make  up  the  misery  of  our  modern  modes  of  life. 

That  our  primogenitors  passed  their  days  among  trees  is  one  of 
the  few  points  on  which  Moses  and  Darwin  agree  ;  whether  four 
banders  or  frugivorous  two-handers,  they  certainly  were  forest-creat- 
ures, and  breathed  an  air  saturated  with  elements  of  which  the  atmos- 
phere of  our  tenement  barracks  is  more  devoid  than  the  briny  breeze 
of  the  ocean.  Our  lungs  suffer  for  it  ;  but  not  our  lungs  alone.  Be- 
sides being  the  best  pulmonary  pabulum,  oxygen  is  a  nerve-tonic  ;  a 
forester,  a  hunter,  a  Swiss  shepherd-boy,  in  a  state  of  tubercular  con- 
sumption, would  be  less  exceptional  phenomena  than  in  a  state  of  nerv- 
ous fretfulness.  A  constitutional  kind  of  good-humor  sweetens  the 
hardships  of  the  overtaxed  peasantry  of  Southern  Europe,  as  its  ab- 
sence certainly  aggravates  the  misery  of  our  factory-slaves.  And  it 
would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  only  summer  air  can  exercise  this 
nerve-soothing  influence.  Let  a  chlorotic  girl  take  a  sleigh-ride  on  a 
cold,  clear  winter  day,  or  through  a  snow-storm  ;  let  her  skate  ;  give 
her  a  chance  to  get  an  hour's  out-door  exercise  even  on  drizzly  or 
frosty  days.  The  north  wind  may  white-freeze  her  ear-tips,  but  it  will 
restore  the  color  of  her  cheeks,  it  will  restore  her  appetite,  her  energy, 
and  her  buoyant  spirits.  Those  whom  necessity  compels  to  limit  their 
out-door  rambles  to  the  half.-mile  between  home  and  shop,  should  let 
the  night  make  up  for  the  shortcomings  of  the  day,  and  sleep — in  dry 
weather,  at  least — in  the  draught  of  a  wide-open  window.  Only  a  first 
experiment  of  that  sort  will  necessitate  the  addition  of  a  night-cap  to 


456  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

one's  bedclothing  ;  and  even  nervous  ladies  will  resist  the  temptation 
to  cover  up  their  faces,  if  they  find  how  soon  the  wonted  morning 
languor  gives  way  to  the  influence  of  Nature's  restorative.  Those 
who  dislike  to  risk  the  discomfort  of  initiation  before  ascertaining  the 
value  of  the  remedy  can  make  another  test-experiment  :  After  a  sum- 
mer excursion,  when  fatigue  and  early  rising  enable  anybody  to  sleep 
soundly  in  an  open  tent,  the  first  few  nights  after  returning  home  will 
be  a  favorable  time  for  defying  the  night  air  superstition  and  sleep- 
ing, perhaps  with  slight  qualms  of  the  old  prejudice,  but  without  the 
least  bodily  discomfort,  on  a  balcony  or  in  an  open  hall,  with  open 
windows  on  all  sides.  After  a  week,  transfer  the  couch  to  the  old  air- 
tight bedroom,  and  note  the  result  :  All  the  next  forenoon  a  queer  feel- 
ing of  discomfort,  as  after  a  prolonged  exposure  to  the  fumes  of  a 
smoky  kitchen,  will  illustrate  the  difference  between  natural  and  un- 
natural modes  of  life.  To  persons  who  have  thus  emancipated  them- 
selves from  the  delusions  of  the  night-air  dread,  the  atmosphere  of  a 
close  bedroom  is  oppressive  enough  to  spoil  the  night's  rest  and  bring 
on  a  relapse  of  many  of  the  distressing  concomitants  of  nervous  in- 
somnia. A  slight  elevation  of  the  window- sash  will  remedy  the  evil, 
and  we  might  expatiate  upon  the  correlation  between  the  nerve-centers 
and  the  respiratory  apparatus  of  the  human  body,  but  the  plain  ulti- 
mate reason  is  that  the  organism  has  been  restored  to  an  essential  ele- 
ment of  its  original  existence. 

Jacob  Engel  has  a  story  of  a  splenetic  student  who  composed  his 
own  funeral  dirge,  with  a  lugubrious  list  of  the  sorrows  from  which  he 
anticipated  demise  would  liberate  his  soul.  On  discovering  the  lyric, 
his  father  ordered  him  to  excavate  a  gravel-bank  for  a  family  vault, 
as  none  of  his  relatives  could  be  expected  to  survive  his  untimely 
fate.  The  prescription  proved  a  success,  and  a  few  weeks  later  Herac- 
litus  Junior  was  caught  writing  sonnets  to  the  hired  girl.  Want  of 
exercise  is,  indeed,  a  most  fruitful  cause  of  nervous  maladies.  Our 
Darwinian  relatives,  creatures  so  similar  to  us  in  the  structure  of  every 
muscle,  every  joint  and  sinew  of  their  bodies,  are  the  most  restless 
habitants  of  the  woods.  "  It  makes  one  dizzy  to  watch  the  evolutions 
of  the  long-armed  gibbons,"  Victor  Jacquemont  writes  from  the  Ner- 
budda  ;  "  the  first  one  I  saw  made  me  think  that  he  was  suffering 
from  an  acute  attack  of  St.  Vitus's  fits,  but  I  have  found  out  that  it 
is  a  chronic  disease.  They  keep  moving  while  the  sun  is  in  sight." 
Savages  alternate  their  wigwam  holiday  with  periods  of  prodigious 
exertion,  and  an  occasional  mountain  tour  would  atone  for  a  good 
many  days  of  city  life,  but  hardly  for  weeks  of  sedentary  occupation. 
Without  at  least  one  hour  per  day  of  active  out-door  exercise,  no  na- 
tive strength  of  constitution  can  resist  the  morbific  influences  of  stag- 
nant humors.  Of  the  immortal  soul's  dependence  upon  the  conditions 
of  the  body  there  are  few  stranger  illustrations  than  the  psychic  influ- 
ence of  narcotic  drugs.     A  mere  indigestion  can  temporarily  meta- 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE.  457 

morphose  the  character  of  the  patient,  and  all  manner  of  symptoms 
ascribed  to  "heart-disease,"  aneurism,  intestinal  parasites,  spinal  or 
cerebral  affections,  are  often  simply  due  to  depraved  humors  and  their 
reaction  on  the  nervous  system.  By  increasing  the  action  of  the  circu- 
latory system,  physical  exercise  promotes  the  elimination  of  such  humors, 
with  their  whole  train  of  morbid  consequences — chlorosis,  tantrums, 
troubled  dreams,  and  the  nervous  affections  proper  ;  restlessness  and 
want  of  vital  energy.  What  amounts  of  "  tonic  "  nostrums — keeping 
their  promise  of  restoring  the  vigor  of  the  system  by  producing  a  fever- 
energy — would  be  thrown  in  the  gutter,  if  the  patient  could  be  per- 
suaded to  try  the  receipt  of  Jacob  Engel !  "  When  I  reflect  on  the 
immunity  of  hard-working  people  from  the  effects  of  wrong  and 
over  feeding,"  says  Dr.  Boerhaave,  "I  can  not  help  thinking  that  most 
of  our  fashionable  diseases  might  be  cured  mechcmically  instead  of 
chemically,  by  climbing  a  bitterwood-tree,  or  chopping  it  down,  if 
you  like,  rather  than  swallowing  a  decoction  of  its  disgusting  leaves." 
For  male  patients,  gardening,  in  all  its  branches,  is  about  as  fashiona- 
ble as  the  said  diseases,  and  no  liberal  man  would  shrink  from  the  ex- 
pense of  a  board  fence,  if  it  would  induce  his  drug-poisoned  wife  to 
try  her  hand  at  turf -spading,  or,  as  a  last  resort,  at  hoeing,  or  even  a 
bit  of  wheelbarrow- work.  Lawn-tennis  will  not  answer  the  occasion. 
There  is  no  need  of  going  to  extremes  and  exhausting  the  little  re- 
maining strength  of  the  patient,  but  without  a  certain  amount  of 
fatigue  the  specific  fails  to  operate,  and  experience  will  show  that 
labor  with  a  practical  purpose — gardening,  boat-rowing,  or  amateur 
carpentering — enables  people  to  beguile  themselves  into  a  far  greater 
amount  of  hard  work  than  the  drill-master  of  a  gymnasium  could  get 
them  to  undergo.  Besides  the  potential  energy  that  turns  hardships 
into  play-work,  athletes  have  the  further  advantage  of  a  greater  dis- 
ease-resisting capacity.  Their  constitution  does  not  yield  to  every 
trifling  accident  ;  their  nerves  can  stand  the  wear  and  tear  of  ordinary 
excitements  ;  a  little  change  in  the  weather  does  not  disturb  their  sleep  ; 
they  can  digest  more  than  other  people.  Any  kind  of  exercise  that 
tends  to  strengthen — not  a  special  set  of  muscles,  but  the  muscular 
system  in  general — has  a  proportionate  influence  on  the  general  vigor 
of  the  nervous  organism,  and  thereby  on  its  pathological  power  of  re- 
sistance. 

For  nervous  children  my  first  prescription  would  be  —  the  open 
woods  and  a  merry  playmate  ;  for  the  chlorotic  affections  of  their 
elder  comrades — some  diverting,  but  withal  fatiguing,  form  of  man- 
ual labor.  In  the  minds  of  too  many  parents  there  is  a  vague  notion 
that  rough  work  brutalizes  the  character.  The  truth  is,  that  it  regu- 
lates its  defects  :  it  calms  the  temper,  it  affords  an  outlet  to  things 
that  would  otherwise  vent  themselves  in  fretfulness  and  ugly  passions. 
Most  school-teachers  know  that  city  children  are  more  fidgety,  more 
irritable  and  mischievous  than  their  village  comrades ;  and  the  most 


458  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

placid  females  of  the  genus  homo  are  found  among  the  well-fed  but 
hard-working  housewives  of  German  Pennsylvania. 

That  hard  work  in  the  factory  does  not  lead  to  the  same  result  is 
due  to  the  contrast  between  fresh  and  foul  air  ;  but  also  to  the  differ- 
ence between  sunshine  and  artificial  twilight.  Light  is  a  chief  source 
of  vital  energy,  and  every  deduction  from  the  proper  share  of  that 
natural  stimulus  of  the  organic  process  is  sure  to  tell  upon  the  well- 
being  of  every  living  organism.  See  the  difference  between  the  vege- 
tation of  the  south  side  and  the  north  side  of  the  same  mountain -range, 
the  gradations  in  the  stunted  appearance  of  hot-house  plants,  house- 
plants,  and  cellar-plants,  the  achromatism  and  strange  deformities  of 
animals  inhabiting  the  waters  of  underground  rivers.  The  direct  rays 
of  the  sun  seem  to  exercise  many  of  the  effects  which  the  manufactur- 
ers of  "  electric  brushes  "  ascribe  to  the  use  of  their  contrivances.  In 
ancient  Rome  special  sun-bathing  houses  were  used  as  a  specific  for  a 
form  of  asthenia,  which  was  then  more  frequent  than  premature  de- 
bility— the  infirmity  of  extreme  old  age.  In  winter-time  white-haired 
invalids,  stripped  to  the  waist,  basked  for  hours  under  the  glass-roof 
of  a  solarium  which  excluded  the  chill  winds,  but  admitted  the  light 
from  all  sides,  and  the  same  remedy  would  prove  even  more  effective 
in  the  treatment  of  chlorosis — properly  a  twilight-disease,  and  due  to 
the  same  causes  that  rob  a  cellar-plant  of  its  color  and  vigor.  A  board 
fence  may  fail  to  remove  the  fear  of  peeping  Toms,  but  on  sequestered 
mountain-meadows,  warmed  by  a  July  sun,  or  better  yet  on  the  beach 
of  a  lonely  sea-shore,  the  patient  may  while  away  an  hour  in  the  cos- 
tume of  the  Nereids  ;  or,  after  the  manner  of  the  sensible  Brazilians, 
children  may  at  safe  hours  be  permitted  to  turn  a  leafy  garden  into 
paradise.  Persons  of  highly  limited  means  can  utilize  the  elevation  of 
their  garrets,  and  use  a  half-screened  window-corner  as  a  solarium^ 
for  hours  together.  The  expectation  of  disastrous  consequences  will 
be  as  surely  disappointed  as  the  dread  of  the  night  air.  "  Colds  "  are 
not  taken  in  that  way.  The  hairy  coat  which  may,  or  may  not,  have 
covered  the  bodies  of  our  prehistoric  forefathers,  did  not  interfere  with 
the  beneficial  action  of  the  solar  rays,  and  it  is  not  the  least  among  the 
disadvantages  of  our  artificial  modes  of  life,  that  this  benefit  is  now 
limited  to  one  tenth,  or,  in  the  case  of  a  muffled-up  lady  of  fashion,  to 
one  per  cent,  of  the  cutaneous  surface. 

The  diet  should  be  sparing,  but  not  to  the  degree  of  being  astrin- 
gent, for  chronic  constipation  and  nervousness  are  almost  invariable 
concomitants.  There  are  many  appetizing  vegetable  articles  of  diet 
of  which  a  liberal  quantum  can  be  eaten  without  exceeding  the  needs 
of  the  organism  ;  but  here,  more  than  elsewhere,  it  is  of  paramount 
importance  to  remember  the  chief  rule  of  the  peptic  catechism  :  not 
to  eat  till  we  have  leisure  to  digest.  Vertigo,  myopsis  (visions  of 
floating  specks  clouding  the  eye-sight),  palpitation  of  the  heart,  and 
the  indescribable  irritations  and  discomforts   of  the   sufferers   from 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE.  459 

nervous  disorders,  can  frequently  be  traced  to  the  influence  of  after- 
dinner  work  —  work,  perhaps,  requiring  severe  mental  application, 
though  the  brain  aches  for  rest — while  about  a  million  of  American 
school-teachers  and  counting-house  drudges  still  aggravate  their 
misery  by  the  use  of  tonic  bitters  in  the  United  States,  and  of  ginger- 
drops  and  chile  Colorado  in  South  America.  Narcotic  drinks  are  an 
equally  fruitful  source  of  nervous  affections,  and  tea,  the  chief  culprit, 
is  too  often  mistaken  for  a  liberator.  A  cup  of  "  good,  strong  tea  " 
relieves  a  nervous  headache  in  exactly  the  same  manner  that  medi- 
cated whiskey  relieves  the  distress  of  a  torpid  liver,  and  the  fact  that 
the  abnormal  excitement  is  regularly  followed  by  a  depressing  reaction 
would  not  undeceive  the  victim  of  the  stimulant-delusion,  if  the  repe- 
tition of  the  stimulation-process  were  not  sure  to  impair  the  efficacy 
of  the  tonic,  unless  the  dose  is  steadily  increased.  Only  after  that  in- 
crease has  in  vain  been  carried  to  an  alarming  extent,  the  patient  is 
apt  to  look  for  a  less  delusive  remedy.  And  yet  the  sudden  discon- 
tinuance of  a  long-wonted  tonic  will  at  first  aggravate  the  distress  to 
a  degree  that  would  overtax  the  endurance  of  most  persons,  and  the 
trials  of  the  transition  period  should  therefore  be  mitigated  by  the  in- 
fluence of  some  healthy  stimulus — the  diversion  of  a  journey,  or  of 
an  exciting  and  very  pleasant  occupation.  Indigestible  made  dishes 
should  also  be  carefully  avoided,  and  the  gratitude  of  suffering  thou- 
sands— both  nurses  and  patients — awaits  the  philanthropist  who  shall 
give  us  a  treatise  on  the  art  of  preparing  an  appetizmg  dinner  without 
the  use  of  the  frying-pan.  Nervous  people  are  extremely  fastidious, 
especially  in  the  choice  of  their  solid  food,  and  doubly  so  after  the 
interdict  of  their  favorite  liquids,  yet  a  single  plateful  of  fried  and 
spiced  viands  may  bring  on  a  relapse  of  the  unhappiest  symptoms, 
with  the  attendant  mental  affections  of  the  poor  followers  of  Epicurus 
who  "  would  be  perfect  gentlemen  if  it  were  not  for  their  tantrums." 
Spleen  is  a  disorder  of  the  nerves,  rather  than  of  the  brain,  and  a 
large  complexus  of  nerve-organs  is  situated  in  the  close  proximity  of 
the  stomach.  The  eel-stews  of  Mohammed  II  kept  the  whole  empire 
in  a  state  of  nervous  excitement,  and  one  of  the  meat-pies  which  King 
Philip  failed  to  digest  caused  the  revolt  of  the  Netherlands.  If  hired 
girls  had  a  vote  in  the  matter,  ladies  of  a  certain  temper  would  be  re- 
stricted to  a  diet  of  attractive  vegetables. 

Everything  that  tends  to  exhaust  the  vital  resources  of  the  body 
disposes  it  to  nervous  disorders.  Sexual  excesses^  therefore,  contribute 
a  large  share  to  the  debilitating  influences  of  civilized  life.  Hysterical 
affections  may  sometimes  result  from  the  unsatisfied  cravings  of  the 
sexual  passion,  but  chiefly  because  the  suppression  of  that  instinct 
often  leads  to  its  perversion.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  mental  incon- 
tinence ;  the  writings  of  hysterical  nuns,  for  instance,  abound  with 
erotic  effusions.  And,  while  spinsters  and  widows  are  often  strong- 
minded  to  an  unsexing  degree,  the  most  pitifully  nervous  women  are 


460  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

found  among  the  wives  of  the  wretches  who  consider  a  marriage-con- 
tract a  license  for  illimited  venery.  For  girls  of  a  chlorotic  disposi- 
tion, a  prurient  literature  does  what  sewer-gas  would  do  for  a  con- 
sumptive— though  idleness  will  find  other  means  to  supply  the  want 
of  dime-novels.  In  such  cases,  out-door  work  is  worth  all  the  medi- 
cines of  the  drug-market. 

A  quiet  country  home  is  the  best  refuge  from  the  sufferings  of  that 
dreary  form  of  nervous  disorders  that  result  from  the  reaction  of  deep 
mental  wounds — disappointed  hope,  reverses  of  fortune,  or  the  loss  of 
a  favorite  child.  Seasons  make  no  difference  ;  the  very  hardships  of 
rustic  life  often  act  as  a  balm  in  such  afflictions.  After  the  death  of 
his  only  son,  Goethe  sought  solace  among  the  pines  of  the  Thuringian 
forest,  like  Shenstone  in  his  Ainsford  solitude,  and  Petrarch  in  his 
hermitage  of  Yaucluse.  "  A  sick  man,"  says  old  Burton,  "  sits  upon 
a  green  bank,  and,  when  the  dog-star  parcheth  the  plains  and  di'ies 
up  the  rivers,  he  lies  in  a  shady  bower,  fronde  sub  arhorea  ferventia 
temper  at  astra,  and  feeds  his  eyes  with  a  variety  of  objects,  herbs, 
trees,  to  comfort  his  misery — or  takes  a  boat  on  a  pleasant  evening, 
and  rows  upon  the  waters,  which  Plutarch  so  much  applauds,  ^lian 
admires,  upon  the  river  Pineus — in  those  Thessalian  fields,  beset  with 
green  bays,  where  birds  so  sweetly  sing  that  passengers,  enchanted,  as 
it  were,  with  their  heavenly  music,  omnium  laborum  et  curarum  ohli- 
viscantur,  forget  forthwith  all  labors,  care,  and  grief."  Especially  if 
the  passenger  can  be  persuaded  to  row  his  own  boat,  and  to  dismiss 
the  delusion  that  the  night-mists  of  his  Pineus  have  to  be  counter- 
acted with  a  bottle  of  alcoholic  bitters. 

In  the  homes  of  the  poor,  nervous  afflictions  are  sometimes  the  re- 
sult of  insufficient  sleep.  After  a  sleepless  night,  the  attempt  to  en- 
gage in  labor  of  an  exacting  kind  will  lead  to  a  fever  of  fidgets  and 
nervous  twitchings,  and  the  same  consequences  may  result  from  the 
habit  of  rising  every  morning  before  Nature  admits  that  the  gain  of 
the  night  has  quite  equalized  the  expenses  of  the  foregoing  day.  But 
it  is  a  true  saying  that  we  are  not  nourished  by  what  we  eat,  but  by 
what  we  digest,  and  that  an  indigestible  meal  is  as  bad  as  a  fast-day. 
Nervous  people  should  remember  that  unquiet  sleep  is  not  much  bet- 
ter than  sleeplessness,  and  that  the  blessing  of  a  good  night's  rest  can 
be  enjoyed  only  in  a  well-ventilated  bedroom.  With  the  largest  pos- 
sible supply  of  fresh  air  by  day  and  by  night,  with  sunshine,  out-door 
exercise,  and  healthy  food,  the  most  obstinate  nervous  disorders  can 
be  gradually  overcome  ;  the  impediments  yield,  till  the  river  of  life 
flows  with  an  unobstructed  current  :  the  body  has  been  restored  to 
the  conditions  of  existence  for  which  its  organism  was  originally 
adapted. 


DANGEROUS  KEROSENE  AND  ITS  DETECTION  461 


DAITGEEOUS  KEROSEKE  AND    THE    METHODS    FOR 
ITS  DETECTION. 

By  Dr.  JOHN  T.  STODDAED, 

PROFESSOK   OF   CHEMISTRY   IN   SMITH   COLLEGE. 

KEROSENE,  in  virtue  of  its  cheapness  and  the  brilliant  light  it 
gives,  has  found  its  way  into  almost  every  house.  And  yet  fre- 
quent and  often  horrible  accidents  prove  that  much  of  the  oil  now 
sold  is  of  a  most  dangerous  character.  It  is  the  recognized  duty  of 
the  State  to  render  the  sale  of  such  oil  impossible  by  proper  inspec- 
tion. Almost  dail)^  reports  of  loss  of  property  and  life,  as  the  result 
of  the  use  of  unsafe  kerosene,  show,  however,  that  this  official  control 
fails  to  effect  its  object.  This  may  be  due,  in  a  measure,  to  the  un- 
doubted negligence  of  cities  and  towns  to  appoint  competent  inspect- 
ors— if,  indeed,  any  appointment  is  made — or  to  the  carelessness  of 
the  inspectors  ;  but  of  greater  importance  even  than  this  are  the  low 
standards  adopted,  and  the  unreliability  of  the  tests  which  are  used  to 
determine  the  character  of  the  oil. 

It  is  the  object  of  this  paper  to  consider  the  conditions  of  safety 
in  an  oil  used  for  illuminating  and  heating  purposes,  and  to  give  a 
brief  sketch  of  the  principal  methods  which  have  been  proposed  for 
determining  this  important  point. 

Petroleum,  from  which  kerosene  is  prepared,  is,  as  is  generally 
known,  a  mixture  of  a  large  number  of  intimately  related  compounds  of 
widely  differing  volatility.  Some  are  gaseous,  and  escape  in  this  form 
as  the  petroleum  issues  from  the  ground,  while  others  form  the  solid 
paraffine.  The  middle  portions  of  the  crude  oil  are  separated  from  the 
more  and  less  volatile  compounds  by  distillation,  and  after  a  further 
process  of  purification  go  into  the  market  as  kerosene.  The  entire 
removal  of  the  lighter  and  more  volatile  portions,  which  are  known  as 
naphtha  and  benzine,  is  of  the  utmost  importance,  for  it  is  in  their  pres- 
ence that  the  danger  lies.  Alone,  they  are  easily  ignited,  and  alone 
or  mixed  even  in  small  proportion  with  kerosene,  they  readily  emit 
vapors  which  are  inflammable  and  which  with  air  form  an  explosive 
mixture. 

An  oil  is  safe  only  w^hen  it  will  not  yield  these  dangerous  vapors 
at  any  temperature  which  it  is  liable  to  assume.  This  temperature 
depends  obviously  (1)  upon  that  of  the  place  where  the  oil  is  kept 
or  used,  and  (2)  upon  the  influence  of  the  heat  of  the  burning  wick  in 
warming  the  oil  in  the  reservoir  of  the  lamp.  As  the  result  of  care- 
fully conducted  experiments  with  lamps  of  different  patterns,  it  has 
been  found*  that  the  maximum  increase  of  temperature  of  the  oil 

*  "  Zeitschrift  fiir  anal.  Chem.,"  xxi,  332. 


462  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

in  a  burning  lamp  is  some  16°  Fahr.  (9°  C).  Before  the  lamp  is 
lighted  the  oil  in  it  will  in  most  cases  have  the  temperature  of  the 
air  about  it.  Our  rooms  in  summer  often  have  a  temperature  of  90° 
Fahr.,  and  reach  100°  Fahr.  in  a  few  exceptional  days,  while  in  win- 
ter the  oil  assumes  even  a  higher  temperature  than  this  when  the  lamp 
is  placed — as  it  often  is — near  a  stove  or  an  open  fire. 

Hence,  it  is  plain  that  the  lowest  temperature  at  which  an  oil  may 
evolve  inflammable  vapors  and  be  considered  safe  must  be  put  at  116° 
Fahr.,  or  better  still  at  120°  Fahr. 

What,  now,  are  the  means  for  determining  the  temperature  at 
which  these  vapors  appear,  and  thus  for  deciding  upon  the  safety  or 
danger  of  an  oil  ?  It  seems  at  first  thought  a  simple  and  certain  mat- 
ter. Put  a  little  oil  in  a  cup  and  suspend  a  thermometer  in  it  ;  warm 
it  slowly,  and,  as  the  temperature  rises  from  degree  to  degree,  pass  a 
lighted  match  just  above  its  surface.  Presently  the  match  will  cause 
a  tiny  explosion.  This  indicates  that  the  dangerous  vapors  are  ap- 
pearing, and  the  thermometer  now  gives  the  so-called  flashing-point 
of  this  oil.  Go  on  heating  and  testing  as  before,  and  at  last  the  oil 
will  take  fire  and  continue  burning  by  itself.  The  mercury  is  now  at 
the  hurning -point.  But  repeat  the  experiment  with  fresh  samples  of 
the  same  oil,  and  you  will  find  that  a  trifling  variation  in  the  conditions 
will  alter  the  flashing-point  to  a  wonderful  extent.  The  quantity  of 
oil  used  for  the  test,  the  rate  of  heating,  and  the  range  of  temperature 
through  which  the  oil  is  heated,  the  distance  above  the  surface  at  which 
the  match  passes — each  and  all  have  a  marked  influence  on  the  deter- 
mination. 

The  hurning -point — ovflre-test^  as  it  is  often  misleadingly  called — 
is  of  little  value  ;  for  not  only  does  it  always  lie  above  the  flashing- 
point — which  is  the  real  danger-point — but  it  bears  no  simple  relation 
to  the  latter,  so  that  its  determination  gives  really  no  clew  to  the  tem- 
perature at  which  the  oil  becomes  unsafe. 

The  unreliability  of  this  simple  method  of  testing  and  the  im- 
portance of  the  problem  have  called  forth  numerous  suggestions  for 
improvement.  Within  the  last  fifteen  years  no  fewer  than  twenty-five 
different  instruments  have  been  proposed,  presenting  as  many  more  or 
less  widely  modified  forms  of  the  simple  cup-tester  indicated  above. 
The  most  essential  variations  are  (1)  in  the  size  and  form  of  the  oil- 
holder  or  cup,  which  in  some  apparatus  is  open,  in  others  partly  or 
wholly  closed  ;  (2)  in  the  dimensions  of  the  w^ater-bath — which  is  in- 
variably employed  in  all  as  the  best  means  for  communicating  a  slow 
and  uniform  increase  of  temperature  to  the  oil  ;  (3)  in  the  means  used 
for  igniting  the  vapor — a  burning  match,  waxed  thread,  small  gas-jet, 
electric  spark,  or  little  oil-lamp  standing  on  the  cover  of  the  oil-cup 
being  the  chief  devices  for  this  purpose. 

But,  notwithstanding  all  the  ingenuity  displayed,  and  the  elaborate 
and  costly  apparatus  to  which  it  has  in  some  instances  given  birth,  we 


DANGEROUS  KEROSENE  AND  ITS  DETECTION.    463 

find  Engler  and  Haass,*  at  the  close  of  a  careful  investigation  into  the 
reliability  of  petroleum-testers,  in  which  all  the  more  promising  meth- 
ods were  laboriously  examined  and  compared,  laying  down  these  gen- 
eral principles,  which  are  to  be  observed  in  the  construction  and  use 
of  this  class  of  testers  : 

1.  The  quantity  of  oil  must  be  the  same  in  all  experiments. — In 
the  Saybolt  tester,  for  instance,  which  was  adopted  in  1879  by  the 
New  York  Produce  Exchange  (chiefly,  however,  for  the  purpose  of 
determining  the  burning-point),  variations  of  one  millimetre,  or  about 
one  twenty-fifth  of  an  inch,  in  the  height  of  the  oil,  cause  differences 
of  some  degrees  in  the  flashing-point. 

2.  The  oil  must  be  heated  slowly  and  uniformly. 

3.  The  temperature  of  the  oil  at  the  beginning  of  the  test  must  be 
at  least  18°  Fahr.  (10°  C.)  below  its  flashing-point  (which  is  approxi- 
mately determined  by  a  preliminary  test).  Hence,  a  low-grade  oil, 
which  flashes  not  far  from  the  air  temperature,  must  be  cooled  down 
before  an  accurate  determination  can  be  made. 

4.  The  size  and  intensity  of  the  flame  or  spark  used  to  produce  the 
flash  must  remain  unchanged  in  all  tests.  Increase  in  size  or  intensity 
lowers  the  flashing-point. 

5.  The  distance  of  the  flash-flame  or  spark  from  the  surface  of  the 
oil  must  be  the  same  in  all  tests.  The  flashing-point  is  lowered  by 
decreasing  this  distance.  Care  must  be  taken  that  this  distance  is  not 
so  small  that  a  local  evolution  of  vapor  from  the  surface  occurs. 

6.  The  time  during  which  the  fl^me  or  spark  acts  must  be  reduced 
to  a  minimum,  increase  in  the  time  causing  a  sensible  lowering  of  the 
flashing-point. 

7.  On  account  of  the  practical  purpose  for  which  the  tests  are 
made,  the  conditions  under  which  the  vapor  is  formed  in  the  tester 
should  correspond  as  closely  as  possible  to  those  which  determine  its 
formation  and  explosion  in  lamps,  etc. 

Comment  upon  methods  which  depend  for  trustworthy  results 
upon  such  a  formidable  array  of  conditions  is  hardly  necessary  ;  the 
best  apparatus  must  be  electrical  and  costly,  and  even  then  unreliable 
except  in  the  hands  of  an  expert.  We  are  not  surprised  to  find  Mr. 
A.  H.  Elliott,  in  his  report  of  a  similar  investigation  ordered  by  the 
New  York  State  Board  of  Health,  giving  as  his  general  conclusion  : 
"  Of  all  the  apparatus  examined,  not  one  can  be  called  perfectly 
satisfactory.  ...  Of  the  electric  testers  it  may  be  stated,  that  any 
advantage  obtained  from  the  use  of  electricity  is  more  than  over- 
come by  the  trouble  necessary  to  maintain  the  galvanic  battery  and 
induction-coil."  But,  even  if  the  performance  of  some  of  these  in- 
struments is  such  as  to  yield  concordant  results,  when  all  the  precau- 
tions are  carefully  heeded,  these  results  can  have  only  a  relative  sig- 
nificance, and  agreement  of  different  testers  can  only  be  secured  by 
*  "Zeitschrift  fiir  anal.  Chem.,"  xx,  1. 


464 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


selecting  one  with  its  manipulation  as  an  arbitrary  standard,  and  adopt- 
ing conditions  in  the  others  which  shall  give  corresponding  results. 
Nor  can  it  be  affirmed  that  all  the  conditions  under  which  explosions 
in  lamps  are  liable  to  occur  are  provided  for  in  any  single  instrument 


Fig.  1.— Thb  Satbolt  Testeb. 

of  this  class.  The  oil-reservoirs  of  our  lamps  diifer  much  in  size  and 
shape,  and  hence  have  different  capacities.  Moreover,  the  quantity  of 
oil,  its  surface,  and  the  amount  of  air  in  the  reservoir  with  which  the 
vapor  mingles,  are  constantly  changing  while  the  lamp  is  in  use  and 
the  danger  greatest.  Again,  it  is  not  alone  in  quietly  burning  lamps 
that  accidents  occur.  Probably  half  are  due  to  upsetting  or  breaking, 
and  the  oil,  which  would  have  been  safe  otherwise,  gives  rise  to  ex- 
plosion or  flames  under  these  more  dangerous  circumstances. 

If  it  is  important  to  test  the  oil,  it  certainly  is  wise  to  employ,  if 
possible,  a  test  which  shall  indicate  the  lowest  temperature  at  which, 
under  any  conditions^  inflammable  vapors  can  be  evolved,  and  not  to 
trust  to  a  method  which  merely  proves  an  oil  safe  under  certain  arbi- 
trary conditions. 

Besides  these  instruments  which  aim  at  a  direct  determination  of 
the  temperature  at  which  an  oil  becomes  dangerous,  others  have  been 
proposed  in  which  the  character  of  the  oil  is  tested  in  an  indirect 
manner,  by  finding  the  elastic  force  or  tension  of  its  vapor  at  a  given 
temperature.  The  tension  is  measured  by  the  height  of  the  column 
of  water  which  it  sustains.  By  comparing  the  tension  which  any  oil 
gives  in  this  apparatus  with  that  of  some  kerosene  which  has  been  se- 
lected as  a  standard,  the  quality  of  the  former  is  ascertained — a  higher 
tension  indicating  a  more  dangerous  oil.     It  is  plain  that  the  reliabil- 


DANGEROUS  KEROSENE  AND  ITS  DETECTION  465 

ity  of  this  method  depends  upon  the  assumption  that  a  definite  re- 
lation exists  between  vapor-tension  and  flashing  -  point  in  all  kero- 
senes. It  has,  however,  been  shown  in  the  most  conclusive  manner, 
that  this  is  not  the  case.*  Four  different  oils,  which  all  had  a  flash- 
ing-point of  28*5°  to  29*5°  C,  as  determined  by  one  of  the  most 
trustworthy  of  the  testers  before  described,  were  found  to  give,  at 
28°  C,  vapor-tensions  of  75,  104,  118,  and  168  millimetres  (of  water)  ; 
and,  at  40°  C,  tensions  of  126,  149,  165,  and  201  millimetres.  Fur- 
ther, seven  different  kerosenes  gave,  when  tested  by  the  two  meth- 
ods, the  following  results  : 


OIL. 

1. 

2. 

3. 

4. 

5. 

6. 

7. 

Flashing-point 

Tension  at  35°  C.  . 

25°  C. 
95mm. 

26°  C. 
160mm. 

26°  C. 
201mm. 

28°  C. 
'ZSmm. 

80°  C. 
45mm. 

44°  C. 
13mm. 

48°  C. 
5mm. 

It  thus  appears  that  the  results  obtained  by  the  measurement  of  the 
vapor-tension  are  quite  worthless  as  indications  of  the  dangerous  char- 
acter of  kerosene,  and  the  method  must  be  regarded  as  far  less  reliable 
than  even  the  imperfect  ways  of  testing  which  have  been  already  dis- 
cussed. 

The  uncertainties  of  the  foregoing  methods  are  entirely  avoided 
by  a  distillation  test,  which  also  enables  one  to  decide  the  quality  of 
the  oil  as  an  illuminating  material,  and  thus  gives  the  fullest  informa- 
tion in  regard  to  its  nature.f  The  oil  is  separated  by  the  distillation 
into  three  fractions  :  a  light  oil  distilling  below  150°  C.  ;  illuminating 
oil  coming  over  between  150°  and  270°  C.  ;  and  a  heavy  oil  which 
boils  above  270°  C.  The  first  fractional  distillate  represents  the  dan- 
gerous constituents,  and  should  not  exceed,  according  to  Bielstein,  five 
per  cent  of  the  whole.  The  heavy  oil  affects  the  freedom  with  which 
the  kerosene  burns  in  a  lamp,  and,  in  American  kerosene,  should  not 
form  more  than  fifteen  per  cent  of  the  oil.  The  operation  must  be 
conducted  with  care,  in  a  flask  provided  with  a  dephlegmator,  and  the 
fractions,  as  well  as  the  original  sample,  must  be  weighed.  These  cir- 
cumstances are  likely  to  prevent  the  general  adoption  of  a  method 
which  is  otherwise  so  simple  and  satisfactory,  and  kerosene  will  prob- 
ably be  tested  in  the  future,  as  now,  by  the  determination  of  its  flash- 
ing-point. 

In  1879  Victor  Meyer  J  suggested  a  principle  by  which  the  mini- 
mum, or,  as  he  called  it,  "  true  or  absolute  "  flashing-point,  could  be  de- 
termined. It  is  to  saturate  air  with  oil-vapor  at  the  test-temperature. 
His  method  is  simply  this  :  A  glass  cylinder  of  about  200  c.  c.  capacity 
is  partly  filled  with  oil,  stoppered  with  a  cork  through  which  a  ther- 

*  Englcr  and  Haass,  he.  cit.  f  "  Zeitschrift  fiir  anal.  Chem.,"  xxii,  313. 

X  Wagner's  "  Jahresbericht,"  18V9,  1175. 
VOL,  XXI7. — 30 


466 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


mometer  passes,  and  heated  by  plunging  into  warm  water  ;  when  the 
temperature  is  reached  at  which  the  test  is  to  be  made,  the  cylinder  is 
briskly  shaken,  the  stopper  removed,  and  a  small  flame  introduced. 
Flashing-points  obtained  by  this  plan  are  considerably  lower  than 
those  given  by  the  methods  which  have  been  discussed,  and  are  found, 
moreover,  to  be  largely  independent  of  the  conditions  so  essential  to 
success  in  the  latter. 

Plaass  *  has  described  an  elaborate  and  clever  apparatus  based  on 
the  same  principle,  and  differing  essentially  from  Meyer's  only  in  the 
substitution  of  an  electric  spark,  at  a  fixed  distance  from  the  surface 
of  the  oil,  for  the  flame  which  the  latter  employed.  In  both  of  these 
methods' the  flashing-point  depends  upon  the  time  allowed  between  the 
shaking  and  testing,  Haass  recommending  an  interval  of  one  minute 
after  the  bubbles  have  disappeared  from  the  surface  of  the  oil,  in 
order  to  permit  the  suspended  oil-particles  to  settle.  The  shaking, 
which  must  be  repeated  from  degree  to  degree,  is  a  troublesome  feat- 
ure of  these  methods,  and,  though  Meyer's  apparatus  is  certainly  sim- 
ple and  inexpensive  enough,  that  of  Haass  is  difficult  of  construction, 
electrical,  and  costly.  The  general  principle  of  these  methods  is,  how- 
ever, without  question  the  correct  one  for  obtaining  a  minimum  (and 
approximately  "absolute  ")  flashing-point,  and  it  is  to  L.  Liebermann  f 
that  we  owe  the  suggestion  of  an  ingenious  and  successful  plan  for 


Fig.  2.— Likbermann'b  Testbr. 

avoiding  the  difliculties  mentioned  above.  In  Liebermann's  method 
the  saturation  of  air  with  vapor  is  accomplished  by  forcing  an  air- 
current  through  the  oil  as  it  is  warmed  from  degree  to  degree  ;  and 
the  test  made  by  bringing  a  small  flame  to  the  mouth  of  the  oil-holder 
at  the  same  instant. 

It  has,  however,  been  shown  that  the  intermittent  cun'ent  of  air 
which  is  recommended  gives  somewhat  irregular  results,  and  that  more 
concordant  flashing-points  are  obtained  by  letting  a  continuous  current 

*  "Chem.  Industrie,"  1880,  123,  and  "  Zeitschrift  fur  anal.  Chem.,"  xx,  29. 
f  "Zeitschrift  fur  anal,  Chem.,"  xxi,  321. 


DANGEROUS  KEROSENE  AND  ITS  DETECTION.  467 


run  through  the  oil  for  at  least  one  minute  before  the  flash  occurs.  It 
may  perhaps  seem,  at  first  thought,  that  a  continuous  current  of  air 
would  dilute  the  vapor  to  such  an  extent  that  the  flashing-point  must 
be  materially  raised,  and  that  this  effect  must  be  more  marked  as  the 
velocity  of  the  current  is  increased.  This  is,  however,  not  the  case. 
On  the  contrary,  while  a  slow,  continuous  current  raises  the  flashing- 
point  appreciably,  a  sufficiently  rapid  one  gives  nearly  the  same  results 
as  the  intermittent  method  ;  nor  does  any  further  increase  in  the  ve- 
locity alter  the  flashing-point  to  a  sensible  extent.  It  has  indeed  been 
found  that  a  large  dilution  of  kerosene-vapor  with  air  is  necessary  to 
furnish  the  conditions  for  the  most  violent  explosion  ;  and  these  con- 
ditions are  also  those  for  the  readiest  flash  by  this  method  of  testing. 
The  most  explosive  mixture,  according  to  Chandler,  is  formed  by  nine 
parts  of  air  to  one  of  vapor.  The  passage  of  a  large  quantity  of  air 
through  the  oil  tends,  of  course,  to  make  the  flashing-point  higher,  by 
carrying  away  with  it  the  more  volatile  portions  which  determine  the 
flash,  and  this  effect  is  greater  when  the  quantity  of  oil  is  small  and  the 
air-current  long  continued.  It  is,  consequently,  necessary  in  the  em- 
ployment of  this  method  to  know  the  minimum  quantity  of  oil  and  the 
maximum  duration  of  air-current  which  will  permit  concordant  results. 
These  limits  have  been  ascertained  in  a  recent  investigation,*  the 
results  or  which  are  given  a  little  further  on. 

A  tester  of  still  simpler  construction  than  that  of  Liebermann  has  also 
been  proposed.f  It  consists,  as  shown  in  the  cut,  of  a  glass  cylinder, 
closed  at  one  end  by  a  cork,  through  which 
a  small  bent  tube,  d,  c,  b,  passes.  Just  with- 
in the  cork  the  end  of  this  tube  contracts  to 
a  small  orifice.  The  other  end  of  the  tube 
connects  with  a  small  bellows,  or  other  source 
of  slightly  compressed  air,  the  flow  of  which 
can  be  regulated  by  the  pinch-cock  e. 

Experiments  made  with  cylinders  of  dif- 
ferent dimensions  have  shown  that  the  best 
results  are  obtained  when  the  diameter  is 
between  2*5  and  4  c.  m.  The  length  (if  only 
great  enough  to  allow  at  least  the  minimum 
quantity  of  oil  to  be  used)  makes  no  differ- 
ence. Cylinders  of  the  same  diameter  but 
of  different  lengths,  when  filled  with  oil  to 
within  the  same  distance  from  the  top,  all  give  the  same  flashing-point. 
Change  in  length  in  such  cases  is  simply  equivalent  to  change  in  the 
quantity  of  oil  employed  in  the  test,  and  it  has  been  proved  that  the 
quantity  of  oil  does  not  affect  the  determination  when  it  is  above  a  cer- 
tain minimum. 

*  "  American  Chemical  Journal,"  vi,  No  1. 
f  Ibid,  iv.  No.  4,  285,  and  "Ber.  d.  Deutschen  chem.  Gesell.,"  xv,  2555. 


no.  3. 


468  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

The  distance  of  the  oil,  or  rather  of  the  foam  into  which  the  sur- 
face is  broken  by  the  air-current,  from  the  top  of  the  cylinder,  how- 
ever, makes  a  considerable  difference  in  the  results — the  flashing-point 
falling  as  this  distance  is  decreased,  until  at  about  5  to  6  c.  m.  it 
reaches  a  minimum. 

These  considerations  lead  to  the  following  statements  and  direc- 
tions for  the  use  of  this  method  : 

1.  The  oil-cylinder  should  have  a  diameter  of  2'5  to  4  c.  m.  It 
may  be  of  any  convenient  length,  provided  it  holds,  when  filled,  for 
the  test  not  less  than  50  c.  c.  of  oil.  With  a  diameter  of  2*5  c.  m., 
the  length  should  be  at  least  16  c.  m.  ;  with  a  diameter  of  3  c.  m., 
the  least  length  should  be  13  c.  m.  A  good  tester  may  be  made 
from  the  chimney  of  a  student-lamp,  by  cutting  off  the  lower  part, 
a  little  above  the  contraction.  (Glass  is  easily  cut  by  filing  a  deep 
notch  at  one  point,  and  letting  a  little  gas-flame  play  slowly  back 
and  forth  across  it  in  the  line  of  the  proposed  section,  until  a  crack 
springs  quite  through  the  glass  ;  this  crack  can  then  be  led  in  any 
desired  direction  by  keeping  the  little  flame  just  ahead  of  it  on  the 
glass.)  The  whole  chimney  may  also  sei-ve  as  an  oil-cylinder  by 
corking  the  large  end.  The  irregularity  of  shape  at  the  bottom  does 
not  affect  the  results  ;  but  the  length  makes  it  rather  inconvenient  by 
requiring  a  correspondingly  deep  water-bath. 

2.  The  cylinder  is  filled  with  oil  to  a  point  such  that,  when  the 
air-current  is  running,  the  top  of  the  foam  is  4  or  6  c.  m.  below  the 
mouth. 

3.  The  oil  is  heated  by  means  of  a  water-bath,  into  which  the 
cylinder  is  plunged  to  the  level  of  the  oil.  The  temperature  of  the 
oil  should  not  rise  faster  than  two  degrees  a  minute. 

4.  Air  is  forced  through  the  oil  with  such  velocity  that  about  (and 
not  less  than)  1  c.  m.  foam  is  maintained  on  the  surface,  and  a  flash- 
jet  brought  to  the  mouth  of  the  cylinder  every  half  degree,  or  oftener 
in  the  vicinity  of  the  flashing-point.  The  approach  of  the  flashing- 
point  is  announced  by  the  appearance  of  a  faint  blue  halo  of  burning 
vapor  around  the  flash-jet ;  this  finally  detaches  itself  and  runs  down 
to  the  surface  of  the  oil,  and  the  reading  of  the  thermometer  at  this 
instant  gives  a  trial  flashing-point,  which  may  be  a  little  too  high  if 
the  air-current  has  been  running  too  long,  or  not  long  enough. 

The  test  is  now  repeated  with  a  fresh  sample  of  the  oil,  and  the 
air-current  started  in  full  strength  not  less  than  one  nor  more  than 
three  or  four  minutes  before  the  flash  occurs.  It  is  a  good  plan,  how- 
ever, to  let  a  very  slow  current  of  air  bubble  through  the  oil  from  the 
time  that  the  tester  is  put  in  the  water-bath,  so  as  to  secure  regularity 
in  the  heating  of  the  oil. 

A  very  good  flash-jet  is  a  little  gas-flame  from  the  tip  of  a  blow- 
pipe, or  glass  tube  drawn  out  to  a  point. 

The  advantages  of  this  method  are  : 


THE  MORALITY  OF  HAPPINESS.  469 

1.  Simplicity  of  apparatus.  It  can  be  made  in  a  few  moments  by 
any  one  who  can  bend  a  glass  tube. 

2.  Simplicity  of  manipulation.  A  manufacturer,  asked  to  try  it, 
obtained  concordant  and  accurate  results  at  the  first  trial. 

3.  Trustworthiness  of  the  results,  which  are  independent  of  arbitrary 
conditions,  and  have  a  significance  wholly  wanting  in  methods  based 
upon  other  principles.     The  flashing-point  determined  is  the  lowest. 

The  lowest  flashing-point  for  illuminating  oils  in  New  York  is 
fixed  by  law  at  100°  Fahr.,  and  this  is  as  determined  by  a  modification 
of  the  Wisconsin  tester,  an  instrument  which  demands  all  the  precau- 
tions so  emphatically  given  by  Engler  and  Haass.  In  Massachusetts, 
method  and  flashing-point  are  apparently  both  left  to  the  wisdom  and 
discretion  of  the  inspector. 

And  yet  we  have  seen  that  116°  Fahr.  is  the  very  lowest  flashing- 
point  consistent  with  safety,  and  this  should  mean  the  minimum  flash- 
ing-point determined  by  some  fully  reliable  method.  We  must  not 
be  misled  in  this  matter  by  the  statement  that  our  best  kerosenes  are 
"  150°  or  160°  test "  oils  ;  for  this  has  reference,  not  to  the  flashing- 
point,  but  to  the  fire-test,  or  burning-point,  which,  as  has  already  been 
shown,  gives  little  indication  of  the  character  of  an  oil.  The  best  oils 
^o\di  flash  at  about  109°  Fahr.,  while  the  cheaper  grades  have  much 
lower  flashing-points — at  least  as  low  as  85°  Fahr. 

We  need  not  be  surprised,  then,  at  the  numerous  accidents  ;  they 
will  not  diminish  until  a  much  more  efficient  and  intelligent  system  of 
inspection  is  enforced  than  now.  We  are  far  too  much  inclined  to 
take  our  risk,  even  in  the  midst  of  constant  warnings  ;  we  leave  our 
kerosene  to  the  ignorant  and  careless  handling  of  our  servants  ;  we 
buy,  perhaps,  a  cheaper  grade  from  motives  of  economy,  only  to  find 
that  the  oil  in  which  we  thoughtlessly  trusted  has  occasioned  loss  of 
property,  horrible  suffering,  or  even  death. 

As  long  as  unsafe  kerosene  is  offered  for  sale,  we  may  be  sure 
purchasers  will  be  found.  The  only  safe  way  is  to  banish  the  dan- 
gerous stuff  from  the  market. 


THE  MOKALITY  OF  HAPPINESS. 

By  THOMAS  FOSTER. 
IV. — EIGHT  AND   "WRONG. 

rits  scientific  aspect,  then,  as  indicated  by  processes  of  evolution, 
conduct  is  good  in  proportion  as  it  tends  to  increase  the  quantity 
and  the  fullness  of  life,  bad  in  proportion  as  it  exerts  a  contrary  influ- 
ence. Conduct  may  tend  to  increase  life  in  its  fullness  directly  or 
indirectly,  proximately  or  remotely  ;  and  again  conduct  may  in  one 


470  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

aspect  increase,  while  in  another  aspect  it  may  diminish,  the  fullness 
and  quantity  of  life  :  but  our  definition  of  good  and  bad  conduct  is 
not  affected  by  such  considerations.  Just  as  a  knife  may  be  a  good 
knife  for  cutting  bread,  and  a  bad  knife  for  cutting  wood,  just  as  a 
business  transaction  may  be  good  in  relation  to  some  immediate  pur- 
pose, yet  bad  when  remoter  effects  are  considered,  so  can  we  truly 
apply  to  conduct  the  terms  good  and  bad  in  reference  to  one  set  of 
considerations,  even  though  we  may  have  to  invert  the  terms  when 
conduct  is  considered  in  reference  to  another  set  of  considerations. 
But  always,  in  its  scientific  aspect,  conduct  is  to  be  regarded  as  good 
where  it  increases  life  or  the  fullness  of  life,  and  bad  where  it  tends 
the  contrary  way. 

When  we  separate  conduct  ethically  indifferent  from  conduct  in 
its  strict  ethical  aspect,  it  is  convenient  to  substitute  for  the  words 
good  and  bad  the  words  right  and  wrong.  But  the  change  is  slighter 
than  at  first  sight  it  appears.  Indeed,  the  more  carefully  the  question 
of  rightness  or  wrongness — the  question  of  duty — is  considered,  the 
more  thoroughly  does  the  kind  of  conduct  judged  to  be  morally  in- 
different merge  into  that  which  we  regard  as  praiseworthy  or  cen- 
surable. 

Taking  first  those  parts  of  conduct  which  relate  directly  to  the 
quantity  or  to  the  fullness  of  individual  life,  we  find  that  while  the 
terms  good  and  bad  are  freely  applied  to  them,  and  even  the  terms 
right  and  wrong,  they  are,  for  the  most  part,  regarded  as  morally 
indifferent.  When  we  say  you  ought  to  do  this  or  to  refrain  from 
that,  the  idea  of  duty  is  often  not  really  present,  so  long  as  the  act 
in  question  relates  to  a  man's  own  life  or  its  fullness.  Even  when  we 
use  words  of  praise  or  censure  in  relation  to  such  acts,  they  do  not 
imply  that  a  moral  obligation  has  been  discharged  or  neglected.  The 
reason  doubtless  is  that,  as  a  rule,  men  need  little  encouragement  to 
look  after  those  parts  of  their  conduct  which  affect  themselves  and 
their  own  interests.  For  it  may  be  observed  that  where  it  is  likely 
there  may  be  want  of  due  care  or  wisdom  in  such  matters,  there  we 
find  distinct  exceptions  to  the  general  rule  just  indicated.  So  far  as 
quantity  and  fullness  of  life  are  concerned,  the  man  who  crosses  a 
crowded  thoroughfare  carelessly,  he  who  neglects  his  business,  and  he 
who  wears  insufiicient  or  unsuitable  clothes  in  cold  and  wet  weather, 
act  with  as  little  propriety  in  their  adjustments  as  is  shown  by  the 
man  who  steadily  drinks  intoxicating  liquors.  But  while  none  preach 
such  duties  as  caution  in  street-crossing,  prudence  and  energy  in  busi- 
ness, and  care  about  clothing,  at  least  as  duties  morally  obligatory, 
quite  a  number  of  persons  preach  against  steady  and  heavy  drinking 
as  against  a  moral  offense.  The  Bible,  indeed,  does  not,  though  it  has 
many  a  word  of  advice  against  wine-bibbing  ;  yet  even  in  the  Bible 
we  find  evidence  of  the  early  existence  of  total  abstainers,  and  it  is  al- 
together unlikely  that  those  ancient  Blue-Ribbonists  omitted  to  recog- 


THE  MORALITY  OF  HAPPINESS,  471 

nize  sinfulness  in  all  who  did  not  share  their  views  and  follow  their 
practices.  Here  we  find  evidence  of  the  law  of  moral  philosophy  that 
a  system  of  ethics,  with  recognition  of  moral  rightness  and  wrongness, 
only  begins  to  be  formed  where  the  best  conduct  (so  far  as  fullness 
of  life  is  concerned)  runs  the  chance,  for  whatever  reason,  of  being 
neglected,  and  inferior  conduct  followed.  In  this  case,  the  best  con- 
duct is  apt  to  be  neglected  because  the  increased  fullness  of  life  to 
which  it  conduces  is  more  remote  than  the  temporary  increase  of  life 
fullness  to  which  inferior  conduct  tends. 

Yet,  speaking  generally,  it  may  be  said  that,  as  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer 
puts  it :  "The  ethical  judgments  we  pass  on  self -regarding  acts  are 
ordinarily  little  emphasized  ;  partly  because  the  promptings  of  the 
self-regarding  desires,  generally  strong  enough,  do  not  need  moral 
enforcement,  and  partly  because  the  promptings  of  the  other  self- 
regarding  desires,  less  strong,  and  often  overridden,  do  need  moral 
enforcement." 

When  we  turn  to  the  life-regarding  actions  of  the  second  class, 
those  which  relate  to  the  rearing  of  offspring,  we  no  longer  find  the 
words  good  and  bad,  right  and  wrong,  used  with  doubtful  meaning. 
Here  the  question  of  duty  is  clearly  recognized.  The  conduct  of  par- 
ents, who,  by  neglecting  to  provide  for  their  children's  wants  in  in- 
fancy, diminish  their  chances  of  full  and  active  life,  or  of  life  itself, 
is  called  bad  and  wrong  not  solely  or  chiefly  because  it  is  not  favor- 
able to  the  increase  of  life,  but  as  open  to  moral  censure.  In  like 
manner,  men  blame  as  really  wrong,  not  merely  unwise  or  ill-adjusted, 
such  conduct  as  tends  to  make  the  physical  and  mental  training  of 
children  imperfect  or  inadequate. 

Still  clearer,  however,  is  the  use  of  the  words  right  and  wrong  as 
applied  to  conduct  by  which  men  influence  in  various  ways  the  lives 
of  their  fellows.  Here  the  adjustments  suitable  for  increasing  the  full- 
ness of  individual  life,  or  for  fostering  the  lives  of  offspring  (alike  in 
quantity  and  fullness),  are  often  inconsistent  with  the  corresponding 
adjustments  of  others.  The  development  by  evolution  of  conduct 
tending  to  the  advancement  of  individual  lives  or  lives  of  offspring 
would  of  itself  tend  constantly  to  acts  inconsistent  with  the  well-being 
or  even  with  the  existence  of  others,  were  it  not  for  the  development 
(also  brought  about,  as  we  have  seen,  by  processes  of  evolution)  of 
conduct  tending  to  the  increase  of  the  quantity  and  fullness  of  life 
in  the  community.  But  there  arises  a  constant  conflict  between  tend- 
encies to  opposite  lines  of  conduct.  It  is  so  essential  for  the  welfare 
of  the  community  that  tendencies  to  advance  the  life  interests  of  self 
and  children  should  be  in  due  subordination  (which  is  not  the  same 
thing,  be  it  noticed,  as  complete  subordination)  to  tendencies  leading 
to  the  furtherance  of  the  fullness  of  life  in  others,  that  rules  of  con- 
duct toward  others  than  self  or  children  have  to  be  emphatic  and  per- 
emptory in  tone.     Hence  it  is,  as  Mr.  Spencer  justly  remarks,  that  the 


472  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

words  good  and  bad  have  come  to  be  specially  associated  with  acts 
which  (respectively)  further  the  complete  living  of  others  and  acts 
which  obstruct  their  complete  living. 

We  approach  now  the  heart  of  the  matter.  We  have  seen  how 
conduct  has  been  evolved  in  the  various  races  of  living  creatures,  from 
the  lowest  to  man  the  highest.  We  have  learned  how  closely  related 
are  men's  ideas  of  good  and  bad  to  that  which  is  the  chief  end  of  all 
conduct — the  preservation  and  extension  of  life.  And  we  have  found 
that  while  the  conception  of  Tightness  and  wrongness  is  not  very 
marked  in  relation  to  conduct  affecting  self-life,  it  becomes  clear  and 
obvious  in  relation  to  conduct  affecting  the  life  of  offspring,  and  at- 
tains its  greatest  definiteness  and  as  it  were  emphasis  in  its  application 
to  conduct  affecting  the  lives  of  others.  Where  the  rules  determining 
right  and  wrong  in  regard  to  the  life  of  self,  of  offspring,  and  of  oth- 
ers, come  into  conflict,  as  they  must  until  social  relations  become  per- 
fect, the  right  in  regard  to  self  mostly  gives  way  to  right  in  regard  to 
offspring,  and  both  usually  give  way  to  right  in  regard  to  the  rest  of 
humankind.  But  in  Mr.  Spencer's  words  (I  quote  them  with  empha- 
sis, because  he  has  been  so  preposterously  and  indeed  wickedly  charged 
with  teaching  a  very  different  doctrine)  "  the  conduct  called  good  rises 
to  the  conduct  conceived  as  best,  when  it  fulfills  all  three  classes  of 
ends  at  the  same  time." 

But  now  the  vital  question  of  all  comes  before  us. 

We  conceive  as  good  or  bad  such  conduct  as  conduces  or  the  re- 
verse to  life  and  the  fullness  of  life,  in  self  and  others.  But  is  conduct 
of  the  one  kind  really  good  or  conduct  of  the  other  kind  really  bad  ? 
Though  good  or  bad  with  reference  to  that  particular  end,  and  though 
held  to  be  right  or  wrong  because  that  end  is  actually  in  view  among 
men,  may  not  conduct  be  differently  judged  when  the  nature  of  that 
end  is  considered  ?  In  other  words,  the  question  comes  before  us,  Is  life 
worth  living  ?  We  need  not  take  either  the  optimist  view,  according 
to  which  life  is  very  good,  or  the  pessimist  view,  according  to  which 
it  is  very  bad.  But  each  one  of  us  from  his  experience  as  regards  his 
own  life,  and  from  his  observation  (often  most  misleading,  however) 
on  the  lives  of  others,  may  be  led  to  hold  that  on  the  whole  life  is 
good,  or  that  on  the  whole  it  is  bad.  Of  course,  in  the  very  theory  of 
the  evolution  of  conduct,  or  rather  in  the  series  of  observed  facts 
demonstrating  the  evolution  of  conduct,  we  see  that  life  and  the  full- 
ness of  life  are  fought  for  throughout  nature  as  if  they  were  good. 
In  the  highest  race  the  love  of  life  in  self,  which  assumes  that  the  life 
of  others  also  is  good,  has  attained  its  highest  expression.  "  Every- 
thing that  a  man  has  he  will  give  for  his  life,"  is  a  rule  established 
rather  than  shaken  by  exceptions  and  the  attention  directed  to  such 
exceptions.  Yet  the  mere  fact  that  life  is  fought  for  by  all,  and  that 
the  struggle  for  life  has  been  so  potent  a  factor  in  the  development  of 
life,  does  not  in  itself  prove  life  to  be  an  actual  good.     Death  comes 


THE  MORALITY   OF  HAPPINESS. 


473 


not  alone.  To  creatures  full  of  life  death  comes  in  company  with 
pain  and  suffering.  It  may  be  these  which  move  all  living  creatures  to 
struggle  for  life,  and  not  mere  fear  of  death. 

Now,  to  the  question,  Is  life  worth  living?  it  would  be  impos- 
sible to  give  an  answer  that  would  suit  all.  Probably  there  have  not 
been  two  human  beings  since  the  world  was  made  who,  could  they 
express  their  precise  opinion  on  this  point,  would  give  precisely  the 
same  answer.  Many  whose  whole  lives  have  been  full  of  sorrow  and 
trouble,  who  have  had  occasion  many  times  to  say  that  man  was  bom 
to  sorrow,  would  yet,  even  taking  survey  of  their  own  sad  lives,  say — 
life  is  sweet.  That  many  whose  own  lives  have  been  bitter  enough, 
think  yet  that  life  is  sweet,  is  shown  by  this,  that  among  them  have 
been  found  those  who  have  done  most  to  foster  the  lives  of  others. 
But  many  of  them  would  say  that  life  is  sweet,  speaking  even  from 
their  own  experience  of  life.  And  on  the  other  hand  many  who  are 
held  by  those  around  them  to  have  had  little  sorrow,  who  from  child- 
hood to  old  age  have  scarce  ever  known  pain  or  suffering,  who  have 
had  more  than  their  fill  of  the  pleasures  of  life,  and  have  escaped  the 
usual  share  of  life's  afflictions,  would  speak  of  life  as  dull  and  dreary 
if  not  bitter.  It  has  been  indeed  from  such  men  that  the  doubting 
cry  has  come,  Is  life  worth  living  ?  Men  of  more  varied  experience 
would  give  other  answers  to  that  vain  question.  All  answers,  indeed^ 
must  be  as  idle  as  the  question  itself.  Yet  most  men  would  give  the 
answer  which  says  most  for  the  pleasantness  of  life — that,  as  a  whole, 
life  is  neither  bitter  nor  sweet,  neither  sharp  nor  cloying,  but  that  it 
"has  all  the  charm  in  bitter-sweetness  found." 

We  are  not  concerned,  however,  to  inquire  what  is  the  true  answer 
to  the  question.  Is  life  worth  living  ?  Though  it  is  clear  that  if  life  is 
not  worth  living  the  observed  action  of  evolution  has  been  unfortunate, 
and  the  resulting  laws  of  conduct  are  a  mistake,  while  the  reverse 
must  be  held  if  on  the  whole  life  is  well  worth  living,  yet,  so  far  as  our 
subject  of  inquiry  is  concerned,  it  matters  not  which  view  we  take. 
That  which  is  common  to  both  views  is  all  we  have  to  consider.  The 
man  who  holds  that  life  is  worth  living,  so  thinks  because  he  believes 
that  the  pleasures  of  life  on  the  whole  outweigh  its  pains  and  sorrows. 
The  man  who  holds  that  life  is  not  worth  living  does  so  because  he 
thinks  that  the  pains  and  sorrows  of  life  outweigh  its  pleasures.  So 
much  is  true  independently  of  all  ideas  as  to  what  are  the  real  pleas- 
ures or  the  real  pains  of  life,  or  whether  life  here  is  most  to  be  con- 
sidered or  chiefly  a  future  life  with  pleasures  or  pains  far  greater  in 
intensity  and  in  duration  than  any  known  here. 

"Where  or  what  the  chief  pleasures  or  pains  of  life  may  be,  when 
or  how  long  endured,  in  no  sort  affects  the  conclusion  that  life  is  to  be 
considered  worth  living  or  the  reverse  according  as  happiness  outvies 
misery  or  misery  happiness,  and  that  therefore  the  Tightness  or  wrong- 
ness  of  conduct  must  be  judged  not  by  its  direct  action  on  life  and  the 


474  ^^^^  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

fullness  of  life  but  by  its  indirect  influence  in  increasing  or  diminishing 
the  totality  of  happiness.  To  quote  again  the  words  of  the  great  teach- 
er who  is  so  often  misquoted  and  so  much  misunderstood  : 

*' There  is  no  escape  from  the  admission  that  in  calling  good  the 
conduct  which  subserves  life,  and  bad  the  conduct  which  hinders  or 
destroys  it,  and  in  so  implying  that  life  is  a  blessing  and  not  a  curse, 
we  are  inevitably  asserting  that  conduct  is  good  or  bad  according  as 
its  total*  effects  are  pleasurable  or  painful." — luiowledge. 


THE  AUEOEA  BOEEALIS. 

By  M.  ANTOINE  De  SAPOETA. 

HOW  can  we  describe,  how  can  an  artist  paint,  the  aurora  borealis  ? 
We  of  temperate  climates  are  not  strangers  to  the  phenomena  ; 
we  know  something  of  the  arcs  and  radiating  streaks  of  various-colored 
light  which  frequently  adorn  our  northern  skies  ;  and  we  are  occasion- 
ally permitted  to  witness  exhibitions  in  which  the  whole  heavens  shine 
with  their  marvelous  glow.  Yet  travelers  from  the  far  North  say  that 
we  can  have  no  conception  of  the  wonderful  splendor  of  the  phenome- 
na as  witnessed  within  the  Polar  Circle,  and  that  nothing  but  the 
actual  sight  can  convey  an  adequate  idea  of  it. 

The  aurora  borealis  was  well  known  to  the  ancients.  The  Greeks, 
discovering  graceful  symbols  in  everything,  thought  it  was  the  glory 
of  the  Olympian  gods  holding  council  in  a  sky  illuminated  for  the 
occasion.  The  Romans,  on  the  other  hand,  always  looking  for  unlucky 
omens,  were  in  dread  of  it.  Pliny,  following  Aristotle  and  Seneca, 
speaks  of  celestial  fires  that  tinged  the  sky  with  a  blood-red,  of  beams 
of  light,  of  openings  yawning  in  the  starry  vault,  of  fantastic  lights 
that  changed  night  into  day  ;  and  he  took  care  not  to  omit  the  politi- 
cal events  that  accompanied  such  manifestations,  without,  however, 
affirming  that  the  phenomena  were  the  cause  of  the  catastrophes  that 
attended  or  followed  them. 

*  I  have  ventured  to  emphasize  this  word  (though  the  emphasis  is  not  necessary  for 
the  ordinarily  attentive),  simply  because  so  many  have  either  actually  misunderstood  Mr. 
Spencer's  saying  here,  or  else  have  pretended  to  do  so.  The  word  emphasized  makes  the 
saying  not  only  true,  but  (as  it  was  intended  to  be)  obviously  true.  Mr.  Spencer  is  here 
purposely  stating  a  truism,  or  what  ought  to  be  a  truism.  No  matter  what  a  man's  doc- 
trine in  religious  matters  may  be,  no  matter  what  his  views  as  to  a  future  state,  the  say- 
ing above  quoted  is  absolutely  true.  It  is  true  in  small  matters  as  well  as  in  great.  By 
overlooking  the  word  "  total,"  or  by  treating  the  saying  as  though  for  the  word  "  total  " 
the  word  "  immediate  "  might  honestly  be  substituted,  the  saying  expresses  what  Carlyle 
contemptuously  called  pig-philosophy;  but  Spencer's  actual  saying  is  about  as  remote 
from  pig-philosophy  as  any  teaching  well  could  be.  It  inculcates  a  philosophy  more  truly 
regardful  of  self  than  the  sheerest  egoism,  more  justly  and  beneficently  regardful  of  others 
than  the  purest  altruism. 


THE  AURORA  BOREALIS.  475 

At  troubled  seasons  in  antiquity  and  the  middle  ages,  in  times  of 
war,  famine,  or  epidemic,  the  only  sentiment  the  aurora  excited  was 
that  of  fear,  and  the  people  thought  they  could  see  in  the  sky  rivers 
of  blood,  armies  clashing,  and  infantry  and  cavalry  engaging  in  mys- 
terious combats.  Now,  except  among  a  few  superstitious  or  unin- 
formed persons,  the  phenomena  are  witnessed  with  simple  curiosity 
by  some,  with  indifference  by  others. 

A  thousand  years  after  Gregory  of  Tours,  who  gave  the  meteor 
the  name  it  now  bears,  Gassendi  first  examined  it  with  a  scientific 
eye,  and  definitively  baptized  it  on  the  12th  of  September,  1621.  The 
terms  "  polar  light  "  and  "  northern  light,"  which  have  been  proposed 
by  various  physicists,  have  never  prevailed  ;  the  bishop  and  the  phi- 
losopher have  triumphed.  From  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, observations  became  more  numerous,  and  theories  and  scientific 
discussions  began  to  appear.  The  subject  even  tempted  the  poets.  To 
say  nothing  of  the  Abbe  Delille,  an  Italian  Jesuit,  Father  Noceti,  sung 
the  aurora  in  Latin  verse.  Frazier,  in  1712,  first  witnessed  a  southern 
aurora. 

It  is  affirmed  that  the  aurora  was  not  common  in  Scandinavia 
and  Holland  previous  to  about  1716,  after  which  it  began  to  appear 
more  frequently.  Whether  this  be  so  or  not,  the  attention  of  several 
Swedish,  Dutch,  and  French  investigators  was  fixed  upon  it.  Celsius, 
the  designer  of  the  centigrade  thermometer,  remarked  the  curious  dis- 
tractions to  which  compass-needles  were  occasionally  subject,  without 
visible  cause  ;  studying  the  perturbations  more  closely,  he  had  no  diffi- 
culty in  assuring  himself  (1741)  that  they  coincided  with  the  appear- 
ance of  the  aurora  borealis.  Hjorter,  another  Swede,  made  the  same 
observation  at  about  the  same  time. 

The  question  whether  auroras  are  of  cosmic  origin,  or  whether  they 
proceed  from  purely  terrestrial  influences,  which  still  provokes  dis- 
cussion, has  from  the  beginning  divided  the  learned  into  two  parties. 
Mairan  maintained  the  extra-terrestrial  character  of  the  meteor,  while 
the  contrary  opinion  found  a  supporter  in  Musschenbroek,  the  inventor 
of  the  Leyden-jar. 

Musschenbroek,  still  evidently  under  the  influence  of  old  middle- 
age  prejudices,  gave  out  the  following  hypothesis  :  Near  both  poles, 
and  at  a  little  distance  beneath  the  surface  of  the  globe,  are  immense 
reservoirs  of  phosphorescent  matter.  Whenever  a  fissure  is  formed 
reaching  to  them,  the  substances,  readily  volatile,  escape  and  illumi- 
nate the  atmosphere  with  their  glow.  The  frequency  of  auroras  in 
particular  years  was  explained  by  supposing  a  subterranean  cavern  to 
have  been  opened.  When  the  pocket  was  exhausted,  the  phenomenon 
would  of  course  be  at  an  end  for  some  time.  So,  after  the  exhaustion 
of  the  provisions  of  phosphorescent  stuff  accumulated  in  a  particular 
region,  the  meteors  would  necessarily  cease  to  show  themselves,  not  to 
appear  again  till  after  a  long  time,  during  which  the  matter  would  ac- 


476  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

cumulate  again.  It  was  thought  that  years  of  dry  weather  were  years 
of  maxima  of  auroras,  and  it  seemed  natural  to  suppose  that  moisture 
would  hinder  exhalations.  Extensive  efforts  were  made,  without  suc- 
cess, by  studying  the  properties  of  the  recently  discovered  phospho- 
rescent substances,  to  determine  the  nature  of  the  stuff  that  thus  shone 
in  space.  Previous  to  this,  an  explanation  of  the  phenomenon  had 
been  suggested  by  supposing  a  fermentation  of  gross  exhalations  from 
the  earth's  surface  which  were  driven  toward  the  pole  and  there 
took  fire. 

Quite  different  from  this  was  Mairan's  theory  ;  and  the  reading  of 
his  book,  "  Traite  physique  et  historique  de  I'aurore  boreale  "  (**  A 
Physical  and  Historical  Treatise  on  the  Aurora  Borealis  "),  which  ap- 
peared in  1733,  is  still  indispensable,  after  a  hundred  and  fifty  years, 
to  any  person  wishing  to  study  the  meteor  to-day.  Rejecting  the 
ideas  outlined  above,  and  another  curious  hypothesis,  that  the  rays  of 
the  sun  were  reflected  from  the  polar  ice,  and  sent  back  to  the  observer 
from  the  concave  surface  of  the  upper  strata  of  the  atmosphere,  he 
had  recourse  to  the  zodiacal  light  which  had  been  observed  by  Cassini 
some  fifty  years  before.  While  some  explained  this  phenomenon  by 
supposing  a  ring  of  light  concentric  with  the  sun,  and  surrounding  it 
without  touching  it,  others,  and  Mairan  among  the  number,  considered 
it  a  prolongation  of  the  solar  atmosphere,  accumulated  chiefly  in  the 
plane  of  the  ecliptic  or  of  the  solar  equator,  and  extending  beyond  the 
orbit  of  Venus.  Emanations  from  the  sun,  or  rather  the  corona  that 
surrounds  it,  according  to  Mairan,  strike  our  atmosphere  and  illumi- 
nate our  globe.  Then,  must  we  suppose  that  the  zodiacal  light  shines 
of  itself  ?  That  is  not  necessary,  says  Mairan.  A  chemical  combina- 
tion, an  essentially  luminous  precipitate,  results  from  the  mixture  that 
takes  place  in  the  upper  regions  of  the  atmosphere.*  This  supposition 
is  hazardous,  and  Mairan  seems  to  be  a  little  too  fast.  It  is,  however, 
indisputable  that  then,  as  now,  auroras  were  more  frequent  in  March 
and  September,  or  the  months  when  the  zodiacal  light  is  brightest. 
It  is  also  worthy  of  remark  that  Angstrom,  in  1867,  and  Respighi, 
in  1872,  found  in  the  spectrum  of  the  zodiacal  light  a  green  ray 
identical  with  a  line  of  the  same  color  characteristic  of  the  aurora 
borealis. 

Mairan  found  a  redoubtable  antagonist  in  the  celebrated  mathe- 
matician Euler,  who  did  not  admit  the  hypothesis  of  an  immense  solar 
atmosphere,  and  believed  only  in  the  existence  of  a  ring.  He  invented, 
in  explanation  of  the  meteor,  a  somewhat  obscure  theory,  according  to 
which  the  subtile  and  rarefied  portions  of  the  air  were  driven  away 
from  the  surface  of  the  globe,  and  the  particles,  having  become  lumi- 

*  Mairan  observes  that,  the  centrifugal  force  being  less  toward  the  poles  than  at 
the  equator,  the  parts  of  the  globe  at  the  tropics  will  repel  the  foreign  matter,  and  it  will 
accumulate  toward  the  high  latitudes.  Hence  there  will  be  few  auroras  except  in  the 
frigid  and  temperate  zones ;  and  this  is  the  case. 


THE  AURORA  BOREALIS.  477 

nous  (he  does  not  say  how),  gave  rise,  at  some  distance  from  the  earth, 
to  the  phenomena  of  the  aurora.* 

A  large  library  would  hardly  be  sufficient  to  hold  all  the  memoirs 
and  notices  that  have  been  published  during  the  past  sixty  years  on 
the  subject  of  the  aurora  borealis,  to  say  nothing  of  the  numerous  trea- 
tises on  physics,  meteorology,  and  astronomy  which  have  devoted  one 
or  more  chapters  to  it.  Some  authors  have  limited  themselves  to  the 
simple  description  of  what  they  have  perceived,  or  to  a  mere  exposi- 
tion of  their  theories,  while  others  have  done  more.  Alexander  von 
Humboldt  has  drawn  in  his  "  Cosmos  "  an  excellent  outline  of  the 
ideas  which  science  entertained  on  the  subject  in  his  time  ;  and  the 
"  Popular  Astronomy  "  of  Arago  contains  valuable  details,  well  classi- 
fied and  arranged,  on  the  same  question. 

About  1850,  M.  de  La  Rive,  a  Genevese  physicist,  endeavored  to 
found  a  definite  theory  of  the  aurora  borealis,  and  with  this  view  ar- 
tificially reproduced  the  phenomenon  with  considerable  success.  A 
prime  point,  which  is  still  far  removed  from  being  fixed,  is  the  approxi- 
mate height  of  the  meteor  above  the  ground.  Sometimes  two  ob- 
servers, in  the  neighborhood  of  a  thousand  miles  apart,  will  affirm  that 
they  have  seen  the  same  aurora  at  the  same  time  and  under  the  same 
aspect ;  at  other  times,  the  phenomenon  is  visible  only  within  a  radius 
of  a  few  leagues.  Mairan,  basing  his  calculations  on  data  that  are  not 
without  value,  concluded  an  elevation  of  two  or  three  hundred  leagues  ; 
Bravais  proposed  one  hundred  and  fifty  kilometres  as  a  mean  value. 
Other  authors  have  supposed  that  the  highest  flashes  soar  to  an  eleva- 
tion of  eight  hundred  kilometres. 

M.  de  La  Rive  has  made  a  table  of  all  former  data,  and  represents 
that  the  aurorse  boreales,  very  low  in  reality,  hardly  pass  beyond  the 
zone  of  clouds.  They  have  been  perceived  (by  Parry)  projected  on 
the  flanks  of  mountains.  Contradictions  of  this  view  are  also  not  want- 
ing. Ill  support  of  his  opinion  that  the  meteor  is  low  in  height,  M.  de 
La  Rive  cites  the  well-established  cases  in  which  sounds  have  been 
heard  during  the  manifestations.  Sometimes  a  sulphurous  odor  has 
been  perceived.  The  crackling  occasioned  sometimes  by  slow  electric 
discharges  and  the  odor  of  electrified  oxygen  or  ozone  are  quite  analo- 
gous. Explorers  and  aeronauts  have  pretended,  according  to  M.  de  La 
Rive,  to  have  gone  through  the  aurora  or  through  the  mist  that  gives 
rise  to  it. 

Arago  had  conceived  the  electric  nature  of  the  meteor,  and  assumed 
to  predict  its  appearance  by  consulting  the  compass.  Other  facts, 
proving  a  connection  between  auroras  and  magnetic  phenomena,  are 
abundant.  Jessan,  in  1878,  sailing  on  the  Yenus,  relates  that  during 
a  fine  aurora  all  the  compasses  of  the  vessel  were  disordered,  and  they 

*  In  this  Euler  made  use  of  Newton's  corpuscular  theory  of  light,  though  he  was  an 
adversary  of  it. 


478  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

went  out  of  their  way.*  Under  similar  circumstances,  Matteucci  ob- 
served the  iron  of  the  Tuscan  telegraphic  apparatus  to  be  so  strongly- 
magnetized  that  the  entire  service  between  Florence  and  Pisa  was 
interrupted.  In  the  United  States,  when  the  like  conditions  are  pre- 
vailing, the  telegraphers  work  their  instruments  without  the  batteries. 

The  beautiful  arcs  of  light  which  are  observed  in  the  polar  regions 
have  their  culminating  point  on  the  magnetic  meridian,  as  the  vertical 
plane  defined  by  the  points  of  a  horizontal  magnetic  needle  is  called. 
Bravais  thought  these  arcs,  or  the  circles  of  which  they  form  part, 
were  concentric  with  the  magnetic  axis  of  the  globe,  or  with  the 
straight  line  uniting  the  two  magnetic  poles  and  passing  through 
the  center  of  the  earth.  The  arcs,  then,  do  not  coincide  with  the 
geographical  parallels,  a  fact  which  the  earlier  observers  had  already 
perceived.  The  magnetic  pole  is,  moreover,  not  immovable,  but  its 
position  may  vary  during  a  century  several  degrees  in  longitude  or 
latitude. 

The  aurorse  boreales  certainly  appear  to  be  connected  with  a  par- 
ticular condition  of  the  atmosphere,  and  M.  de  La  Rive  finds  in  this  a 
confirmation  of  his  theory.  Nearly  all  the  observers  agree  that  cirro- 
stratus  clouds  accompany  or  precede  the  phenomena,  and  are  frequently 
seen  within  the  dark  segment.  Hardly  less  invariable  is  the  simulta- 
neous presence  in  the  air  of  hosts  of  fine,  transparent,  microscopic 
needles  of  ice,  that  favor  the  formation  of  lunar  halos  before  the  au- 
rora itself  breaks  out.  The  essential  points  of  M.  de  La  Rive's  theory 
are  that  the  earth  is  charged  with  negative  fluid,  and  the  same  is  the 
case  with  the  strata  of  air  very  near  the  soil.  The  upper  regions  of 
the  atmosphere  are,  on  the  other  hand,  positively  electrified.  This 
double  fact,  the  result  of  certain  experiments,  is  not  denied  by  any 
one.  The  two  electricities  of  opposite  polarity,  accumulated  near  the 
tropics  in  enormous  masses,  are  combined  at  the  poles,  where  the  air, 
less  moist,  is  a  better  conductor.  The  polar  discharges  produce  inces- 
sant calls  of  fluid,  if  we  may  use  such  an  expression,  and  currents  of 
electricity  are  constantly  departing  from  the  equator  toward  the  poles, 
one  kind  traveling  through  the  rarefied  gases  of  the  upper  strata,  and 
the  other  kind  through  the  ground.  It  is  from  the  phenomenon  of  re- 
composition,  favored  by  the  presence  of  infinitesimal  vesicles  of  air,  of 
imperceptible  snow-crystals,  and  of  little  icy  needles,  that  proceeds  the 
meteor  of  which  we  are  trying  to  present  the  history. 

M.  de  La  Rive  satisfied  himself  of  the  suflSciency  of  his  theory  by 
an  experiment.  Tubes  were  inserted  opposite  to  each  other  into  the 
sides  of  a  glass  bottle.  The  air  within  the  bottle  was  exhausted  by 
means  of  one  of  the  tubes,  while  in  the  other  one  was  fixed  a  rod  of 
iron  projecting  on  the  outside,  and  having  its  other  end  prolonged  to 

*  Nevertheless,  if  the  observer  is  tcithin  the  circle  formed  by  the  aurora,  its  action  on 
the  needle  is  almost  nothing.     This  fact  has  been  noticed  more  than  once. 


THE  AURORA  BOREALIS.  479 

the  middle  of  the  bottle.  The  iron  was  covered  with  an  insulating 
material,  except  at  the  end,  and  over  that  was  a  copper  ring,  connected 
with  an  electrical  machine.  The  copper  was  then  charged  with  posi- 
tive electricity,  and  the  iron,  having  been  put  in  communication  with 
the  soil,  was  negatively  electrified  by  induction.  The  two  electricities 
combined  in  the  rarefied  atmosphere  of  the  bottle,  forming  a  luminous 
sheaf,  like  that  of  the  lights  in  the  Geissler  tubes  ;  but,  when  the  iron 
was  magnetized,  a  corona  or  concentric  aureole,  whence  radiated  brill- 
iant jets,  was  formed  around  its  free  end.  As  a  little  reflection  will 
show,  the  iron  represented  the  earth  and  the  terrestrial  magnet ;  the 
copper,  the  upper  strata  of  air ;  and  the  free  end  of  the  magnetized 
rod,  the  polar  regions. 

The  fact  mentioned  by  Mairan,  that  auroras  are  most  frequently 
seen  during  the  equinoctial  months,  March  and  September,  is  easily 
explained  on  M.  de  La  Rive's  theory.  March  corresponds  with  a 
period  of  increasing  heat  in  the  tropical  part  of  the  northern  hemi- 
sphere, while  September  coincides  with  the  time  when  fogs  are  con- 
densed from  vapors  near  the  pole.  In  the  one  case,  an  excess  of 
electricity  is  developed  ;  in  the  other,  a  more  ready  combination  of  the 
two  fluids.  Perhaps  the  supposed  eleven-years  period,  corresponding 
with  the  sun-spot  period,  may  be  explained  in  a  similar  way.  There 
may  also  be  secular  variations  in  the  prevalence  of  the  phenomenon, 
but  too  little  time  has  passed  since  careful  observations  have  been 
made  for  their  law  to  be  as  yet  apprehended. 

In  the  last  months  of  1878,  M.  Nordenskjold,  who  was  wintering 
in  Berhing  fetrait,  remarked  on  clear  nights,  when  the  moonlight  was 
not  too  strong,  the  presence  of  a  feebly  luminous  arc,  with  its  crest 
toward  the  north-northeast.  Regular  in  form  and  curvature,  this 
arc  rested  on  a  segment  of  a  circle  which  was  itself  limited  by  the 
horizon,  and  covered  about  90'',  or  a  quarter  of  the  horizon.  Its 
lower  limit  was  quite  clearly  marked  on  the  dark  segment,  probably 
by  contrast,  but  its  outer  outline  was  less  distinct,  and  it  was  hard  to 
measure  its  thickness  exactly  ;  but  that  was  estimated  at  about  five 
degrees.  The  light  of  the  arc  was  calm  and  uniform,  without  any 
appearance  of  rays,  but  dull  enough,  as  we  have  said,  and  displayed 
nothing  comparable  to  the  draperies,  the  brilliant  flashes,  and  the 
streaks  of  the  Scandinavian  auroras.  M.  Nordenskjold  observed  it  from 
day  to  day,  taking  notice  of  all  the  special  features  he  could  remark, 
and  came  to  the  following  conclusions:  Above  the  surface  of  the 
earth,  at  a  distance  of  about  four  hundred  kilometres,  is  situated  a 
permanent,  or  nearly  permanent,  luminous  corona,  which  encircles  the 
entire  globe  without  its  direction  coinciding  with  that  of  the  parallels, 
for  its  center  does  not  correspond  with  the  north  pole,  but  with  the 
magnetic  pole. 

So  our  globe  has,  by  this  theory,  a  ring  like  Saturn's,  but  with 
some  differences.     The  ring  of  the  latter  planet  is  around  its  equator. 


48o  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Our  ring,  incomparably  smaller,  covers  only  a  narrow  zone  of  the  polar 
regions,  the  center  of  which  is  at  a  considerable  distance  from  the 
pole.  The  inhabitants  of  Saturn's  equator — if  there  are  any — look  out 
upon  a  ribbon  very  wide  in  the  vertical  but  very  narrow  in  the  hori- 
zontal direction.  On  the  other  hand,  an  observer  in  the  high  latitudes 
of  Asia  or  America  stands  in  the  presence  of  a  corona  of  little  thick- 
ness, but  relatively  extensive  ;  that  is,  the  development  of  our  ring  is 
nearly  parallel  to  the  part  of  the  terrestrial  surface  dominated  by  it, 
and  which  it  would  overshadow  if  it  were  opaque. 

To  this  theory  the  objection  may  be  offered,  that  no  one  before 
M.  Nordenskjold  has  remarked  the  meteor  in  question,  while  many 
should  have  done  so  if  it  is  permanent.  An  observer  standing  near 
the  auroral  pole  should  perceive  a  luminous  circle  completely  envelop- 
ing the  horizon.  M.  Nordenskjold  replies  to  this  by  saying  that  the 
luminous  arc  is  only  a  residuum  of  more  brilliant  and  more  complex 
phenomena  ;  we  can  hardly  hope  to  see  it  except  in  years  when  auro- 
ras are  weak,  or  years  of  minima,  of  which  the  year  1878-'T9  was  one. 
Most  commonly  the  accessory  masks  the  principal,  much  in  the  same 
way  that  we  can  not  see  the  foundations  of  a  house  while  the  building 
is  standing.  The  light  of  the  ring  is  so  weak  that  not  only  the  day 
and  the  twilight,  but  simple  moonlight  makes  it  invisible.  If  the  sky 
is  charged  with  frost,  it  will  all  disappear,  and  even  the  presence  of 
too  much  vapor  in  the  air  extinguishes  it.  The  observer  must,  then, 
be  favored  with  dry  and  cold  weather.  If  the  temperature  is  above 
the  freezing-point,  it  is  useless  to  look  for  the  corona.  The  coasts  of 
Norway,  moist  with  the  breezes  from  the  Gulf  Stream,  are  badly  situ- 
ated to  give  views  of  it.  Nearly  all  other  regions  where  it  could  be 
perceived  are  dismal  solitudes.  In  the  second  place,  a  spectator  situ- 
ated near  the  auroral  poles  would  see  nothing,  for  the  horizon  would 
hide  the  meteor  from  him  in  the  same  way  that  a  Saturnian,  who 
never  left  the  high  polar  regions  of  his  planet,  would  not  be  aware  of 
the  existence  of  his  ring.  Our  observer,  leaving  the  auroral  pole,  and 
going  toward  the  magnetic  south,  would  finally  distinguish  in  that 
direction  an  arc  gradually  rising  above  the  horizon.  An  entire  circle 
of  considerable  width  is  dominated — that  is  the  word — by  the  corona, 
which  is  then  near  the  zenith  ;  but,  although  the  meteor  may  be  nearer 
the  ground  at  that  point  than  anywhere  else,  it  is  not  visible  there,  for 
it  is  too  thin  to  be  seen,  looking  at  it  vertically.  Outside  of  this  latter 
zone,  another  zone,  concentric  with  it,  enjoys  the  sight  of  the  arc,  now 
situated  obliquely  in  the  direction  of  the  magnetic  north.  Further 
on,  the  arc,  grazing  the  horizon,  ceases  to  be  visible  ;  some  time  be- 
fore reaching  this  point,  in  fact,  it  is  hidden  by  the  mists  that  gather 
in  the  horizon,  as  well  as  by  the  density  of  the  atmosphere  which  the 
visual  rays  have  to  traverse.  M.  Nordenskjold  would  not  have  been 
able  to  see  it  if  it  had  been  only  half  as  luminous. 

The  meteor  is  relatively  stationary,  but  is  not  rigorously  motionless. 


THE  AURORA   BOREALIS,  481 

Besides  the  slow  variations  of  its  radius  and  its  thickness,  besides  the 
oscillations  which  displace  its  center  movements,  the  laws  of  which  are 
worth  studying,  the  luminous  arc  rises,  falls,  and  fades  away  for  in- 
tervals of  some  hours.  Its  light,  generally  uniform,  is  heightened  by 
"  knots  of  light  "  that  play  from  one  end  to  the  other.  Sometimes  a 
second  arc  is  formed  parallel  to  the  first ;  according  to  M.  Norden- 
skjold,  this  is  nearly  always  concentric  with  the  usual  arc  and  situated 
in  the  same  plane  with  it,  but  farther  from  the  surface.  Sometimes, 
also,  the  two  arcs  amalgamate,  and  a  vertically  flattened  aurora  results. 
Not  rarely,  supplementary  arcs  intervene,  and  frequently  luminous 
rays  play  between  the  two  arcs  and  into  the  undefined  exterior  space. 
If,  now,  we  imagine  the  phenomena  growing  more  complicated  and 
becoming  irregular,  with  the  arcs  rising  above  the  horizon  and  the 
rays  multiplying,  shooting  through  the  curves  in  such  a  way  as  to 
illuminate  the  vacant  space,  and  extending  themselves  out  toward  the 
magnetic  south  in  somewhat  oblique  directions,  we  have  the  common 
aurora  borealis  passably  explained.  Within  the  projection  of  the 
corona,  toward  the  magnetic  pole,  is  a  zone  where  we  may  observe 
the  auroras  in  a  southerly  direction,  and,  still  nearer  to  that  pole,  the 
meteor  only  rarely  illuminates  the  horizon.  A  few  travelers.  Dr. 
Hayes,  for  example,  noticed  this  fact  some  time  ago.  The  zone 
of  no  auroras  embraces  a  circle  having  a  radius  of  about  eight  de- 
grees. 

The  labors  of  M.  Lenstrom,  in  Lapland,  are  of  particular  interest, 
because  they  constitute  a  direct  and  definite  proof  of  the  electrical 
nature  of  the  aurora  borealis.  They  go  further  than  those  of  M.  de 
La  Rive,  for  the  Swedish  observer,  instead  of  operating  in  his  labora- 
tory, has  succeeded  in  reproducing  the  meteor  itself  in  the  open  air, 
and  has  compelled  it  to  manifest  itself,  as  Franklin  forced  the  light- 
ning to  come  down  from  the  sky,  so  that  he  could  examine  it  scien- 
tifically. We  must  not  forget,  furthermore,  that  it  is  a  very  meri- 
torious thing  to  work  in  a  cold  of  twenty  degrees  below  zero,  with  a 
strong  wind  blowing  and  the  frost  all  the  time  clogging  the  apparatus,, 
having  to  be  constantly  on  the  watch,  and  enjoying  no  better  shelter 
than  a  charcoal-burner's  hut. 

Not  satisfied  with  provoking  artificial  auroras,  the  Finnish  expe- 
dition, of  which  M.  Lenstrom  was  a  part,  has  collected  a  number  of 
important  data  relative  to  the  free  manifestation  of  the  phenomenon. 
The  observations  were  made  at  Sodankyla  (lat.  67°  N.,  long.  27°  E.), 
and  Kultala  (lat.  78°  30'  K,  long.  27°  E.),  Lapland,  in  November  and 
December,  1882.  In  the  former  place  "the  polar  aurora  appeared  fre- 
quently of  a  very  great  intensity,  but  did  not  exhibit  much  variation. 
It  generally  began  with  a  faint  arc  in  the  north,  which  shortly  de- 
veloped into  an  arc  with  rays  and  sometimes  into  draperies  extending 
from  the  east  to  the  west,  most  frequently  a  little  toward  the  north. 
But  little  change  of  color  took  place  ;   nearly  always  a  pale-yellow 

VOL.  XXIV. — 31 


482  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

tint,  lightly  washed  with  green,  was  shown.  Although  the  meteor 
was  not  visible  continuously,  there  was  often  observed  in  the  spectro- 
scope, and  even  quite  high  above  the  horizon,  the  characteristic  band  of 
the  auroras  without  the  eye  perceiving  any  trace  of  their  light.  Since 
this  fact  was  remarked  even  when  there  was  no  snow,  it  could  not  be 
attributed  to  reflected  auroral  flashes.  Moreover,  the  observers  not 
rarely  saw  during  the  nights  a  light  yellowish,  diffuse,  and  phosphores- 
cent light  that  illuminated  the  horizon  and  paled  the  stars.  The  effect 
produced  was  compared  to  that  of  the  moon  half  veiled  by  clouds.  M. 
Lcnstrom  and  his  associates  attempted,  on  the  8th  of  December,  1882, 
to  measure  the  height  of  an  auroral  arc  above  the  surface  of  the  earth. 
They  divided  themselves  into  two  groups,  and  took  with  a  theodolite  the 
angular  distance  from  the  crest  of  the  arc  to  the  horizon.  The  two  sta- 
tions were  four  and  a  half  kilometres  apart  on  the  same  magnetic  me- 
ridian, and  correspondence  was  had  during  the  observations  by  a  tele- 
graphic wire  previously  arranged  for  the  purpose.  They  endeavored  to 
look  in  concert  at  the  same  point  of  the  meteor,  but,  after  reiterated  es- 
says, they  recognized  that  any  particular  ray  visible  to  one  party  could 
not  be  seen  by  the  other.  The  results  of  the  views  were  irreconcilable, 
for  the  angle  obtained  was  greater  for  the  southern  post  than  for  the 
northern  one,  although  the  latter  post  was,  a  priori,  nearer  to  the  me- 
teor. M.  Lcnstrom  concluded  from  this,  as  M.  de  La  Rive  had  done, 
that  every  observer  sees  his  own  aurora  the  same  as  every  one  sees  his 
own  rainbow,  and  that  the  phenomenon  is  produced  at  the  height  of  only 
a  few  thousand  metres.  He  also  calls  attention  to  the  results  obtained 
in  Greenland  by  the  engineer  Fritze,  which  lead,  in  certain  cases  at 
least,  to  numbers  twenty  times  as  small.  During  the  Swedish  Polar 
Expedition  of  1868,  faint  flashes  or  j)hosphorescent  lights  were  remarked 
around  the  summits  of  the  mountains.  This  fact,  with  which  M.  Lcn- 
strom did  not  become  acquainted  till  1871,  related  as  it  was  to  some  of 
the  descriptions  given  by  other  travelers,  decided  him  to  try  to  pro- 
voke or  facilitate  the  appearance  of  the  meteor  by  artificial  means. 
The  firat  attempts  date  from  1871,  and,  like  those  that  followed  them, 
were  made  in  Lapland.  The  enterprise  being  successful  from  the  first, 
the  experiments  were  resumed  during  the  Finnish  Polar  Expedition 
of  1382,  and  were  renewed  twice  on  two  different  peaks,  called  re- 
spectively Oratunturi  and  Pietarintunturi.  Oratunturi,  rising  more 
than  five  hundred  metres  above  the  level  of  the  sea,  is  situated  in  lati- 
tude G7''  21',  near  the  village  of  Sodankylii.  Near  the  topmost  height 
of  the  mountain  was  placed  a  long  copper  wire,  so  bent  upon  itself  as 
to  form  a  series  of  squares  within  squares,  having  a  total  surface  of 
nine  hundred  square  metres,  supported  by  insulated  posts.  Tin  points 
or  nibs  bristled  out  from  this  connecting  net  at  distances  of  half  a 
metre  apart,  and  the  whole  was  connected  by  an  insulated  wire  running 
along  on  stakes  with  a  galvanometer  fixed  in  a  cabin  at  the  foot  of  the 
peak.    The  galvanometer  was  connected  with  the  earth  by  the  other  ex- 


THE  AURORA  BOREALIS. 


483 


tremity  of  its  own  circuit.*  Nearly  every  night  after  the  installation  of 
the  apparatus,  a  yellow-white  light  illuminated  the  points  without  any- 
thing like  it  appearing  on  the  heights  in  the  neighborhood,  while  the 
needle  of  the  galvanometer  by  its  motions  betrayed  the  passage  of  an 
electric  current.  The  light  was  analyzed  in  the  spectroscope,  and  gave 
the  greenish-yellow  ray  that  characterizes  the  aurora  borealis.     The 


% i .i 

i      |i 

i i 

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i     i  i      ^ 

^ i 

V i 

L^ 1; 

i\ ^ h 

i' ^ ^i 


intensity  of  the  glow  and  the  deviations  of  the  needle,  moreover, 
varied  continually.  In  the  mean  time  the  hoar-frost  which  was  de- 
posited on  the  wires  quickly  destroyed  the  insulation,  and  rendered  an 
experiment  of  any  duration  almost  impossible.  The  numbness  of  the 
fingers  of  the  operators,  induced  by  the  cold,  added  to  the  difficulties 
of  the  study. 

The  apparatus  afterward  set  up  on  Pietarintunturi,  in  more  than 
78°  of  latitude,  was  disposed  in  an  almost  identical  manner,  except  that 
the  surface  furnished  with  points  was  a  half  less  ;  but,  M.  Lenstram 
remarks,  the  proximity  to  the  "  maximum  zone  "  of  auroras  compen- 
sated for  this  inferiority.  On  the  29th  of  December  an  "  auroral  ray  " 
made  its  appearance  above  the  net,  which  it  dominated  vertically  from 
a  height  of  one  hundred  and  twenty  metres. 

The  difficulties  of  the  question  of  the  exact  origin  and  nature  of 
the  auroral  phenomena  have  not  been  solved  yet ;  but  we  have  good 
reason  to  believe  that  a  long  approach  has  been  made  in  the  recent  ex- 
periments toward  a  solution,  and  grounds  to  believe  that  science  will 
soon  remove  them  all  ;  and  we  shall  no  longer  be  able  to  repeat  what 
Hatiy,  less  than  a  hundred  years  ago,  said  on  the  same  subject,  "  It  is 
not  always  what  has  been  known  longest  that  is  best." — Translated  for 
the  Popular  Science  Monthly  from  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes. 

*  Professor  Lenstrom's  apparatus  is  represented  in  the  figure.  The  wire  bep:ins  at  o, 
and  connection  with  the  galvanometer  is  made  from  the  inner  end.  The  letter  i  indicates 
an  insulator. 


484  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

DEFENSES  OF  THE  LESSER  AISIMALS. 

By  Pbofessob  L.  GLASEE. 

ALL  organic  beings  are,  in  the  course  of  their  lives,  subject  to  a 
series  of  dangers  and  destructive  influences  arising  from  the 
conditions  of  climate  and  temperature,  and  from  the  competition  of 
their  fellovr-beings,  the  universality  and  power  of  which  are  well  illus- 
trated in  Darwin's  phrase,  "  the  struggle  for  existence."  Yet  all  creat- 
ures are  adjusted  with  most  wonderful  art  and  adaptation  to  the  con- 
ditions of  their  existence  and  the  state  of  the  world  around  them. 
Among  these  adaptations  are  the  means  given  to  the  most  helpless 
animal  existences  for  securing  themselves  against  the  depredations  of 
their  enemies.  It  is  proper  to  observe,  in  considering  this  subject,  that 
the  protection  enjoyed  by  the  lower  animal  organisms  is  not  absolute 
and  individual,  but  that  it  is  generally  effective  principally  for  the 
preservation  of  the  species  against  destruction.  For  where  peculiar 
means  of  protection  are  given  to  one  creature,  corresponding  means 
for  overcoming  it  are  often  given  to  another,  its  enemy.  To  the  pro- 
tective sharp  sight  of  the  rodents  and  birds  are  opposed  the  equally 
sharp  sight  of  the  fox  and  the  long  range  of  vision  of  the  hawk.  It 
is  only  in  averaging  the  mass  of  such  animals  that  we  find  they  are 
secured  as  a  whole  a«cainst  danojer,  while  numerous  individuals  are 
overtaken  by  their  enemies. 

Some  of  the  higher  animals  illustrate  the  manner  in  which  Nature 
contrives  to  furnish  special  measures  of  precaution  for  its  little-gifted, 
unalert,  unarmed,  and  helpless  creatures.  The  absence  of  teeth  in  the 
edentates  is  offset  by  shields  or  scale-armor  ;  helpless  beetles  are  fur- 
nished with  hard  wing-cases  ;  the  pheasants,  quails,  and  larks  of  the 
fields  are  hidden  from  the  keen  vision  of  birds  of  prey  by  their  earthy 
color,  birds  of  the  river  and  sea-shore  by  their  resemblance  in  color  to 
the  sand  and  shingle. 

Protection  is  required  by  the  lower  animals  chiefly  against  the 
weather  and  against  parasites  and  other  external  enemies.  Frequently 
the  place  of  their  abode  is  their  only  and  ordinarily  a  sufficient  pro- 
tection, as  is  the  case  with  earth-worms  and  burrowing  larvae,  wood- 
worms and  fruit-borers.  But  such  animals  appear  to  be  afflicted  with 
particular  enemies  peculiarly  fitted  to  hunt  them  out  in  their  other- 
wise secure  fortresses — in  the  shape  of  moles,  mole-crickets,  long-nosed 
hedgehogs,  shrew-mice,  and  swine,  hook-billed  lapwings,  and  sharp- 
tongued  woodpeckers.  Frequently,  also,  each  animal  is  defended  by 
some  special  relation  peculiar  to  its  species.  Insects,  which  in  their 
comparatively  brief  state  of  maturity  are  secured  by  their  powers  of 
flight,  have  to  be  guarded,  in  their  three  previous  conditions  of  Gggy 
larva,  and  pupa,  against  hosts  of  enemies  to  which  they  would  other- 


DEFENSES    OF  THE  LESSER  ANIMALS.  485 

wise  be  an  easy  prey  and  a  palatable  food.  In  the  condition  of  the 
apparently  lifeless  and  really  helpless  Qgg,  they  are  covered  by  their 
obscurity  and  littleness,  or  by  being  deposited  in  holes  and  cracks,  or 
covered  with  slime  or  hairy  or  silken  veils  and  cocoons,  under  which 
they  escape  all  but  the  sharpest  search  and  rare  accidents. 

More  curious  are  the  many-sided  and  diversified  means  provided 
for  the  security  of  the  young  insect  during  the  helpless  larval  condi- 
tion. In  this  state,  when  it  is  destitute  of  eyes  and  wings,  it  is  either 
furnished  with  hairy  bristles  or  spiny  envelopes,  like  those  of  numer- 
ous caterpillars,  or  with  covers  composed  of  fine  chips,  bud-scales,  or 
other  fragments,  compactly  woven  together  with  a  few  threads  of  silk  ; 
or  else  it  is  screened  from  the  sun  and  from  parasites  and  birds  by  a 
plaster  of  mud.  A  group  of  insects,  described  sometimes  as  sack- weav- 
ers or  sack-moths,  make  a  kind  of  sack  or  pocket  out  of  fragments  of 
leaves  and  splinters,  within  which  they  perfect  their  growth.  The 
case-moths  make  thick  and  close-fitting  garments  for  their  bodies,  out 
of  leaves  loosely  strung  together,  within  which  they  hang,  head  down- 
ward, from  the  skeletons  of  the  leaves  they  have  attacked,  undistin- 
guishable  to  birds  and  parasites  from  a  long  bud-scale  or  from  a  dry 
splinter  ;  and  clothes-moths  conceal  themselves  in  similar  cases  made 
from  the  hair-dust  or  wool  of  the  fabrics  of  which  they  have  taken  pos- 
session. Some  beetles  envelop  themselves  and  go  through  their  changes 
in  balls  of  earth  within  which  they  inclose  themselves.  The  larvs8 
of  one  group  protect  themselves  by  a  kind  of  foam  which  they  manu- 
facture from  the  juice  of  the  plants  they  suck.  The  woolly  aphides  are 
well  cared  for  with  the  great  tufts  of  wool  with  which  they  are  pro- 
vided, under  the  cover  of  which  they  suck  the  juices  of  plants  and 
bring  forth  their  multitudinous  offspring,  which  given  to  the  winds, 
the  same  hairy  envelopes  serve  them  as  sails  on  which  they  are  borne 
afar  to  new  plantations.  A  species  that  feeds  on  the  ash-tree  takes 
possession  of  the  galls  that  form  upon  it,  and  can  not  be  removed  with- 
out taking  off  the  whole  limb,  for  birds  will  not  attack  insects  thus 
protected.  These  and  other  aphides,  which  are  particularly  injurious 
to  fruit-trees,  are  so  carefully  protected  against  the  ordinary  attacks 
of  external  enemies  that  man  is  left  to  contend  against  them  alone. 
The  bark-lice  or  scale-insects  are  particularly  difficult  to  reach,  and 
seem  to  multiply  in  perfect  security  against  all  ordinary  attacks. 

A  whole  series  of  gall-insects  provide  security  for  their  posterity 
by  colonizing  them  in  the  swellings  or  knots  that  are  produced  on  the 
trees  wherever  they  sting  the  bark  and  lay  their  eggs.  The  larva?,  con- 
tinuing to  irritate  the  tissues  of  the  tree,  cause  the  knots  to  swell  and 
grow  correspondingly  with  their  own  growth,  and  thus  find  themselves 
in  a  well-fortified  home  exactly  fitted  to  their  wants.  Within  the 
galls,  the  naked,  helpless  worms  are  at  once  protected  from  exterior 
assaults  of  every  kind  and  provided  with  an  unfailing  supply  of  food 
which  they  can  reach  without  effort,  so  that  their  development  goes 


486  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

on  without  obstruction  of  any  kind.  According  to  A.  Schenck,  the 
gall-nuts  of  the  rose  are  adapted  to  the  shelter  and  support  of  the  larva? 
of  more  than  two  hundred  species  of  flies,  and  those  of  the  oak  are  also 
the  home  of  numerous  varieties.  Malpighi,  who  died  near  the  end  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  remarked  that  there  was  no  part  of  the  plant 
on  which  galls  did  not  arise.  The  roots,  runners,  stalks,  leaf-stems, 
leaves,  buds,  flower-stems,  flowers,  and  fruit,  all  are  made  to  serve  as 
the  nest  or  place  of  transformation  for  the  young  of  one  or  more  species 
of  insect  ;  but  only  the  aphis  lives  upon  them  permanently. 

Another  very  frequently  observed  means  of  securing  young  insect 
broods  is  by  envelopes  formed,  sometimes  with  great  apparent  skill,  by 
rollings  or  foldings  of  the  leaf.  Some  weevils  have  the  art  of  cutting 
out  patterns  of  leaves,  and,  without  wholly  severing  their  attachment, 
rolling  them  up  into  a  scroll,  within  which  they  deposit  their  eggs  ; 
and  they  do  the  whole  with  such  mathematical  accuracy  that  their  con- 
structions have  been  made  the  subjects  of  formal  monographs,  like 
those  of  Drs.  Heis  and  Debey  on  the  funnel-rollers.  Specimens  of 
these  scrolls  are  familiar  enough,  as  they  have  been  observed  on  the 
hazel,  beech,  hornbeam,  alder,  birch,  aspen,  and  vine,  where  the  opera- 
tions of  the  insects  are  in  some  seasons  attended  with  injury  to  the 
crop.  The  caterpillars  of  many  butterflies  and  moths  are  also  shel- 
tered in  the  same  manner  ;  while  other  caterpillars  associate  them- 
selves together  and  s]An  webs  for  their  nests,  in  the  air  between  the 
leaves  and  twigs  of  trees.  Nests  of  this  kind  are  frequently  found  on 
fruit-trees  and  shrubbery,  and  afford  a  very  good  degree  of  protection 
to  their  inhabitants  against  late  frosts,  storms,  birds,  and  parasites. 
The  nest  of  the  procession-spinner  serves,  curiously,  only  as  a  resting- 
place  for  the  insect  in  the  larval  state,  though  it  finally  becomes  the 
common  home  of  the  pupse.  The  caterpillars,  to  satisfy  their  hunger, 
are  accustomed  to  leave  the  nest  in  a  kind  of  orderly  procession,  climb- 
ing up  the  stem  of  the  tree  to  wander  all  over  the  crown  of  the  foliage, 
and,  after  they  have  done  their  work,  to  return  again  in  procession  to 
their  nest.  They  are  avoided  by  man  on  account  of  the  irritation  pro- 
duced by  the  sting  of  their  hairs,  and  are  for  the  same  reason  safe 
against  all  birds  but  the  cuckoo.  A  carnivorous  beetle,  the  Calosoma 
sycojohanta,  also  despises  their  fortress  and  their  weapons,  and  breaks 
voraciously  into  their  communities,  like  a  wolf  into  a  sheep-fold.  We 
must  remember  here,  the  consummate  architectural  skill  with  which 
honey-bees  build  up  their  combs  of  waxen  cells  closely  joined  one  to 
another.  Their  whole  manner  of  life  and  their  professional  division 
of  labor,  in  which  they  remind  us  of  civilized  human  life,  provoke  the 
query,  Whence  the  mechanical  and  technical  skill  and  the  intelligence 
of  these  little  creatures  ? 

A  considerable  number  of  our  insects  are  burrowers,  and  during 
the  period  of  their  larval  development  excavate,  under  the  epidermis 
of  the  leaves  and  other  green  parts  of  plants,  passages,  small  at  first. 


DEFENSES    OF  THE  LESSER  ANIMALS,  487 

but  which  widen  as  the  larvae  grow,  feeding  themselves  from  the 
parenchyma  in  which  they  work,  and  at  the  same  time  obtaining  a 
defense  against  external  injurious  influences  and  disturbances.  They 
usually  leave  their  burrow,  when  about  to  assume  the  chrysalis  state, 
by  a  little  hole  that  may  be  found  at  the  extreme  end  of  the  excava- 
tion, and  either  fall  to  the  ground  or  make  a  cocoon,  attached  to 
some  plant,  in  the  air.  Other  burrowing  larvae  bury  themselves  in 
the  ground. 

For  the  preservation  of  the  chrysalis,  Nature  has  provided  many 
insect-larvae  with  the  faculty  of  spinning,  and  organs  for  the  purpose. 
This  function  is  so  extraordinarily  developed  in  the  larvae  of  the  but- 
terflies that  a  whole  group  of  that  order  have  been  called  "  the  spin- 
ners '* ;  while  many  of  these  spinners — the  silk-worms — have  been 
made  serviceable  to  human  civilization.  Before  the  spinning  larva 
advances  to  its  last  change  of  skin,  it  selects  a  sheltered,  dry  spot — 
between  leaves,  on  bark,  in  a  hedge,  in  turf,  or  on  a  post — and  then, 
drawing  from  the  spinning-glands  situated  under  its  neck  and  between 
its  head  and  fore-feet  fine  silken  threads,  it  prepares  an  ample,  firm, 
and  intricate  web  of  flock-silk  for  its  envelope.  Having  completed 
its  cocoon,  it  shakes  off  its  old  skin,  and  lays  itself  to  sleep  in  this 
soft  but  solidly-made  bed,  while  its  pupa-skin  hardens  and  it  awaits 
the  time  for  its  next  transformation ;  and  only  when  disturbed  from 
without  does  it  show  by  some  spasmodic  motion  of  the  posterior  seg* 
ment  that  it  can  still  feel,  and  that  its  pupa-rest  is  not  a  death-sleep, 
but  only  a  temporary  repose.  If  the  larva  is  provided  with  a  hairy 
skin  or  bristles,  they  become  interwoven  with  the  cocoon,  and  a  com- 
posite texture  is  formed,  which  man  must  be  careful  how  he  touches, 
or  the  bristles  will  sting  his  fingers  and  make  them  smart.  Naked 
caterpillars,  or  larvae,  weave,  like  the  real  silk-worm,  cocoons  of  pure 
silk,  or,  like  the  false-caterpillars,  and  the  larvae  of  wasps,  ants,  and 
bees,  transparent,  cylindric-oval  envelopes  of  a  consistency  like  that 
of  parchment  or  waxed  paper.  The  naked  caterpillars  of  the  Iler- 
mione  moth  make  a  kind  of  roof  of  pieces  of  bark  over  a  hollow  which 
they  have  excavated  in  the  ground  for  their  bed  ;  and  a  hairy  larva 
provides  for  itself  in  a  similar  manner.  Many  other  larvae  go  for  the 
security  of  their  pupae  into  or  upon  the  ground,  where  they  prepare, 
from  leaf -dust,  moss,  and  grains  of  sand,  a  ball  rough  on  the  outside 
but  smoothly  finished  within,  or  simply  a  hole  in  the  ground,  as  an 
envelope. 

Arrived  at  last  at  its  perfect  and  free  state,  the  insect  is  efficiently 
protected  by  that  "  mimicry  "  which  has  been  much  discussed  by  Wal- 
lace and  other  writers,  or  the  likeness  in  color,  and  sometimes  in  other 
qualities,  which  it  presents  to  objects  that  are  associated  with  its 
most  accustomed  haunts.  Some  instances  of  this  mimicry  may  be 
observed  among  higher  animals,  but  it  is  most  conspicuous  and  sig- 
nificant with  insects.     We  need  only  refer  to  the  appearance  of  dif- 


488  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

ferent  butterflies  resting  with  their  wings  folded  together  on  flow- 
ers, leaves,  bark,  old  walls,  dead  wood,  etc.,  and  to  the  thousands 
of  instances  daily  in  which  insects  pass  unobserved  by  being  con- 
founded in  their  general  harmony  with  the  objects  that  are  nearest 
to  them. 

The  shells  which  serve  as  houses  to  land-snails,  and  which  the 
animals  close  in  winter  by  their  opercula,  or  doors,  are  known  to  all. 
Many  snails  are  not  provided  with  shells,  and  they  secure  themselves 
by  creeping  under  dead  leaves,  stones,  or  pieces  of  wood,  or  into  the 
sod  and  the  ground. 

If  we  regard  the  animals  in  the  water  we  shall  find  that  they  are 
furnished  with  safeguards  as  well  adapted  to  their  wants  as  those  of 
their  fellows  of  the  air.  The  larvae  hide,  like  those  of  the  Ephemerce, 
with  their  whole  bodies  in  the  ground,  and  thus  escape  destruction  by 
the  fish  ;  or  they  live,  like  the  larvae  of  the  May -flies,  in  cases  made 
of  splinters  of  wood,  pieces  of  rush,  seeds,  bits  of  shells,  or  hollow 
straws  and  stalks  of  weeds.  Other  larvae  conceal  themselves  in  leaf- 
rollings  on  the  surface  of  the  water  or  beneath  the  floating  leaves  of 
water-plants  The  soft  animals  of  the  water  find  their  protection  in 
shells  of  limestone,  either  spirally  coiled  or  double-valved  and  kept 
tightly  closed  by  a  strong  muscle.  Crustaceans  are  protected  by  the 
peculiar  armor  which  gives  the  class  its  name,  and  which  they  change 
once  a  year  for  a  suit  of  larger  size  ;  some  members  of  the  family  take 
possession  of  deserted  shells,  and  concealing  their  hinder  parts  within 
them  live  thus,  and  carry  their  acquired  houses  about  with  them,  as 
Diogenes  did  his  tub.  The  coral-polyps  of  the  ocean  build  from  their 
secretions  solid,  branching  masses  of  limestone,  within  which  they 
conceal  their  jelly-like  forms,  furnishing  another  striking  example  of 
the  care  Nature  takes  for  all  its  creatures.  The  boring-worms  of  the 
sea,  the  Serpulm,  and  the  borers  of  oyster  and  other  shells,  the  Sahellm 
and  the  Terchellce,  offer  other  examples  of  a  similar  kind.  And  the 
Arenicolm,  or  sand- worms,  like  the  earth-worms  of  the  land,  find  their 
security  simply  by  being  under  the  cover  of  the  sand  as  they  crawl 
around  for  their  food. —  Translated  and  abridged  for  the  Popular 
Science  Monthly  from  Die  Natur. 


THE  COMET   OF  1812  AISID  1883. 

By  Professor  DANIEL   KIEKWOOD. 

IN  the  quarter  of  a  century  included  between  August,  1802,  and 
August,  1827,  Jean  Louis  Pons  discovered  thirty  comets — twice 
as  many  as  all  observers  besides.  Of  this  number  are  the  celebrated 
comets  of  short  period  designated  as  Encke's,  Biela's,  and  Winnecke's, 


THE   COMET   OF  1812  AND   1883.  489 

as  well  as  the  comet  of  1812,  now  visible  on  its  first  predicted  return. 
It  was  originally  detected  on  the  20th  of  July,  and  was  the  thirteenth 
discovered  by  Pons  within  ten  years.  Its  appearance  at  first  was  that 
of  an  irregular  nebula  without  tail  or  beard,  and  it  was  only  visible 
through  a  telescope.  By  the  14th  of  September  it  was  easily  seen 
without  optical  aid  ;  its  tail  was  over  two  degrees  in  length,  and  the 
diameter  of  its  nucleus  was  five  or  six  seconds.  It  continued  visible 
till  October — a  period  of  ten  weeks — and  was  consequently  well  ob- 
served. Cooper's  valuable  work  on  "  Cometic  Orbits  "  contains  eight 
sets  of  elements  by  different  computers.  Encke  distinctly  recognized 
the  elliptic  form  of  the  orbit,  and  the  elements  which  he  assigned  have 
been  generally  preferred.     They  are  as  follows  : 

Perihelion  passage  1812,  Sept.,  15-3136,  G.  M.  T. 

Longitude  of  perihelion 92°  18'  46" 

Longitude  of  ascending  node 253°    1'    3" 

Inclination 73°  57'    3' 

Perihelion  distance 0*771 

Eccentricity 0*9545 

Period 70  68  years. 

Motion direct. 

According  to  Encke,  therefore,  the  next  perihelion  passage  was  to 
have  been  expected  in  June,  1883 — about  three  months  before  the 
actual  discovery  of  the  comet  by  Mr.  W.  R.  Brooks.  A  re-discussion 
of  the  observations  of  1812  had,  however,  been  recently  completed  by 
Dr.  Schulhof  and  M.  Bossert,  whose  calculations  gave  a  probable  pe- 
riod about  seven  months  longer  than  that  obtained  by  Encke.  The 
true  period  is  found  to  be  very  nearly  a  mean  between  these  earlier 
and  later  estimates. 

On  its  present  return  the  comet  was  first  glimpsed  on  the  night 
of  September  1st,  by  Mr.  William  R.  Brooks,  Director  of  Red  House 
Observatory,  Phelps,  New  York.  He  was,  however,  prevented  by 
clouds  from  verifying  his  conjecture  of  the  cometary  character  of  the 
nebulous  speck  till  the  evening  of  the  3d.  Its  identity  with  the  comet 
of  1812  was  shown  on  the  18th  of  September,  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Searles, 
of  New  York,  and  independently  on  the  day  following  by  Professor 
Lewis  Boss,  of  the  Dudley  Observatory.  The  latter  designated  Janu- 
ary 25,  1884,  as  the  date  of  perihelion  passage.  Astronomers  of  the 
twentieth  century  will  probably  witness  its  next  apparition  in  the 
summer  of  1955. 

The  comet  of  1812  is  one  of  a  remarkable  group  whose  periods 
range  between  sixty-eight  and  seventy-six  years,  all  of  their  aphelia 
being  some  distance  beyond  the  orbit  of  Neptune.  It  seems,  how- 
ever, to  be  specially  related  to  the  fourth  comet  of  1846.  The  latter 
was  discovered  by  De  Vico,  at  Rome,  on  February  20th,  and  inde- 
pendently, by  Professor  G.  P.  Bond,  February  26th.  It  remained 
visible  ten  weeks,  and  its  elements  were  calculated  by  Peirce,  Hind, 


490 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


Van  Diense,  and  others.  The  present  writer  has  elsewhere  *  called 
attention  to  the  close  agreement  of  the  elements  of  the  comets  of  1812 
and  1846.  These  coincidences  are  seen  at  a  glance  in  the  following 
figure,  where  the  dotted  ellipse  represents  the  orbit  of  the  comet  of 
1812,  and  the  continuous  curve  that  of  the  fourth  comet  of  1846. 


0* 


It  seems  difficult  to  regard  this  general  similarity  as  accidental. 
A  possible  explanation  may  be  found  in  the  hypothesis  of  an  ancient 
comet's  separation  into  parts  —  a  phenomenon  known  to  have  oc- 
curred in  the  case  of  Biela's  comet.  It  has  also  been  pointed  out 
that  the  paths  of  both  comets  very  nearly  intersect  the  orbit  of  Ve- 
nus ;  that  of  1812  in  true  anomaly  341°,  and  that  of  1846  in  347°. 

On  the  hypothesis  of  a  common  origin  it  is  obvious  that  these  bod- 
ies must  have  entered  the  solar  system  at  a  remote  epoch.  It  seems, 
therefore,  quite  remarkable  that  neither  is  known  to  have  been  ob- 
served before  1812.  The  period  of  De  Vico's  comet  of  1846  is  still 
too  uncertain  to  be  traced  backward  through  former  returns  ;  but, 
with  a  mean  period  of  the  Pons-Brooks  comet  equal  to  the  interval 
between  the  two  observed  apparitions,  we  find  the  dates  of  former 
perihelion  passages  to  have  been  approximately  as  given  below.     The 

*  "  Comets  and  Meteors,"  Chapter  III.     The  nodal  lines  are  nearly  coincident,  but  the 


HOW  WE  SNEEZE,  LAUGH,  STAMMER,  AND  SIGH.  491 

nearest  corresponding  dates  at  which  comets  were  seen  are  also  ap- 
pended ; 


Fonner  returns  of  tho 
comet  of  lbl2. 

Corresponding  dates 
at  which  comets 

Former  returns  of  the 
comet  of  ISIL'. 

Corresponding  dates 
at  which  cometa 

were  seen. 

were  seen. 

1Y41 

1742 

1456 

1457 

1670 

,    ,  . 

1384 

13S2 

1598 

.... 

1313 

1313 

1527 

1529 

1241 

1240 

No  comets  are  recorded  for  1670  and  1598,  and  very  little  is  known 
of  those  seen  in  1742  and  1529.  Some  of  the  preceding  may  have 
been  returns  of  the  Pons-Brooks  comet.  The  comets  of  1812  and 
1846,  as  has  been  shown,  are  both  liable  to  great  perturbation  by 
Venus. 


HOW  WE  SNEEZE,  LAUGH,  STAMMEK,  AND  SIGH. 

By  FEEDEEIC  A.  FEENALD. 

THE  nose  is  an  organ  in  more  senses  than  one.  From  its  resonant 
pipes  proceed  the  sonorous  tones  which  tell  of  blissful  slumber, 
and  the  convulsive  snort,  varying  from  the  mere  "  cat-sneeze  "  to  the 
tremendous  "  Horatio,"  that  has  less  definite  meaning  ;  while  the 
Frenchman  and  the  typical  New-Englander  (who  is  nearly  as  rare  as 
the  aborigine  in  New  England,  by-the-way)  give  it  an  important  share 
in  the  production  of  speech.  To  give  some  physiological  explanation 
of  these  and  other  involuntary  actions  of  the  respiratory  mechanism  is 
the  object  of  the  present  article. 

Snoring  is  produced  in  sleep  by  the  passage  of  the  breath  through 
the  pharynx  when  the  tongue  and  soft  palate  are  in  certain  positions. 
The  soft  palate  must  have  fallen  back  in  such  a  manner  as  to  nearly 
or  quite  close  the  entrance  to  the  nasal  cavity  from  the  throat,  and  the 
tongue  must  also  be  thrown  back  so  far  as  to  leave  only  a  narrow  open- 
ing between  it  and  the  soft  palate.  It  is  by  the  air  being  forced  either 
inward  or  outward  through  this  opening  that  the  noise  is  produced.  A 
snore  results  also  when,  with  a  closed  mouth,  the  air  is  forced  be- 
tween the  soft  palate  and  the  back  wall  of  the  pharynx  into  the  nasal 
cavity.  With  deep  breathing,  perhaps  accompanied  by  a  variation  in 
the  position  of  the  soft  palate,  a  rattling  noise  may  be  heard  in  addi- 
tion to  the  snoring,  which  is  due  to  a  vibration  of  the  soft  palate. 
Hence  it  is  evident  how  flinging  a  pillow  at  a  snorer,  or  poking  him  in 
the  ribs,  will  often  cause  him  to  be  silent  even  when  the  disciplinary 
measure  does  not  awaken  him,  for  a  change  of  position  that  lets  the 
tongue  and  soft  palate  fall  a  little  forward  secures  a  free  passage  for 
the  air. 


492  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Grunting  is  a  noise  which  is  produced  when,  after  the  larynx  has 
been  perfectly  closed,  whether  spasmodically  or  as  a  voluntary  action 
with  the  object  of  holding  the  breath,  the  current  of  air  thus  inter- 
rupted is  suddenly  resumed.  In  the  grunt  we  must  distinguish  two 
elements  :  the  first  is  a  clicking  sound,  and  the  other  an  explosive 
sound  or  slight  report.  The  click  is  the  noise  produced  by  the  meet- 
ing of  air  in  the  space  left  vacant  when  two  moistened  bodies  are  sud- 
denly separated.  It  forms,  however,  but  a  very  small  part  of  the  noise 
of  grunting,  and  can  scarcely  be  experimentally  demonstrated.  The 
"  report  "  is  the  well-known  phenomenon  connected  with  the  sudden 
expansion  of  a  body  of  compressed  air. 

"  Talking  through  the  nose  "  when  a  person  has  a  cold  is  in  reality 
talking  with  the  nose  so  stopped  that  less  rather  than  more  than  the 
usual  quantity  of  vibrating  air  can  pass  through  the  nasal  cavity.  In 
producing  certain  articulate  sounds — ^those  which  occur  in  English  are 
represented  by  m,  n,  and  ng — all  the  vocal  air  escapes  from  the  pharynx 
by  the  nose.  The  nasal  air-passage  has  the  general  form  of  a  resonator, 
and  there  can  be  no  doubt  but  that  it  has  a  corresponding  influence, 
and  that  the  sounds  produced  by  the  air  passing  through  it  are  strength- 
ened by  its  resonance.  The  larger  the  nasal  cavity  the  more  powerful 
the  resonance,  and  consequently  the  re-enforcement  experienced  by  the 
tone.  Sounds  uttered  with  the  nasal  resonance,  particularly  the  nasal 
vowels,  are  fuller  and  more  ample  than  the  same  sounds  when  strength- 
ened by  the  resonance  of  the  cavity  of  the  mouth,  and  it  is  for  this 
reason  that  third-rate  tragic  actors  like  to  give  a  nasal  resonance  to  all 
the  vowels  in  the  pathetic  speeches  of  their  heroic  parts.  The  reso- 
nance of  the  nasal  cavity  plays  a  part  also  in  the  formation  of  non-nasal 
articulate  sounds  ;  then,  however,  appearing  only  as  a  re-enforcement 
of  the  resonance  of  the  cavity  of  the  mouth.  The  directly  excited 
nasal  resonance  sometimes  plays  an  immediate  part  in  the  formation  of 
all  articulate  sounds,  producing  the  nasal  "  twang."  But  the  general 
conception  of  this  mode  of  speaking  is  by  no  means  scientifically  cor- 
rect, every  species  of  pronunciation  in  which  the  nasal  element  asserts 
itself  with  undue  prominence  being  called  "  talking  through  the  nose." 
It  may,  however,  arise  from  two  unlike  causes  :  firstly,  from  a  stoppage 
of  the  nasal  cavity  ;  or,  secondly,  from  incomplete  closure  of  the  poste- 
rior entrance  to  this  cavity.  If  the  nasal  cavity  is  obstructed,  as  when 
a  child's  nose  is  pinched  and  he  is  told  to  say  "  pudding,"  an  accumula- 
tion of  air  forms  in  the  back  of  the  mouth,  being  unable  to  escape 
through  the  nose,  and  in  the  end  is  obliged  to  find  exit  through  the 
mouth.  The  resonance  is  also  altered,  and  the  nasal  sounds  are,  there- 
fore, formed  imperfectly  and  falsely.  The  same  disturbance  is  pro- 
duced by  the  partial  obstruction  of  the  nasal  cavity  which  is  experi- 
enced from  the  swollen  condition  of  the  mucous  membrane,  and  from 
its  increased  secretion,  during  a  "  cold  in  the  head." 

A  nasal  twang  from  improper  escape  of  air  through  the  nasal  cav- 


ROJV  WE  SNEEZE,  LAUGH,  STAMMER,  AND  SIGH.  493 

ity  may  be  due  to  a  cleft  palate,  or  to  some  less  grave  defect  wMcli 
prevents  insufficient  contact  between  the  soft  palate  and  the  back  wall 
of  the  pharynx.  Various  other  noises  emanate  from  the  mouth  and 
nose,  accompanying  certain  unusual  and  mainly  involuntary  forms  of 
respiration.  These  are  classified  by  Yon  Meyer,  from  whose  "  Organs 
of  Speech,"  in  the  "  International  Scientific  Series,"  most  of  the  mate- 
rial for  this  article  has  been  obtained,  as  disturbances  of  inspiration, 
to  which  class  belong  hiccough,  gaping,  and  stammering,  and  dis- 
turbances of  expiration,  under  which  he  enumerates  sneezing,  cough- 
ing, laughing,  and  sighing. 

Hiccough  is  the  simplest  of  the  former  class,  and  is  merely  a  vio- 
lent inspiration  caused  by  a  convulsive  contraction  of  the  diaphragm. 
The  ensuing  expiration  then  takes  place  quietly.  The  air  inhaled  may 
enter  principally  either  through  the  mouth  or  the  nose,  or  through 
both  equally,  and  in  each  case  the  accompanying  noise  is  different. 
A  contraction  of  the  glottis  may  also  take  place  at  the  same  time,  and 
in  this  case  the  entering  stream  of  air  creates,  in  passing  between  the 
vocal  chords,  a  sharp,  clear  tone.  During  an  attack,  one  inspiration 
in  about  four  or  five  is  convulsive.  Hiccough  arises  from  over-irri- 
tation of  the  nerves  of  the  diaphragm,  the  cause  of  which  we  know 
to  be  either  psychical  conditions  or  overfilling  of  the  stomach.  When 
the  stomach  is  overladen  with  food  or  with  effervescing  or  alcoholic 
drinks,  it  resists  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  the  fall  of  the  diaphragm  ; 
the  contraction's  of  the  diaphragm  necessarily  become  more  labored, 
and  occasionally,  like  other  over-irritated  muscles,  assume  a  convulsive 
character.  Frequently,  however,  the  hiccough  appears  as  a  sign  of 
the  general  over-irritation  of  the  nervous  system  in  hysteria,  and, 
probably  from  the  same  reason,  it  may  not  uncommonly  be  observed 
in  otherwise  healthy  young  persons,  particularly  children.  The  above 
explanation  of  hiccough  as  a  convulsive  contraction  of  the  diaphragm 
is  further  confirmed  by  the  manner  in  which  it  may  be  stopped.  It 
is,  namely,  only  necessary  to  allow  an  exceedingly  protracted  and,  at 
the  end,  forcible  expiration  to  follow  a  long  and  quiet  inspiration. 
The  slow  inspiration,  especially  when  it  is  chiefly  performed  by  the 
wall  of  the  chest,  prevents  the  phrenic  nerve  from  being  too  power- 
fully irritated,  while  the  long  expiration  gives  this  nerve  time  to  re- 
cover from  its  over-irritation.  A  remedy  which  the  writer  has  tested 
many  times  without  a  failure  can  always  be  used  upon  a  person  who 
has  "  the  hiccoughs  "  by  some  one  else,  and  generally  by  the  sufferer 
himself.  You  say  to  your  friend  something  like  this  :  "  See  how  close 
together  you  can  hold  the  tips  of  your  forefingers  without  their  touch- 
ing. No,  keep  your  elbows  out  free  from  your  sides.  You  can  get 
your  fingers  closer  than  that.  They  are  touching  now.  There,  now 
hold  them  so.  Steady."  By  this  time  you  can  generally  ask,  "  Now, 
why  don't  you  hiccough  ? "  The  involuntary  tendency  to  breathe 
slowly  and  steadily  when  the  attention  is  fixed  on  performing  a  deli- 


494  ^^^  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

cate  manipulation  is  here  what  counteracts  the  convulsive  action  of 
the  diaphragm. 

Gaping  is  also  a  convulsive  form  of  inspiration,  which,  however, 
is  not  so  short  and  violent  as  the  hiccough.  In  gaping,  moreover, 
those  muscles  which  raise  the  walls  of  the  chest  are  at  once  brought 
into  prominent  action  ;  while,  further,  a  rapid  contraction  of  the  dia- 
phragm is  necessary  before  the  climax  can  be  reached,  after  which  a 
somewhat  rapid  fall  of  the  thorax  produces  a  quick  expiration.  The 
important  part  which  is  played  by  the  rise  of  the  chest  is  particularly 
shown  by  the  fact  that  in  very  violent  gaping  the  head  is  thrown  back- 
ward, and  the  shoulders  raised,  in  addition  to  which  even  the  arms  are 
sometimes  stretched  upward.  During  the  gaping  inspiratory  process 
the  mouth  is  opened  sj^asmodically,  and  at  the  same  time  the  soft  pal- 
ate is  spasmodically  raised,  closing  the  air-passage  of  the  nose.  The 
whole  phenomenon,  including  the  sense  of  satisfaction  after  the  inspi- 
ration, seems  an  indication  of  a  strong  desire  for  air,  and  the  existence 
of  this  desire  under  those  circumstances  in  which  gaping  is  generally 
observed — sleepiness,  for  instance,  or  weariness — is  readily  explaina- 
ble. Such  circumstances  are  accompanied  by  a  general  inactivity  of 
the  nervous  system,  from  which  results  a  weak  respiratory  action,  in- 
sufficient for  the  body  when  awake. 

Stammering  results  from  efforts  to  talk  while  a  similar  action  to 
that  which  produces  hiccough  is  going  on.  The  difference  is  that,  in 
stammering,  the  contractile  spasm  of  the  diaphragm  is  longer.  During 
its  continuance  no  expiration  can  take  place,  and,  as  speech  depends 
upon  the  existence  of  an  issuing  stream  of  air,  it  is  impossible  for  a 
person  while  suffering  such  a  spasm  to  produce  any  sound.  Ineffectual 
and  therefore  exaggerated  efforts  to  create  sound  with  the  organs  of 
the  mouth  and  throat  give  rise  to  distressed  grimaces,  and  this  dis- 
tressed expression  must  necessarily  be  augmented  by  the  fact  that,  by 
so  long  delaying  expiration,  a  want  of  breath  is  felt  and  the  circula- 
tion of  the  blood  interrupted.  When  at  length  the  spasm  ceases,  and 
is  followed  by  a  quick  expiration,  the  natural  condition  is  restored  till 
again  destroyed  by  a  fresh  spasm.  But  there  may  be  no  attempt  to 
speak,  and  yet  the  cause  of  the  phenomenon  (the  spasm  in  the  dia- 
phragm) may  be  experienced  ;  in  this  case  it  ^\\\\  not  cause  stammer- 
ing, and  may  be  quite  imperceptible  to  the  observer.  If,  now,  as  ap- 
pears from  the  above,  stammering  is  only  an  occasionally  observed 
symptom  of  a  contractile  spasm  in  the  diaphragm,  it  must  be  clear 
that  all  attempts  to  cure  stammering  by  exercising  the  organs  of  the 
mouth  and  throat  must  be  unsuccessful,  and  that  this  defect  can  be 
efficiently  treated  only  by  following  rules  already  given  for  the  treat- 
ment of  hiccough.  A  quiet,  unhurried  inspiration  must  be  followed 
by  an  expiration  as  slow  and  long  as  possible,  the  issuing  stream 
either  being  employed  in  speech  or  not.  TVith  this  treatment  the 
motor  nerves  of  the  diaphragm  can  most  effectually  recover  from  their 


HOW  WE  SNEEZE,  LAUGH,  STAMMER,  AND  SIGH.  495 

state  of  over-irritation,  and  return  to  their  normal  condition.  We 
must,  however,  be  careful  not  to  fall  into  the  common  error  of  con- 
founding stuttering  with  stammering.  In  stuttering  the  process  of 
breathing  is  quite  normal,  and  the  defective  speech  arises  only  from 
inaptitude  in  the  formation  of  sound  ;  this  defect  of  speech  is,  there- 
fore, peculiar  to  children,  idiots,  and  persons  suffering  from  apoplexy. 

Sighing^  which  is  classed  by  Von  Meyer  as  an  unusual  form  of  ex- 
piration, is  better  regarded  as  including  the  preceding  inspiration  also. 
A  sigh  is  in  fact  a  long  breath,  and,  like  a  gape,  is  an  involuntary 
spurt  made  to  catch  up  with  the  demand  for  air.  This  is  true  even 
when  it  arises  from  depressing  emotion.  The  expiration  is  often  the 
more  prominent  part  of  the  action,  the  rapidity  with  which  the  air 
flows  out  being  due  to  a  sudden  cessation  of  the  activity  of  the  expira- 
tory muscles,  which  commonly  regulate,  by  retarding,  the  issuing 
stream  of  air.  In  sobbing,  air  is  obtained  by  short,  abrupt  inspirations, 
and  the  tears  which  overflow  into  the  nasal  cavity  assist  in  causing 
this  air  to  produce  sound. 

Sneezing  is  the  simplest  of  the  purely  expiratory  noises.  Just  as 
the  hiccough  depends  upon  a  single  violent  spasm  during  inspiration, 
so  the  sneeze  is  due  to  a  single  violent  spasm  during  expiration,  gen- 
erally of  the  abdominal  muscles,  but,  when  very  violent,  of  the  other 
expiratory  muscles  also.  It  is  a  reflex  action  which  occurs  after  an 
irritation  of  the  mucous  membrane  lining  the  air-passages  of  the  nose, 
and  also  after  irritation  of  the  optic  nerve  by  a  bright  light.  A  few 
slight  contractions  of  the  abdominal  muscles  are  at  first  suppressed  by 
some  short  inspirations  rapidly  following  each  other  without  any  in- 
tervening expiration  ;  then  follows  a  vigorous  contraction  of  the  ab- 
dominal muscles,  by  means  of  which  the  stream  of  air  is  violently 
driven  out  through  the  mouth  and  nose.  In  its  passage  through  the 
nose,  the  air  produces  a  well-known  noise,  which  may,  however,  be 
connected  with  a  sound  produced  in  the  vocal  chords.  We  recognize 
the  same  peculiarity,  though  the  action  is  voluntarily  performed,  in 
blowing  the  nose.  Sneezing  is  not  an  observer  of  times  and  seasons, 
and  often  seems  to  choose  the  most  inopportune  moment  for  exhibiting 
its  power.  In  such  a  case  the  impending  catastrophe  may  be  averted 
by  pressing  firmly  upon  some  branch  of  the  fifth  nerve,  say  in  the  up- 
per lip  close  under  the  nose. 

Coughing  and  laughing  are  also  due  to  a  spasmodic  contraction  of 
the  expiratory  muscles.  These  acts  differ  from  sneezing  only  in  this 
respect,  that,  while  in  the  latter  expiration  is  accomplished  by  a  single 
violent  action,  it  is  here  characterized  by  a  number  of  separate  im- 
pulses of  the  expiratory  muscles  with  small  intervening  pauses.  In 
long-continued  coughing  or  laughing,  short  inspirations,  which,  on  ac- 
count of  their  shortness  and  violence,  often  approach  the  verge  of 
hiccoughing,  are  taken  between  the  separate  expirations,  and,  indeed, 
laughing  after  a  full  meal  frequently  leads  to  a  fit  of  hiccoughs.    Cough- 


496  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

ing  most  closely  resembles  sneezing,  not  only  as  regards  its  origin,  but 
also  as  regards  its  execution.  This  is  a  reflex  action  which  follows  an 
irritation  of  the  air-passages,  particularly  of  the  windpipe  and  the 
larynx,  but  also  of  the  pharynx  and  the  nasal  cavity.  Stimulation  of 
other  nerves,  as  those  of  the  skin  by  a  draught  of  cold  air,  may  also 
produce  coughing.  The  expiratory  impulses  induced  may  attain  great 
violence,  so  as  in  this  respect  to  resemble  the  single  impulse  of  sneez- 
ing. "While,  however,  in  sneezing,  the  stream  of  air  escapes,  as  a  rule, 
through  the  nose,  in  coughing  it  escapes  through  the  cavity  of  the 
mouth,  which  is  shut  off  by  the  raised  soft  palate  from  the  nasal  cavity, 
and  enlarged  by  dropping  the  lower  jaw,  and  by  the  depression  of  the 
floor  of  the  cavity,  the  tongue  at  the  same  time  being  pushed  forward. 
The  closed  glottis  holds  this  air  back  for  an  instant  against  the  press- 
ure of  the  abdominal  muscles,  and  then  suddenly  opens  part  way, 
letting  it  escape  with  an  explosive  noise,  generally  accompanied  by  a 
sound,  shrill  or  deep  as  the  case  may  be,  produced  by  the  vocal  chords. 
Performed  voluntarily,  and  with  less  violence,  coughing  assumes  the 
form  known  to  us  as  "  clearing  the  throat."  In  laughing,  the  separate 
expiratory  impulses  are  not  so  violent,  and  the  stream  of  air  passes 
through  the  fairly  open  mouth,  or,  when  the  mouth  is  shut,  through 
the  nose.  It  is  accompanied  by  contractions  of  the  muscles  of  the 
face,  and  is  mainly  involuntary,  being  generally  caused  by  an  impres- 
sion produced  upon  the  higher  parts  of  the  brain.  Violent  laughing 
may  be  caused  by  tickling  some  parts  of  the  body.  Characteristic 
sounds  are  produced  in  the  same  way  as  already  described  in  coughing, 
and  in  both,  when  long  continued,  the  air  which  from  time  to  time  is 
quickly  inspired  may  produce  a  clear,  shrill  note  in  passing  through 
the  glottis. 


THE  CHEMISTKY  OF  COOIvEEY. 

By  W.  MATTIEU  WILLIAMS. 

xxn. 

I  NOW  come  to  a  very  important  constituent  of  animal  food,  al- 
though it  is  not  contained  in  beef,  mutton,  pork,  poultry,  game, 
fish,  or  any  other  organized  animal  substance.  It  is  not  even  proved 
satisfactorily  to  exist  in  the  blood,  although  it  is  somehow  obtained 
from  the  blood  by  special  glands  at  certain  periods.  I  refer  to  casein, 
the  substantial  basis  of  cheese,  which,  as  everybody  knows,  is  the  con- 
solidated curd  of  milk. 

It  is  evident  at  once  that  casein  must  exist  in  two  forms,  the  solu- 
ble and  insoluble,  so  far  as  the  common  solvent,  water,  is  concerned. 
It  exists  in  the  soluble  form,  and  completely  dissolved  in  milk,  and 
insoluble  in  cheese.     "When  precipitated  in  its  insoluble  or  coagulated 


THE   CHEMISTRY  OF  COOKERY,  497 

form,  as  the  curd  of  new  milk,  it  carries  with  it  the  fatty  matter,  or 
cream,  and  therefore,  in  order  to  study  its  properties  in  a  state  of 
purity,  we  must  obtain  it  otherwise.  This  may  be  done  by  allowing 
the  fat-globules  of  the  milk  to  float  to  the  surface,  and  then  remove 
them — i.  e.,  by  separating  the  cream  as  by  the  ordinary  dairy  method. 
We  thus  obtain  in  the  skimmed  milk  a  solution  of  casein,  but  there 
still  remains  some  of  the  fat.  This  may  be  removed  by  evaporating 
it  down  to  solidity,  and  then  dissolving  out  the  fat  by  means  of  ether, 
which  leaves  the  soluble  casein  behind.  The  adhering  ether  being 
evaporated,  we  have  a  fairly  pure  specimen  of  casein  in  its  original  or 
soluble  form. 

This,  when  dry,  is  an  amber-colored,  translucent  substance,  devoid 
of  odor,  and  insipid.  This  insipidity  and  absence  of  odor  of  the  pure 
and  separated  casein  is  noteworthy,  as  it  is  evidently  the  condition  in 
which  it  exists  in  milk,  but  very  different  from  that  of  the  casein  of 
cheese.  My  object  in  pointing  this  out  is  to  show  that  in  the  course 
of  the  manufacture  of  cheese  new  properties  are  developed.  Skim 
rnilk — a  solution  of  casein — is  tasteless  and  inodorous,  while  cheese, 
whether  made  from  skimmed  or  whole  milk,  has  a  very  decided  flavor 
and  odor. 

If  we  now  add  some  of  our  dry  casein  to  water,  it  dissolves,  form- 
ing a  yellowish,  viscid  fluid,  which,  on  evaporation,  becomes  covered 
with  a  slight  film  of  insoluble  casein,  which  may  be  readily  drawn  off. 
Some  of  my  readers  will  recognize  in  this  description  the  resemblance 
of  a  now  well-known  domestic  preparation  of  soluble  casein,  condensed 
milk,  where  it  is  mixed  with  much  cream,  and  in  the  ordinary  prepara- 
tion also  much  sugar.  The  cream  dilutes  the  yellowness,  but  does  not 
quite  mask  it,  and  the  viscidity  is  shown  by  the  strings  which  follow 
the  spoon  when  a  spoonful  is  lifted.  If  a  concentrated  solution  of 
pure  casein  is  exposed  to  the  air  it  rapidly  putrefies,  and  passes 
through  a  series  of  changes  that  I  must  not  tariy,  to  describe,  be- 
yond stating  that  ammonia  is  given  off,  and  some  crystalline  sub- 
stances, such  as  leucme,  tyrosine,  etc.,  very  interesting  to  the  physio- 
logical chemist,  but  not  important  in  the  kitchen,  are  formed. 

A  solution  of  casein  in  water  is  not  coagulated  by  boiling  ;  it  may 
be  repeatedly  evaporated  to  dryness  and  redissolved.  Upon  this  de- 
pends the  practicability  of  preserving  milk  by  evaporating  it  down, 
or  "  condensing."  This  condensed  milk,  however,  loses  a  little  ;  its 
albumen  is  sacrificed,  as  everybody  will  understand  who  has  dipped  a 
spoon  in  freshly-boiled  milk  and  observed  the  skin  which  the  spoon 
removes  from  the  surface.     This  is  coagulated  albumen. 

If  alcohol  is  added  to  a  concentrated  solution  of  casein  in  water,  a 
pseudo-coagulation  occurs  ;  the  casein  is  precipitated  as  a  white  sub- 
stance like  coagulated  albumen,  but,  if  only  a  little  alcohol  is  used,  the 
solid  may  be  redissolved  in  water  ;  if,  however,  it  is  thus  treated  with 
strong  alcohol,  the  casein  becomes  difficult  of  solution,  or  even  quite 

VOL.  XXIT.— 32 


498  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

insoluble.  Alcohol  added  to  solid  soluble  casein  renders  it  opaque, 
and  gives  it  the  appearance  of  coagulated  albumen.  The  alcohol  itself 
dissolves  a  little  of  this. 

The  characteristic  coagulation  of  casein,  or  its  conversion  from  the 
soluble  to  the  insoluble  form,  is  produced  rather  mysteriously  by  ren- 
net. Acids  precipitate  it  from  an  aqueous  solution,  producing  an  ap- 
parent coagulation,  but  it  is  not  a  true  and  complete  coagulation  like 
that  effected  by  the  rennet,  for  on  neutralizing  the  acid  precipitant 
with  an  alkali  or  metallic  oxide  the  casein  again  dissolves.  Excepting 
in  the  cases  of  acetic  and  lactic  acids  (vinegar  and  the  acid  of  sour 
milk),  which  precipitate  pure  casein,  the  acid  precipitates  appear  to 
be  a  compound  of  casein  with  the  acids,  and  the  casein  is  set  free  in 
its  original  state  when  the  acid  goes  over  to  the  alkali  or  basic  metal- 
lic oxide.  The  action  of  rennet  in  the  coagulation  of  casein  is  still  a 
chemical  mystery,  especially  when  we  consider  the  smallness  of  the 
quantity  of  coagulating  agent  required  for  the  rapid  and  complete  con- 
version. 

A  calf  has  four  stomachs,  the  fourth  being  that  which  corresponds 
to  ours,  both  in  structure  and  functions.  It  is  lined  with  a  membrane, 
from  which  are  secreted  the  gastric  juice  and  other  fluids  concerned  in 
effecting  the  conversion  of  food  into  chyme.  A  weak  infusion  made 
from  a  small  piece  of  this  "mucous  membrane"  will  coagulate  the 
casein  of  two  or  three  thousand  times  its  own  quantity  of  milk,  or  the 
coagulation  may  be  effected  by  placing  a  small  piece  of  the  stomach 
(usually  salted  and  dried  for  the  purpose)  in  the  milk,  and  warming 
it  for  a  few  hours. 

Many  theoretical  attempts  have  been  made  to  explain  this  action 
of  the  rennet.  Simon  and  Liebig  supposed  that  it  acts  primarily  as  a 
ferment,  converting  the  sugar  of  milk  into  lactic  acid,  and  that  this 
lactic  acid  coagulates  the  casein  ;  but  Selmi  has  shown  that  alkaline 
milk  may  be  coagulated  by  rennet  in  the  course  of  ten  minutes,  and 
that  after  the  coagulation  it  still  has  an  alkaline  reaction.  This  is  the 
case  whether  fresh  naturally  alkaline  milk  is  used,  or  milk  that  has 
been  artificially  rendered  alkaline  by  the  addition  of  soda. 

Casein,  when  thoroughly  coagulated  by  rennet,  then  purified  and 
dried,  is  a  hard  and  yellowish  horn-like  substance.  It  softens  and 
swells  in  water,  but  does  not  dissolve  therein,  nor  in  alcohol  nor  weak 
acids.  Strong  mineral  acids  decompose  it.  Alkalies  dissolve  it  readi- 
ly, and,  if  concentrated,  decompose  it  on  the  application  of  heat. 
When  moderately  heated,  it  softens,  and  may  be  drawn  into  threads, 
and  becomes  elastic  ;  at  a  higher  temperature  it  fuses,  swells  up,  car- 
bonizes, and  develops  nearly  the  same  products  of  distillation  as  the 
other  protein  compounds. 

I  have  good  and  sufficient  reasons  for  thus  specifying  the  proper- 
ties of  this  constituent  of  food.  I  regard  it  as  the  most  important  of 
all  that  I  have  to  describe  in  connection  with  my  subject — ^the  science 


THE  CHEMISTRY  OF  COOKERY.  499 

of  cookery.  It  contains  (as  I  shall  presently  show)  more  nutritious 
material  than  any  other  food  that  is  ordinarily  obtainable,  and  its 
cookery  is  singularly  neglected,  is  practically  an  unknown  art,  espe- 
cially in  this  country.  We  commonly  eat  it  raw,  although  in  its  raw 
state  it  is  peculiarly  indigestible  ;  and  in  the  only  cooked  form  famil- 
iarly known  among  us  here,  that  of  a  Welsh  rabbit,  or  rare-bit,  it  is  too 
often  rendered  still  more  indigestible,  though  this  need  not  be  the  case. 

Here,  in  this  densely  populated  country,  where  we  import  so  much 
of  our  food,  cheese  demands  our  most  profound  attention.  The  diffi- 
culties and  cost  of  importing  all  kinds  of  meat,  fish,  and  poultry,  are 
great,  while  cheese  may  be  cheaply  and  deliberately  brought  to  us 
from  any  part  of  the  world  where  cows  or  goats  can  be  fed,  and  it 
can  be  stored  more  readily  and  kept  longer  than  other  kinds  of  animal 
food.  All  that  is  required  to  render  it,  next  to  bread,  the  staple  food 
of  Britons,  is  scientific  cookery. 

If  I  shall  be  able,  in  what  is  to  follow,  to  impart  to  my  fellow- 
countrymen,  and  more  especially  countrywomen,  my  own  convictions 
concerning  the  cookability,  and  consequent  improved  digestibility,  of 
cheese,  these  papers  will  have  "  done  the  state  some  service  !  " 

XXIII. 

In  my  last  I  referred  generally  to  the  high  nutritive  value  of  cheese. 
I  will  now  state  particulars.  First,  as  regards  the  water.  Taking  mus- 
cular fiber  without  bone,  i.  e.,  selected  best  part  of  the  meat,  beef  con- 
tains on  an  average  72^  per  cent  of  water  ;  mutton,  73^  ;  veal,  74^  ; 
pork,  69f  ;  fowl,  73f  ;  while  Cheshire  cheese  contains  only  30J,  and 
other  cheeses  about  the  same.  Thus,  at  starting,  we  have  in  every 
pound  of  cheese  rather  more  than  twice  as  much  solid  food  as  in  a 
pound  of  the  best  meat,  or  comparing  with  the  average  of  the  whole 
carcass,  including  bone,  tendons,  etc.,  the  cheese  has  an  advantage  of 
three  to  one. 

The  following  results  of  Mulder's  analysis  of  casein,  when  compared 
with  those  by  the  same  chemist  of  albumen,  gelatine,  and  fibrin,  show 
that  there  is  but  little  difference  in  the  ultimate  chemical  composition 
of  these,  so  far  as  the  constituents  there  named  are  concerned  : 


Carbon 53-83 

Hydrogen 7*15 

Nitrogen 1 5*65 

Oxygen. ) 

Sulphur \ 


Casein. 


Albumen.  Gelatine.  Fibrin. 

Carbon 53-5  5040  62-7 

Hydrogen 7-0  6-64  6-9 

Nitrogen 15'5  18-34  15-4 

Oxygen 22-0  24-62  235 

Sulphur 1-6  "  1-2 

Phosphorus 0-4  "  0*3 


500  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

We  may  therefore  conclude  that,  regarding  these  from  the  point  of 
view  of  nitrogenous  or  flesh-forming,  and  carbonaceous  or  heat-giving 
constituents,  these  chief  materials  of  flesh  and  of  cheese  are  about 
equal. 

The  same  is  the  case  as  regards  the  fat.  The  quantity  in  the  car- 
cass of  oxen,  calves,  sheep,  lambs,  and  pigs  varies,  according  to  Dr. 
Edward  Smith,  from  16  per  cent  to  31*3  per  cent  in  moderately-fatted 
animals,  while  in  whole-milk  cheeses  it  varies  from  21-68  per  cent  to 
32*31  per  cent,  coming  down  in  skim-milk  cheeses  as  low  as  6*3.  Dr. 
Smith  includes  Neufchatel  cheese,  containing  18-74  per  cent  among 
the  whole-milk  cheeses.  He  does  not  seem  to  be  aware  that  the  cheese 
made  up  between  straws  and  sold  under  that  name  is  a  ricotta,  or  crude 
curd  of  skim-milk  cheese.  Its  just  value  is  about  threepence  per  pound. 
In  Italy,  where  it  forms  the  basis  of  some  delicious  dishes  (such  as 
hudino  di  ricotta,  of  which  anon),  it  is  sold  for  about  twopence  per 
pound  or  less. 

There  is  a  discrepancy  in  the  published  analyses  of  casein  which 
demands  explanation  here,  as  it  is  of  great  practical  importance. 
They  generally  correspond  to  the  above  of  Mulder  within  small  frac- 
tions, as  shown  below  in  those  of  Scherer  and  Dumas  : 

Scherer.  Dumas. 

Carbon 54-C65  53-7 

Hydrogen '7-465  7"2 

Nitrogen 15-724  16-6 

Oxygen,  sulphur 22-146  22-6 

In  these  the  one  hundred  parts  are  made  up  without  any  phosphate  of 
lime,  while,  according  to  Lehmann  ("Physiological  Chemistry,"  vol.  i, 
p.  379,  Cavendish  edition),  "  casein  that  has  not  been  treated  with  acids 
contains  about  six  per  cent  of  phosphate  of  lime  ;  more,  consequently, 
than  is  contained  in  any  of  the  protein  compounds  we  have  hitherto 
considered." 

From  this  it  appears  that  we  may  have  casein  with,  and  casein  with- 
out, this  necessary  constituent  of  food.  In  precipitating  casein  for  lab- 
oratory analysis,  acids  are  commonly  used,  and  thus  the  phosphate  of 
lime  is  dissolved  out ;  but  I  am  unable  at  present  to  tell  my  readers  the 
precise  extent  to  which  this  actually  occurs  in  practical  cheese-making 
where  rennet  is  used.  What  I  have  at  present  learned  only  indicates 
generally  that  this  constituent  of  cheese  is  very  variable  ;  and  I  hereby 
suggest  to  those  chemists  who  are  professionally  concerned  in  the 
analysis  of  food,  that  they  may  supply  a  valuable  contribution  to  our 
knowledge  of  this  subject  by  simply  determining  the  phosphate  of  lime 
contained  in  the  ash  of  different  kinds  of  cheese.  I  would  do  this  my- 
self, but,  having  during  some  ten  years  past  forsaken  the  laboratory 
for  the  writing-table,  I  have  neither  the  tools  nor  the  leisure  for  such 
work  ;  and,  worse  still,  I  have  not  that  prime  essential  to  practical  re- 


THE   CHEMISTRY   OF   COOKERY.  501 

search  (especially  of  endowed  research),  a  staff  of  obedient  assistants 
to  do  the  drudgery. 

The  comparison  specially  demanded  is  between  cheeses  made  with 
rennet  and  those  Dutch  and  factory  cheeses  the  curd  of  which  has  been 
precipitated  by  hydrochloric  acid.  Theoretical  considerations  point  to 
the  conclusion  that  in  the  latter  much  or  even  all  of  the  phosphate  of 
lime  may  be  left  in  solution  in  the  whey,  and  thus  the  food-value  of 
the  cheese  seriously  lowered.  We  must,  however,  suspend  judgment 
in  the  mean  time. 

In  comparing  the  nutritive  value  of  cheese  with  that  of  flesh,  the 
retention  of  this  phosphate  of  lime  nearly  corresponds  with  the  reten- 
tion of  the  juices  of  the  meat,  among  which  are  the  phosphates  of  the 
flesh. 

These  phosphates  of  lime  are  the  bone-making  material  of  food, 
and  have  something  to  do  in  building  up  the  brain  and  nervous  matter, 
though  not  to  the  extent  that  is  supposed  by  those  who  imagine  that 
there  is  a  special  connection  between  phosphorus  and  the  brain,  or 
phosphorescence  and  spirituality.  Bone  contains  about  eleven  per  cent 
of  phosphorus,  brain  less  than  one  per  cent. 

The  value  of  food  in  reference  to  its  phosphate  of  lime  is  not  merely 
a  matter  of  percentage,  as  this  salt  may  exist  in  a  state  of  solution,  as 
in  milk,  or  as  a  solid  very  difficult  of  assimilation,  as  in  bones.  That 
retained  in  cheese  is  probably  in  an  intermediate  condition — not  actu- 
ally in  solution,  but  so  finely  divided  as  to  be  readily  dissolved  by  the 
acid  of  the  gastric  juice. 

I  may  mention,  in  reference  to  this,  that,  when  a  child  or  other 
young  animal  takes  its  natural  food  in  the  form  of  milk,  the  milk  is 
converted  into  unpressed  cheese,  or  curd,  prior  to  its  digestion. 

Supposing  that  on  an  average  cheese  contains  only  one  half  of  the 
six  per  cent  of  phosphate  of  lime  found,  as  above,  in  the  casein,  and 
taking  into  consideration  the  water  contained  in  flesh,  the  bone,  etc., 
we  may  conclude  generally  that  one  pound  of  average  cheese  con- 
tains as  much  nutriment  as  three  pounds  of  the  average  material  of 
the  carcass  of  an  ox  or  sheep  as  prepared  for  sale  by  the  butcher ;  or, 
otherwise  stated,  a  cheese  of  twenty  pounds  weight  contains  as  much 
food  as  a  sheep  weighing  sixty  pounds  as  it  hangs  in  the  butcher's 
shop. 

Now  comes  the  practical  question.  Can  we  assimilate  or  convert 
into  our  own  substance  the  cheese-food  as  easily  as  we  may  the  flesh- 
food? 

I  reply  that  we  certainly  can  not  if  the  cheese  is  eaten  raw  ;  but 
have  no  doubt  that  we  may  if  it  be  suitably  cooked.  Hence  the  para- 
mount importance  of  this  part  of  my  subject.  A  Swiss  or  Scandinavian 
mountaineer  can  and  does  digest  and  assimilate  raw  cheese  as  a  staple 
article  of  food,  and  proves  its  nutritive  value  by  the  result ;  but  feebler 
bipeds  of  the  plains  and  towns  can  not  do  the  like. 


5C2  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

I  may  here  mention  that  I  have  recently  made  some  experiments  on 
the  dissolving  of  cheese  by  adding  sufficient  alkali  (carbonate  of  pot- 
ash) to  neutralize  the  acid  it  contains,  thus  converting  the  casein  into 
its  original  soluble  form  as  it  existed  in  the  railk_,  and  have  partially 
succeeded  both  with  water  and  milk  as  solvents  ;  but  before  reporting 
these  results  in  detail  I  will  describe  some  of  the  practically  established 
methods  of  cooking  cheese  that  are  so  curiously  unknown  or  little 
known  in  this  country. 

In  the  fatherland  of  my  grandfather,  Louis  Gabriel  Mattieu,  one  of 
the  commonest  dishes  of  the  peasant  who  tills  his  own  freehold  and 
grows  his  own  food  is  a  "  f ondevin  "  (I  can  not  explain  the  etymology 
of  the  word,  and  spell  it  only  by  ear,  never  having  seen  it  in  print  or 
writing).  This  is  a  mixture  of  cheese  and  eggs,  the  cheese  grated  and 
beaten  into  the  egg  as  in  making  omelets,  with  a  small  addition  of  new 
milk  or  butter.  It  is  placed  in  a  little  pan  like  a  flower-pot  saucer, 
cooked  gently,  served  as  it  comes  off  the  fire,  and  eaten  from  the  ves- 
sel in  which  it  is  cooked.  I  have  made  many  a  hearty  dinner  on  one 
of  these,  plus  2k  lump  of  black  bread  and  a  small  bottle  of  genuine  but 
thin  wine  ;  the  cost  of  the  whole  banquet  at  a  little  aiiherge  being  usu- 
ally less  than  sixpence.  The  cheese  is  in  a  pasty  condition,  and  partly 
dissolved  in  the  milk  or  butter.  I  have  tested  the  sustaining  power  of 
such  a  meal  by  doing  some  very  stiff  mountain-climbing  and  long  fast- 
ing after  it.  It  is  rather  too  good — over-nutritious — for  a  man  only 
doing  sedentary  work. 

A  diluted  and  delicate  modification  of  this  may  be  made  by  taking 
slices  of  bread,  or  bread  and  butter,  soaking  them  in  a  batter  made  of 
eggs  or  milk — without  flour — then  placing  the  slices  of  soaked  bread 
in  a  pie-dish,  covering  each  with  a  thick  coating  of  grated  cheese,  and 
thus  building  up  a  stratified  deposit  to  fill  the  dish.  The  surplus  bat- 
ter may  be  poured  over  the  top  ;  or,  if  time  is  allowed  for  saturation, 
the  trouble  of  preliminary  soaking  may  be  saved  by  simply  pouring 
all  the  batter  thus.  This,  when  gently  baked,  supplies  a  delicious  and 
highly  nutritious  dish.  We  call  it  cheese-pudding  at  home,  but  my 
own  experience  convinces  me  that  we  make  a  mistake  in  using  it  to 
supplement  the  joint.  It  is  far  too  nutritious  for  this  ;  its  savory  char- 
acter tempts  one  to  eat  it  so  freely  that  it  would  be  far  wiser  to  use  it 
as  the  Swiss  peasant  uses  his  f ondevin ,  i.  e.,  as  the  one  and  only  dish 
of  a  good  wholesome  dinner. 

I  have  tested  its  digestibility  by  eating  it  heartily  for  supper.  No 
nightmare  has  followed.  If  I  sup  on  a  corresponding  quantity  of  raw 
cheese,  my  sleep  is  miserably  eventful. — Knowledge, 


TJNDER'GBOUND    WIRES,  503 


UNDEE-GROUND  WIRES. 

By  Dr.  WILLIAM  W.  JACQUES, 

KLECTKICIAN   OF   THE   AMERICAN   BELL  TELEPHONE   COMPANY. 

THE  first  telegraph  line  constructed  in  this  country,  from  Balti- 
more to  Washington,  in  1843,  was  intended  to  be  laid  under- 
ground, and  the  first  nine  miles  was  so  laid.  Four  copper  wires  were 
each  wound  with  cotton,  soaked  in  shellac,  and  the  whole  drawn  into 
a  lead  tube.  This  tube  was  laid  in  a  trench  by  the  side  of  the  rail- 
road. Hardly  was  the  section  completed,  however,  when  water  found 
its  way  into  the  joints,  destroying  the  insulation,  and  the  conductors 
failed.  They  were  accordingly  replaced  by  wires  strung  on  poles,  and 
the  rest  of  the  line  was  constructed  in  this  way. 

In  England  a  very  similar  line  was  built,  along  the  line  of  the 
Great  Western  Railway,  for  a  distance  of  thirteen  miles  out  from  the 
city  of  London.  This  line  failed  in  exactly  the  same  way  as  the 
American  lines,  and  the  pipes  were  dug  up  and  placed  on  short  posts 
six  inches  above  the  ground.  They  were,  however,  soon  replaced  by 
pole  lines. 

At  various  places  on  the  Continent  similar  experiments  were  tried, 
and  everywhere  with  the  same  results.  Thus  it  happened  that,  though 
the  first  idea  of  telegraph  engineers  the  world  over  was  to  run  electric 
wires  under-ground,  they  were  everywhere  obliged  to  string  the  wires 
on  poles.  In  England  and  on  the  Continent  there  has  always  been  a 
strong  desire  to  have  a  part,  at  least,  of  the  electric  wires  under-ground. 
In  the  cities,  pole  lines  have  .been  considered  objectionable,  because 
they  disfigure  the  streets.  Between  cities,  under-ground  lines  have 
been  desired,  because  of  their  great  safety  in  case  of  invasion,  great 
secrecy,  and  reliability  in  case  of  storms. 

The  introduction  of  gutta-percha,  in  1846,  accordingly  gave  a  new 
impetus  to  under-ground  construction,  and,  though  it  took  years  of 
experimenting  and  millions  of  dollars,  and  though  system  after  system 
failed  in  England,  Germany,  and  the  rest  of  Europe,  there  exists  to- 
day a  successful  and  durable  system  of  under-ground  telegraph  wires 
connecting  together  the  principal  cities  of  the  German  Empire,  besides 
many  other  under-ground  lines  in  various  parts  of  Europe.  Many  of 
the  European  cities  have  the  telegraph  lines  carried  from  the  center  of 
the  city  to  the  outskirts,  under-ground ;  and,  in  Paris,  not  only  all  of 
the  telegraph  lines,  but  those  for  electric  lights,  telephones,  and  the 
various  other  private  and  municipal  lines,  are  carried  in  the  sewers 
under  the  streets  of  the  city. 

It  must  be  remembered,  howeyer,  that  these  various  systems  have 
cost  from  ten  to  twenty  times  as  much  as  similar  overhead  lines  ;  that, 
for  every  mile  of  under-ground  wire,  there  are  many  miles  on  poles ; 


504  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

and  that  in  Paris,  which  is  the  only  city  in  the  world  having  a  com- 
plete under-ground  system,  there  are  unusual  facilities  for  the  running 
of  wires,  as  sewers  large  enough  to  walk  about  in  extend  even  under 
the  less  important  streets  of  the  city.  Moreover,  it  has  been  found 
that,  for  delicate  and  quick- working  apparatus,  such  as  automatic 
telegraphs,  polarized  relays,  and,  above  all,  the  telephone,  long  under- 
ground lines  are  far  less  eiRcient  than  pole  lines.  There  are  two  rea- 
sons, apart  from  the  difficulty  of  securing  good  insulation,  why  these 
long  under-ground  lines  are  comparatively  inefficient  : 

1.  If  an  electric  conductor  be  brought  near  to  a  large  mass  of  con- 
ducting matter,  as  is  a  wire  when  it  is  taken  down  from  a  pole  and 
buried  in  the  earth,  there  appears  in  the  current  the  phenomenon  of 
retardation,  by  which  each  signal,  instead  of  being  sharp  and  distinct, 
is  partly  kept  back,  so  that  it  overlaps  and  mingles  with  the  next  ;  the 
result  is  to  limit  the  speed  of  working  of  the  apparatus  ;  or  if,  like  the 
telephone,  it  be  an  apparatus  in  which  the  currents  are  necessarily  ex- 
tremely frequent,  to  confuse  and  destroy  the  signals  altogether.  With 
ordinary  Morse  telegraphic  apparatus,  this  is  not  very  troublesome  on 
under-ground  lines  a  hundred  miles  long.  With  delicate  relays,  and 
more  especially  with  quick  working  printing  telegraphs,  or  automatic 
telegraphs,  such  lines  are  very  troublesome  ;  and,  with  telephones, 
the  retardation  is  a  very  troublesome  matter  on  under-ground  lines  ten 
miles  long. 

2.  The  second  difficulty  is  called  induction,  and  is  noticed  when  two 
or  more  wires  are  run  side  by  side  and  near  together,  as  they  necessa- 
rily are  in  an  under-ground  cable. 

If  the  signals  on  one  wire  of  such  a  cable  be  sharp  and  quick,  they 
cause  fac-simile  signals  on  all  of  the  neighboring  wires,  and  this  too, 
though  the  insulation  may  be  absolutely  perfect ;  indeed,  above  a  cer- 
tain point,  the  more  perfect  the  insulation  the  greater  the  induction. 
The  result  of  this  phenomenon  is,  that  messages  sent  over  one  wire  are 
liable  to  be  received  on  all  of  the  other  wires,  and,  in  the  case  of  the 
telephone,  this  phenomenon  is  noticeable  on  cables  one  thousand  feet 
long,  and  on  a  cable  one  mile  long  the  parties  on  one  wire  can  easily 
understand  what  those  on  the  other  wires  are  saying.  For  any  other 
instrument,  however,  the  interference  only  becomes  annoying  on  much 
longer  lines.  Steady  currents,  like  those  used  with  electric  lights,  are, 
of  course,  not  affected  either  by  retardation  or  induction. 

In  our  own  country  there  is  little  doubt  that  the  proper  method  of 
constructing  electrical  wires  between  cities  is,  to  string  them  on  poles 
in  mid-air.  A  brief  review  of  some  of  the  European  systems  that  have 
been  constructed  will  convince  us  of  this.  Between  the  years  1847 
and  1850  a  system  of  cables,  containing  2,648  miles  of  wire,  was 
laid  under-ground  to  connect  Berlin  with  the  other  principal  cities 
of  Prussia.  Gutta-percha-covered  wires  were  drawn  into  lead  tubes, 
which  were  then  buried  in  trenches  two  feet  deep.     The  cost  of  this 


UNDER-GROUND    WIRES,  505 

system  was  at  least  ten  times  that  of  well-constructed  overhead  lines. 
By  1850  the  earliest  of  these  lines  had  failed,  and  by  1853  the  entire 
system  was  replaced  by  pole  lines.  In  1852  asimilar  cable  was  laid 
in  Russia,  between  St.  Petersburg  and  Moscow  ;  this  worked  a  few 
years  and  then  failed.  Between  1846  and  1852  many  miles  of  some- 
what similar  cables  were  laid  in  France,  but,  excepting  those  laid  in 
the  sewers  of  Paris,  they  universally  failed. 

In  1854  quite  a  number  of  lead-covered  cables  were  laid  in  Den- 
mark, but  these  were  soon  obliged  to  be  abandoned  in  favor  of  over- 
head lines.  In  1853  the  Telegraph  Company  of  England  laid  down 
a  cable  of  ten  gutta-percha- covered  wires,  in  wooden  troughs,  along 
the  high-road  between  London  and  Manchester,  a  distance  of  two  hun- 
dred miles.  Although  neither  expense  nor  pains  were  spared  in  the 
construction  of  this  line,  the  cost  being  comparable  with  that  of  the 
Prussian  system,  two  years  had  not  elapsed  before  some  of  the  wires 
ceased  to  work,  and,  though  these  were  replaced  and  workmen  kept 
constantly  busy  on  the  line,  at  the  end  of  seven  years  the  line  was 
wholly  abandoned  in  favor  of  overhead  wires. 

During  the  same  year  the  Electric  Telegraph  Company  laid  down 
a  somewhat  similar  system  between  London,  Manchester,  and  Liver- 
pool, though  iron  and  earthenware  pipes  were  substituted  for  the 
wooden  troughs.  Some  of  these  lines  began  to  fail  almost  as  soon  as 
completed,  while  others  were,  by  constant  repairing  and  attention,  kept 
working  for  nearly  ten  years,  when  the  whole  was  finally  abandoned 
and  overhead  lines  put  up. 

The  great  trouble  with  all  of  these  systems,  whether  in  England 
or  on  the  Continent,  was  due  to  water,  which  found  its  way  to  the 
conductors,  and  of  course  destroyed  the  insulation.  It  was  difficult  to 
handle  the  wires  without  abrading  the  gutta-percha  ;  and,  when  safely 
laid,  the  gutta-percha  was  attacked  by  coal-gas,  vegetable  growths, 
and  the  constituents  of  the  soil.  During  this  time  many  other  shorter 
lines  were  constructed,  but  invariably  with  the  same  results. 

In  1855  the  French  government,  having  failed  in  their  attempt  to 
use  gutta-percha  wires,  laid  down  a  large  number  of  bare  wires  in  a 
trench  filled  in  with  bituminous  compounds.  The  details  of  this  work 
were  very  carefully  carried  out,  and  the  experiment  is  of  interest 
because  similar  plans  are  constantly  being  proposed  to-day.  This  sys- 
tem, costing  from  eight  to  ten  times  that  of  a  thoroughly  built  pole 
line,  never  worked  satisfactorily,  and  soon  had  to  be  abandoned.  In 
1858  the  administration  decided  to  return  to  gutta-percha-covered 
cables  laid  in  lead  tubes.  The  reason  of  this  was,  that  some  of  these 
cables  laid  in  the  sewers  of  Paris,  in  1846,  were  still  in  good  condition. 
Many  miles  of  this  cable  were  laid,  some  with  the  lead  pipe  laid  di- 
rectly in  the  earth,  some  with  it  drawn  again  into  iron  pipes,  and  some 
carried  through  the  sewers  of  the  principal  cities.  Those  cables  laid 
directly  in  the  earth  soon  failed,  but  those  in  iron  pipes  and  the  sewers 


5o6  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

continued  to  work,  and  from  this  grew  the  system  now  used  in  Paris. 
Up  to  1870  the  above-described  attempts,  as  well  as  many  others  (not 
recounted),  had  proved  a  series  of  complete  failures.  Since  that,  how- 
ever, several  lines  have  been  built  in  England  that  have  continued  to 
work  successfully  ;  and  in  Germany  successful  under-ground  cables  have 
been  laid  down  connecting  together  all  of  the  principal  cities  of  the 
empire.  The  present  complete  system,  as  used  between  Liverpool 
and  Manchester,  was  constructed  as  follows  :  Iron  or  stoneware  pipes 
were  laid  from  one  to  two  feet  below  the  level  of  the  road-side  with 
flush-boxes  coming  to  the  surface  every  two  hundred  yards.  Into 
these  was  drawn  a  cable  of  gutta-percha-covered  wires.  The  joints 
were  carefully  made  in  the  pipes,  and  they  were  smoothed  inside  to 
prevent  any  possible  abrading  of  the  cable.  The  route  was  especially 
selected  through  a  low  and  marshy  section  of  country,  so  that  the 
pipes  were  almost  constantly  filled  with  water — this  being  the  best 
possible  condition  for  the  preservation  of  the  gutta-percha.  The  pres- 
ent European  system  dates  from  1875.  The  cable  is  similar  to  that 
used  for  submarine  purposes.  It  consists  of  seven  copper  wires,  each 
coated  with  two  layers  of  gutta-percha  and  two  of  Chatterton's  com- 
pound, and  the  whole  covered  with  an  armor  of  galvanized-iron  wires. 
This  cable  is  laid  in  a  trench  by  the  road-side,  and  comes  to  the  surface 
only  inside  the  telegraph-offices  in  the  cities.  Its  cost  was  nearly 
twenty  times  the  cost  of  a  well-built  pole  line. 

Although  both  the  English  and  the  German  systems  are  success- 
fully working  lines  of  telegraph,  they  are  far  less  efficient  than  pole 
lines  of  the  same  length.  The  s]3eed  of  working  even  the  ordinary 
instruments  is  limited  ;  serious  trouble  appears  in  attempting  to  use 
fast-working  machines,  or  automatic  senders,  and  the  use  of  the  tele- 
phone is  impossible. 

I  think  these  facts  have  sufficiently  demonstrated  that  for  long 
lines  of  telegraph,  stretching  from  city  to  city,  here  in  America,  pole 
lines,  which  can  be  cheaply  built,  easily  repaired,  and  where  the  wires 
can  be  removed  from  the  retarding  influence  of  the  earth  and  the  in- 
ductive influences  on  each  other,  are  decidedly  superior  to  under- 
ground lines. 

Within  our  large  cities  the  problem  presented  is  somewhat  differ- 
ent. During  the  last  few  years  the  number  of  electric  wires  has 
rapidly  increased,  especially  since  the  introduction  of  the  telephone 
and  electric  light,  and  the  probability  is  that  the  next  few  years  will 
show  a  further  large  increase.  If  these  wires  are  run  on  poles,  they 
not  only  disfigure  the  streets,  but  seriously  interfere  with  the  opera- 
tions of  firemen  in  case  of  fire,  as  we  have  repeatedly  seen  during  the 
last  few  years.  A  cobweb  of  wires  running  over  the  house-tops  re- 
quires the  linemen  to  continually  tramp  through  the  houses  and  over 
the  roofs,  causing  annoyance  to  the  tenants  and  damage  to  the  build- 
ings.    Moreover,  wires  fixed  to  house-tops  are  subject  to  removal  at 


UNDER-GROUND    WIRES.  507 

the  whim  of  the  owner,  and  they  have  to  be  continually  removed  from 
building  to  building  as  the  good- will  of  each  owner  is  exhausted. 

In  almost  all  of  the  large  cities  the  question  is  now  being  asked, 
Why  can  not  all  of  these  wires  be  buried  along  with  the  gas  and 
water  pipes  under  the  streets  ?  In  answer,  I  propose  to  describe  briefly 
what  has  been  done  in  this  direction  in  European  cities,  then  to  look 
at  some  experiments  lately  made  in  this  country,  and  thus  to  show 
how  far  such  a  plan  is  and  how  far  it  is  not  practicable. 

In  Paris,  all  the  wires  are  carried  in  the  sewers  under-ground. 

In  London,  the  telegraph  wires  are  carried  from  the  central  office 
to  many  of  the  branch  offices  and  to  the  railways  leading  out  of  the 
city  under-ground. 

In  Vienna,  Prague,  Briinn,  Munich,  Augsburg,  Nuremberg,  and 
many  other  cities,  the  telegraph-wires  are  carried  under-ground  by 
armored  cables  to  the  outside  of  the  city. 

In  the  German  cities  we  have  seen  that  many  of  the  telegraph- 
wires  are  carried  under-ground  from  the  center  of  the  city  to  connect 
with  cables  running  to  other  cities. 

Telephone  wires,  electric-light  wires,  and  a  large  majority  of  tele- 
graph wires  in  European  cities  are,  however,  as  in  America,  carried 
over  house-tops  or  on  poles. 

The  cable  most  generally  made  in  Paris  consists  of  seven  gutta- 
percha-covered  wires  laid  into  a  cable  covered  with  tarred  hemp  and 
drawn  into  a  lead  pipe  ;  this  pipe  is  fastened  by  hooks  to  the  side-wall 
of  the  sewer.  The  cables  are  thus  easy  of  access,  and  any  new  cables 
may  be  added  as  required  without  disturbing  those  already  in  use. 
In  some  of  the  newer  cables  wires  covered  with  cotton  soaked  in  par- 
affine  are  used  instead  of  gutta-percha-covered  wires.  The  distances 
within  this  city  are  so  short  that  neither  induction  nor  retardation 
has  to  be  considered  in  the  telegraph  wires.  Electric-lighting  wires, 
we  have  seen,  are  not  affected.  The  telephone  wires  are  in  Paris 
protected  from  these  evils  by  an  extremely  simple  though  expensive 
device.  Instead  of  a  single  wire  for  each  circuit,  two  wires  twisted 
together  are  used,  the  current  going  out  over  one  and  returning  over 
the  other.  Such  a  device  is  called  a  "metallic  circuit."  Any  outside 
disturbing  circuit  tends  to  induce,  in  the  two  wires  of  the  metallic 
circuit,  equal  and  opposite  currents,  which  neutralize  and  disappear. 
In  such  an  arrangement,  too,  there  is  a  minimum  of  retardation. 

There  are  several  thousand  miles  of  wire  in  the  sewers  of  Paris, 
and  the  cost  of  the  gutta-percha-covered  cables  is  about  $140  per  mile 
of  wire,  or  about  five  times  the  cost  of  a  pole  line  to  do  the  same 
work.  As  telephone  cables  require  two  wires  for  each  circuit,  this 
estimate  would  have  to  be  doubled.  The  paraffined  cables  are,  how- 
ever, considerably  cheaper,  though  their  durability  has  not  yet  been 
proved.  The  cost  for  repairs  is  very  small,  and  some  cables  have  not 
been  touched  for  twenty  years.     In  any  other  city  than  Paris,  the 


5o8  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

above  figures  would  be  very  greatly  increased  by  the  cost  of  under- 
ground piping  and  chambers  to  contain  the  cables. 

It  is  thus  demonstrated  that  it  is  technically  possible  to  place  all 
of  the  wires  in  a  city  under-ground.  It  is  also  demonstrated  that  the 
cost,  even  when  a  large  number  of  wires  run  side  by  side,  is  enormously 
increased.  For  many  purposes,  as  telephony  or  electric  lighting,  a 
considerable  number  of  wires  start  out  from  a  central  office  together, 
but  continually  bifurcate  until  single  wires  run  to  the  houses  of  the 
subscribers.  The  cost  of  one  wire  by  itself  is  vastly  larger  than  where 
many  are  run  together,  the  cost  of  the  pipe  and  for  laying  being  not 
much  greater  for  fifty  wires  than  for  one,  and  the  cost  of  single  wire 
cables  being  greater  per  mile  of  wire  than  multiple  wire  cables,  so 
that  the  expense  of  putting  such  a  system  as  one  of  our  telephone 
exchanges  entirely  under-ground  would  place  the  cost  of  the  instru- 
ments entirely  out  of  reach  of  the  subscribers.  If  telephones  were  re- 
quired in  every  house,  as  are  gas  and  water,  such  a  system  might  be 
practicable,  but  at  present  that  is  not  likely  to  be  the  case. 

The  American  Bell  Telephone  Company  has  recently  constructed 
two  short  lines  of  under-ground  wires  in  the  business  section  of  Bos- 
ton, and  these  give  us  excellent  data  from  which  to  judge  of  the  extent 
of  technical  practicability  and  the  expense  of  putting  all  wires  under- 
ground. We  have  seen  that  in  Paris  the  retardation  and  induction 
are  both  obviated  by  the  use  of  double  and  twisted  wires  in  metallic 
circuit.  It  is  necessary  that  all  of  the  wires  be  in  metallic  circuit, 
for,  if  a  metallic  circuit  be  connected  to  a  single-line  circuit,  the  dis- 
turbances are  not  removed.  If  a  subscriber  in  one  city  wishes  to  talk 
with  a  subscriber  in  a  neighboring  city,  both  cities  must  have  me- 
tallic-circuit systems  and  metallic  circuits  between  the  two  cities.  As 
the  two  lines  constructed  in  Boston  are  short,  only  about  one  quarter 
of  a  mile  each,  it  was  deemed  best  to  use  single-line  circuits,  hoping 
that  the  induction  and  retardation  on  so  short  lines  would  not  be 
serious. 

The  system  is  constructed  as  follows  :  Eight  wrought-iron  pipes, 
three  inches  in  diameter,  are  laid  side  by  side  in  two  rows,  about  four 
feet  below  the  surface.  At  each  street  corner  is  built  a  brick  cham- 
ber, large  enough  to  admit  a  man,  and  with  a  cover  flush  with  the 
street.  The  cables,  of  which  several  kinds  are  in  use,  run  out  from  the 
basement  of  the  central  office  through  these  pipes  and  up  the  side 
of  buildings  to  roofs,  from  which  they  spread  out  to  the  subscribers 
by  means  of  ordinary  overhead  lines. 

Conversation  over  these  lines  is  not  so  easily  carried  on  as  by  means 
of  overhead  wires,  and  it  is  frequently  possible  to  overhear  other  con- 
versation. This  prohibits  further  extension  of  the  single-wire  system 
under-ground,  for  technical  reasons.  The  cost  of  the  piping  and  cham- 
bers is  in  round  numbers  $50,000  per  mile,  and  these  pipes  are  intended 
to  accommodate  one  thousand  wires.     The  cost  of  the  cables  is  from 


AK  OVERDOSE   OF  HASHEESH,  509 

160  to  $150  per  mile  for  each  circuit,  according  to  the  kind  of  cable 
used. 

In  round  numbers  we  may  estimate  the  total  cost  for  one  thousand 
wires  at  $150,000  per  mile,  or  $150  per  mile  per  circuit.  The  cost  of 
piping  and  chambers  would  be  nearly  as  great  for  one  hundred  cir- 
cuits as  for  one  thousand,  as  the  cost  of  chambers  and  the  labor  of 
excavating  and  filling  would  be  the  same  ;  so  that  the  cost  for  one 
hundred  wires  may  be  estimated  at  $50,000  per  mile,  or  $500  per  mile 
per  conductor.  The  cost  per  conductor  thus  mcreases  enormously  as 
the  number  of  conductors  diminishes,  so  that  it  would  be  clearly  im- 
possible to  follow  out  the  wires  of  an  exchange  system  in  all  of  their 
bifurcations. 

It  may  be  argued  that  cheaper  methods  of  laying  wires  may  be 
devised  ;  but  the  experience  of  forty  years  has  led  continually  to 
more  and  more  expensive  systems.  If,  then,  the  present  method  of 
running  wires  overhead  is  objectionable,  and  the  expense  of  running 
them  under-ground  is  so  great  as  to  put  the  cost  of  telephones,  electric 
lights,  and  other  electrical  appliances  out  of  the  reach  of  would-be 
users,  how  are  the  wires  to  be  run? 

It  seems  to  the  writer  that  much  of  the  inconvenience  may  be 
obviated,  and  without  greatly  increasing  the  expense,  by  adopting  the 
following  plan  :  From  each  telephone  exchange,  electric-lighting  sta- 
tion, or  other  center  of  electric  wires,  run  overhead  cables  out  to  a 
considerable  number  of  points  about  the  city,  some  one  of  which  would 
be  quite  near  to  each  subscriber.  From  each  of  these  points  to  the 
various  subscribers  run  short  stretches  of  ordinary  house-top  wire.  In 
this  way  hundreds  of  single  wires  would  be  gathered  into  small  and 
inoffensive  cables,  and  the  enormous  wooden  structures  would  be  re- 
placed by  small  cable  supports  of  brick  or  iron.  In  no  place  would 
there  be  the  offensive  multiplicity  of  wires.  Such  a  system  would  be 
more  durable,  needing  fewer  repairs,  than  the  present,  and  would  not 
be  much  more  expensive.  For  any  other  apparatus  than  telephones, 
retardation  and  induction  would  not  be  felt  on  so  short  cables.  With 
telephone  cables  of  moderate  length  these  troubles  would  not  be  seri- 
ous, and,  if  longer  cables  were  necessary,  metallic  circuits  could  be 
used. 


AN  OYERDOSE  OF  HASHEESH. 

Bt  MARY  C.  HUNGEEFOED. 

BEING  one  of  the  grand  army  of  sufferers  from  headache,  I  took, 
last  summer,  by  order  of  my  physician,  three  small  daily  doses 
of  Indian  hemp  (hasheesh),  in  the  hope  of  holding  my  intimate  enemy 
in  check.  Not  discovering  any  of  the  stimulative  effects  of  the  drug, 
even  after  continual  increase  of  the  dose,  I  grew  to  regard  it  as  a 


510  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

very  harmless  and  inactive  medicine,  and  one  day,  when  I  was  assured 
by  some  familiar  symptoms  that  my  perpetual  dull  headache  was 
about  to  assume  an  aggravated  and  acute  form,  such  as  usually  sent 
me  to  bed  for  a  number  of  days,  I  took,  in  the  desperate  hope  of 
forestalling  the  attack,  a  much  larger  quantity  of  hasheesh  than  had 
ever  been  prescribed.  Twenty  minutes  later  I  was  seized  with  a 
strange  sinking  or  faintness,  which  gave  my  family  so  much  alarm 
that  they  telephoned  at  once  for  the  doctor,  who  came  in  thirty  min- 
utes after  the  summons,  bringing,  as  he  had  been  requested,  another 
practitioner  with  him. 

I  had  just  rallied  from  the  third  faint,  as  I  call  the  sinking  turns, 
for  want  of  a  more  descriptive  name,  and  was  rapidly  relapsing  into 
another,  when  the  doctors  came.  One  of  them  asked  at  once  if  I  had 
been  taking  anything  unusual,  and  a  friend  who  had  been  sent  for 
remembered  that  I  had  been  experimenting  with  hasheesh.  The  phy- 
sicians asked  then  the  size  and  time  of  the  last  dose,  but  I  could  not 
answer.  I  heard  them  distinctly,  but  my  lips  were  sealed.  Undoubt- 
edly my  looks  conveyed  a  desire  to  speak,  for  Dr.  G ,  bending  over 

me,  asked  if  I  had  taken  a  much  larger  quantity  than  he  ordered. 
I  was  half  sitting  up  on  the  bed  when  he  asked  me  that  question, 
and,  with  all  my  energies  bent  upon  giving  him  to  understand  that  I 
had  taken  an  overdose,  I  bowed  my  head,  and  at  once  became  uncon- 
scious of  everything  except  that  bowing,  which  I  kept  up  with  ever- 
increasing  force  for  seven  or  eight  hours,  according  to  my  computa- 
tion of  time.  I  felt  the  veins  of  my  throat  swell  nearly  to  bursting, 
and  the  cords  tighten  painfully,  as,  impelled  by  an  irresistible  force, 
I  nodded  like  a  wooden  mandarin  in  a  tea-store. 

In  the  midst  of  it  all  I  left  my  body,  and  quietly  from  the  foot  of 
the  bed  watched  my  unhappy  self  nodding  with  frightful  velocity.  I 
glanced  indignantly  at  the  shamefully  indifferent  group  that  did  not 
even  appear  to  notice  the  frantic  motions,  and  resumed  my  place  in 
my  living  temple  of  flesh  in  time  to  recover  sufliciently  to  observe 
one  doctor  lift  his  finger  from  my  wrist,  where  he  had  laid  it  to  count 
the  pulsations  just  as  I  lapsed  into  unconsciousness,  and  say  to  the 
other  :  "  I  think  she  moved  her  head.  She  means  us  to  understand 
that  she  has  taken  largely  of  the  cannabis  Indica."  So,  in  the  long, 
interminable  hours  I  had  been  nodding  my  head  off,  only  time  enough 
had  elapsed  to  count  my  pulse,  and  the  violent  motions  of  my  head 
had  in  fact  been  barely  noticeable.  This  exaggerated  appreciation  of 
eight,  motion,  and  sound  is,  I  am  told,  a  well-known  effect  of  hasheesh, 
but  I  was  ignorant  of  that  fact  then,  and,  even  if  I  had  not  been, 
probably  the  mental  torture  I  underwent  during  the  time  it  enchained 
my  faculties  would  not  have  been  lessened,  as  I  seemed  to  have  no 
power  to  reason  with  myself,  even  in  the  semi-conscious  intervals 
which  came  between  the  spells. 

These  intervals  grew  shorter,  and  in  them  I  had  no  power  to  speak. 


AN   OVERDOSE   OF  HASHEESH,  511 

My  lips  and  face  seemed  to  myself  to  be  rigid  and  stony.  I  thought 
that  I  was  dying,  and,  instead  of  the  peace  which  I  had  always  hoped 
would  wait  on  my  last  moments,  I  was  filled  with  a  bitter,  dark  despair. 
It  was  not  only  death  that  I  feared  with  a  wild,  unreasoning  terror, 
but  there  was  a  fearful  expectation  of  judgment,  which  must,  I  think, 
be  like  the  torture  of  lost  souls.  I  felt  half  sundered  from  the  flesh, 
and  my  spiritual  sufferings  seemed  to  have  begun,  although  I  was 
conscious  of  living  still. 

One  terrible  reality — I  can  hardly  term  it  a  fancy  even  now — that 
came  to  me  again  and  again,  was  so  painful  that  it  must,  I  fear,  al- 
ways be  a  vividly  remembered  agony.  Like  dreams,  its  vagaries  can 
be  accounted  for  by  association  of  ideas  past  and  passing,  but  the  suf- 
fering was  so  intense  and  the  memory  of  it  so  haunting  that  I  have 
acquired  a  horror  of  death  unknown  to  me  before.  I  died,  as  I  be- 
lieved, although  by  a  strange  double  consciousness  I  knew  that  I  should 
again  reanimate  the  body  I  had  left.  In  leaving  it  I  did  not  soar 
away,  as  one  delights  to  think  of  the  freed  spirits  soaring.  Neither 
did  I  linger  around  dear,  familiar  scenes.  I  sank,  an  intangible,  im- 
palpable shape,  through  the  bed,  the  floors,  the  cellar,  the  earth,  down, 
down,  down  !  As  if  I  had  been  a  fragment  of  glass  dropping  through 
the  ocean,  I  dropped  uninterruptedly  through  the  earth  and  its  atmos- 
phere, and  then  fell  on  and  on  forever.  I  was  perfectly  composed,  and 
speculated  curiously  upon  the  strange  circumstance  that  even  in  going 
through  the  solid  earth  there  was  no  displacement  of  material,  and  in 
my  descent  I  gathered  no  momentum.  I  discovered  that  I  was  trans- 
parent and  deprived  of  all  power  of  volition,  as  well  as  bereft  of  the 
faculties  belonging  to  humanity.  But  in  place  of  my  lost  senses  I  had 
a  marvelously  keen  sixth  sense  or  power,  which  I  can  only  describe  as 
an  intense  superhuman  consciousness  that  in  some  way  embraced 
all  the  five  and  went  immeasurably  beyond  them.  As  time  went  on, 
and  my  dropping  through  space  continued,  I  became  filled  with  the 
most  profound  loneliness,  and  a  desperate  fear  took  hold  of  me  that  I 
should  be  thus  alone  for  evermore,  and  fall  and  fall  eternally  without 
finding  rest. 

"  Where,"  I  thought,  "  is  the  Saviour,  who  has  called  his  own  to  his 
side  ?  Has  he  forsaken  me  now  ?  "  And  I  strove  in  my  dumb  agony 
to  cry  to  him.  There  was,  it  seemed  to  me,  a  forgotten  text  which, 
if  remembered,  would  be  the  spell  to  stop  my  fatal  falling  and  secure 
my  salvation.  I  sought  in  my  memory  for  it,  I  prayed  to  recall  it,  I 
fought  for  it  madly,  wrestling  against  the  terrible  fate  which  seemed 
to  withhold  it.  Single  words  of  it  came  to  me  in  disconnected  mock- 
ery, but  erased  themselves  instantaneously.  Mentally,  I  writhed  in 
such  hopeless  agony  that,  in  thinking  of  it,  I  wonder  I  could  have 
borne  such  excess  of  emotion  and  lived.  It  was  not  the  small  fact  of 
life  or  death  that  was  at  stake,  but  a  soul's  everlasting  weal. 

Suddenly  it  came.     The  thick  darkness  through  which  I  was  sink- 


512  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

ing  became  illuminated  with  a  strange  lurid  light,  and  the  air,  space, 
atmosphere,  whatever  it  might  be  called,  separated  and  formed  a  wide 
black-sided  opening,  like  the  deadly  pit  which  shows  itself  in  the  cen- 
ter of  a  maelstrom.  Then,  as  I  sank  slowly  into  this  chasm,  from  an 
immeasurable  distance  above  me,  yet  forcibly  distinct,  the  words  I 
longed  for  were  uttered  in  a  voice  of  heavenly  sweetness  :  "  He  that 
believeth  on  me  hath  everlasting  life,  and  shall  not  come  unto  condem- 
nation." My  intense  over-natural  consciousness  took  possession  of 
these  words,  which  were,  I  knew,  my  seal  of  safety,  my  passport  to 
heaven.  For  one  wild  instant  a  flash  of  ineffable  joy,  the  joy  of  a 
ransomed  soul,  was  mine.  I  triumphed  over  sin  and  hell  and  the  un- 
utterable horrors  of  the  second  death.  Then  I  plunged  again  into  the 
outer  darkness  of  the  damned.  For  the  talisman  which  had  been  so 
suddenly  revealed  was,  as  if  in  mockery,  as  suddenly  snatched  from 
me,  and,  as  before,  obliterated  from  my  recollection. 

Then  all  the  chaos  beyond  the  gap  into  which  I  was  falling  became 
convulsed,  as  if  shaken  by  wind  and  storm.  Hideous  sounds  of  souls 
in  torment,  and  still  more  hideous  peals  of  mocking,  fiendish  laughter, 
took  the  place  of  the  hitherto  oppressive  silence.  I  was  consumed  by 
a  fearful,  stinging  remorse  for  the  sins  done  in  the  body.  Unlike  the 
experience  of  the  drowning,  my  sins  did  not  present  themselves  to  my 
remembrance  in  an  aiTay  of  mathematical  accuracy.  On  the  contrary, 
not  one  was  specifically  recalled,  but,  if  my  daily  walk  and  convei*sa- 
tion  had  through  life  been  entirely  reprobate,  and  the  worst  of  crimes 
my  constant  pastimes,  my  consequent  agony  of  self-reproach  could 
not  have  been  greater.  My  conscience,  in  its  condition  of  exaggerated 
self -accusation,  was  not  only  the  worm  that  never  dieth,  but  a  viper 
that  w^ould  sting  eternally,  a  ravening  beast  that,  still  insatiate,  would 
rend  and  gnaw  everlastingly. 

I  began  then,  without  having  reached  any  goal,  and  for  no  apparent 
reason,  to  ascend  with  neither  more  nor  less  swiftness  than  I  had  gone 
down,  and  in  the  same  recumbent  position  in  which  my  forsaken  body 
lay  upon  the  bed  a  fathomless  distance  above,  and  which  I  had  been 
all  the  time  powerless  to  change.  Even  the  dress,  a  thin,  figured  Swiss 
muslin,  was  the  same,  although  a  hundred  times  more  diaphanous. 
Even  in  my  agonies  of  remorse  I  noticed  how  undisturbed  by  my  fall- 
ing were  its  filmy  folds.  There  was  not  even  a  flutter  in  the  delicate 
lace  with  which  it  was  ornamented.  As  I  rose,  a  great  and  terrible 
voice,  from  a  vast  distance,  pronounced  my  doom  in  these  words  of 
startling  import  :  "  In  life  you  declared  the  negation  of  the  supernatu- 
ral. For  truth  you  took  a  false  philosophy.  You  denied  the  power 
of  Christ  in  time — you  shall  feel  it  in  eternity.  In  life,  you  turned 
from  him — in  death,  he  turns  from  you.  Fall,  fall,  fall,  to  rise  again 
in  hopeless  misery,  and  sink  again  in  lonely  agony  forever  !  "  All  space 
took  up  the  last  four  words  of  my  terrible  sentence,  and  myriads  of 
voices,  some  sweet  and  sad,  some  with  wicked,  vindictive  glee,  echoed 


AN   OVERDOSE   OF  HASHEESH,  513 

and  re-echoed  like  a  refrain,  "  In  lonely  agony  forever  !  "  Then  ensued 
a  wild  and  terrible  commingling  of  unsyllabled  sounds,  so  unearthly 
that  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  language  to  fitly  describe  them.  It  was 
something  like  a  mighty  Niagara  of  shrieks  and  groans,  combined  with 
the  fearful  din  and  crash  of  thousands  of  battles  and  the  thunderous 
roar  of  a  stormy  sea.  Over  it  all  came  again  the  same  grandly  domi- 
nant voice,  sternly  reiterating  the  four  last  words  of  doom,  "  In  lonely 
agony  forever  !  "  and  all  the  universe  seemed  to  vibrate  with  them. 

Silence  reigned  again.  A  strange,  brassy  light  prevailed  ;  rapid 
and  fierce  lightning  flashed  incessantly  in  all  directions,  and  the  shaft- 
like opening  about  me  closed  together.  Impelled  by  a  resistless  force 
I  still  rose,  although  now  against  a  crushing  pressure  and  an  active 
resistance  which  seemed  to  beat  me  back,  and  I  fought  my  upward 
way  in  an  agony  which  resembled  nothing  so  much  as  the  terrible 
moment  when,  from  strangling  or  suffocation,  all  the  forces  of  life 
struggle  against  death,  and  wrestle  madly  for  another  breath.  In 
place  of  the  woful  sounds  now  reigned  a  deadly  stillness,  broken  only 
at  long  but  regular  intervals  by  a  loud  report,  as  if  a  cannon,  louder 
than  any  I  ever  heard  on  earth,  were  discharged  at  my  side,  almost 
shot  into  me,  I  might  say,  for  the  sound  appeared  to  rend  me  from 
head  to  foot,  and  then  die  away  into  the  dark  chaos  about  me  in 
strange,  shuddering  reverberations.  Even  in  the  misery  of  my  ascend- 
ing I  was  filled  with  a  dread  expectancy  of  the  cruel  sound.  It  gave 
me  a  feeling  of  acute  physical  torture,  with  a  lingering  intensity  that 
bodily  suffering  could  not  have.  It  was  repeated  an  incredible  num- 
ber of  times,  and  always  with  the  same  suffering  and  shock  to  me. 
At  last  the  sound  came  oftener,  but  with  less  force,  and  I  seemed 
again  nearing  the  shores  of  time.  Dimly  in  the  far  distance  I  saw 
the  room  I  had  left,  myself  lying  still  and  death-like  upon  the  bed, 
and  the  friends  watching  me.  I  knew,  with  no  pleasure  in  the  knowl- 
edge, that  I  should  presently  reanimate  the  form  I  had  left.  Then, 
silently  and  invisibly,  I  floated  into  the  room,  and  was  one  with  my- 
self again. 

Faint  and  exhausted,  but  conscious,  the  seal  of  silence  still  on  my 
lips,  with  all  the  energy  I  was  capable  of  I  struggled  to  speak,  to 
move,  to  make  some  sign  which  my  friends  would  understand  ;  but  I 
was  as  mutely  powerless  as  if  in  the  clutch  of  paralysis.  I  could  hear 
every  word  that  was  spoken,  but  the  sound  seemed  strangely  far  away. 
I  could  not  open  my  eyes  without  a  stupendous  effort,  and  then  only 
for  an  instant.  "  She  is  conscious  now,"  I  heard  one  of  the  doctors  say, 
and  he  gently  lifted  the  lids  of  my  eyes  and  looked  into  them.  I  tried 
my  best  then  to  throw  all  the  intelligence  I  could  into  them,  and  re- 
turned his  look  with  one  of  recognition.  But,  even  with  my  eyes  fixed 
on  his,  I  felt  myself  going  again  in  spite  of  my  craving  to  stay.  I 
longed  to  implore  the  doctor  to  save  me,  to  keep  me  from  the  unutter- 
able anguish  of  falling  into  the  vastness  and  vagueness  of  that  shadowy 
VOL.  XXIV. — 33 


514  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

sea  of  nothingness  again.  I  clasped  my  hands  in  wild  entreaty  ;  I  was 
shaken  by  horrible  convulsions — so,  at  least,  it  seemed  to  me  at  the 
time — but,  beyond  a  slight  quivering  of  the  fingers,  no  movement  was 
discernible  by  the  others.  I  was  unable  to  account  for  the  apathy 
with  which  my  dearest  friends  regarded  my  violent  movements,  and 
could  only  suppose  it  was  because  my  condition  was  so  hopeless  that 
they  knew  any  effort  to  help  me  would  be  futile. 

For  five  hours  I  remained  in  the  same  condition — short  intervals 
of  half-consciousness,  and  then  long  lapses  into  the  agonizing  experi- 
ence I  have  described.  Six  times  the  door  of  time  seemed  to  close  on 
me,  and  I  was  thrust  shuddering  into  a  hopeless  eternity,  each  time 
falling,  as  at  first,  into  that  terrible  abyss  wrapped  in  the  fearful 
dread  of  the  unknown.  Always  there  were  the  same  utter  helpless- 
ness and  the  same  harrowing  desire  to  rest  upon  something,  to  stop, 
if  but  for  an  instant,  to  feel  some  support  beneath  ;  and  through  all 
the  horrors  of  my  sinking  the  same  solemn  and  remorseful  certainty 
penetrated  my  consciousness  that,  had  I  not  in  life  questioned  the 
power  of  Christ  to  save,  I  should  have  felt  under  me  the  "  everlast- 
ing arms "  bearing  me  safely  to  an  immortality  of  bliss.  There  was 
no  variation  in  my  trances  ;  always  the  same  horror  came,  and  each 
time  when  sensibility  partially  returned  I  fought  against  my  fate  and 
struggled  to  avert  it.  But  I  never  could  compel  my  lips  to  speak, 
and  the  violent  paroxysms  ray  agonizing  dread  threw  me  into  w  ere 
all  unseen  by  my  friends,  for  in  reality,  as  I  was  afterward  told,  I 
made  no  motion  except  a  slight  muscular  twitching  of  the  fingers. 

Later  on,  when  the  effect  of  the  drug  was  lessening,  although  the 
spells  or  trances  recurred,  the  intervals  were  long,  and  in  them  I  seemed 
to  regain  clearer  reasoning  power  and  was  able  to  account  for  some  of 
my  hallucinations.     Even  when  my  returns  to  consciousness  were  very 

partial.  Dr.  G had  made  me  inhale  small  quantities  of  nitrite  of 

amyl  to  maintain  the  action  of  the  heart,  which  it  was  the  tendency  of 
the  excess  of  hasheesh  to  diminish.  Coming  out  of  the  last  trance,  I 
discovered  that  the  measured  rending  report  like  the  discharge  of  a 
cannon  which  attended  my  upward  way  was  the  throbbing  of  my  own 
heart.  As  I  sank  I  was  probably  too  unconscious  to  notice  it,  but 
always,  as  it  made  itself  heard,  my  falling  ceased  and  the  pain  of  my 
ascending  began.  The  immense  time  between  the  throbs  gives  me  as 
I  remember  it  an  idea  of  infinite  dui*ation  that  was  impossible  to  me 
before. 

For  several  days  I  had  slight  relapses  into  the  trance-like  state  I 
have  tried  to  describe,  each  being  preceded  by  a  feeling  of  profound 
dejection.  I  felt  myself  going  as  before,  but  by  a  desperate  effort  of 
will  saved  myself  from  falling  far  into  the  shadowy  horrors  which  I 
saw  before  me.  I  dragged  myself  back  from  my  fate,  faint  and  ex- 
hausted and  with  a  melancholy  belief  that  I  was  cut  off  from  human 
sympathy,  and  my  wretched  destiny  must  always  be  unsuspected  by 


THE   CAUSES    OF  EARTHQUAKES.  515 

my  friends,  for  I  could  not  bring  myself  to  speak  to  any  one  of  the 
dreadful  foretaste  of  the  hereafter  I  firmly  believed  I  had  experienced. 
On  one  of  these  occasions,  when  I  felt  myself  falling  from  life,  I  saw  a 
great  black  ocean  like  a  rocky  wall  bounding  the  formless  chaos  into 
which  I  sank.  As  I  watched  in  descending  the  long  line  of  towering, 
tumultuous  waves  break  against  some  invisible  barrier,  a  sighing  whis- 
per by  my  side  told  me  each  tiny  drop  of  spray  was  a  human  existence 
which  in  that  passing  instant  had  its  birth,  life,  and  death. 

"  How  short  a  life  !  "  was  my  unspoken  thought. 

"  Not  short  in  time,"  was  the  answer.  "  A  lifetime  there  is  shorter 
than  the  breaking  of  a  bubble  here.  Each  wave  is  a  world,  a  piece  of 
here,  that  serves  its  purpose  in  the  universal  system,  then  returns  again 
to  be  reabsorbed  into  infinity." 

"  How  pitifully  sad  is  life  ! "  were  the  words  I  formed  in  my  mind 
as  I  felt  myself  going  back  to  the  frame  I  had  quitted. 

"  How  pitifully  sadder  to  have  had  no  life,  for  only  through  life 
can  the  gate  of  this  bliss  be  entered  !  "  was  the  whispered  answer.  "  I 
never  lived — I  never  shall." 

"  What  are  you,  then  ?  " 

I  had  taken  my  place  again  among  the  living  when  the  answer 
came,  a  sighing  whisper  still,  but  so  vividly  distinct  that  I  looked 
about  me  suddenly  to  see  if  others  besides  myself  could  hear  the 
strange  words  : 

"  Woe,  woe  !  I  am  an  unreal  actual,  a  formless  atom,  and  of  such 
as  I  am  is  chaos  made." 


THE  CAUSES  OF  EAETHQUAKES. 

By  M.  DAUBEIEE, 

OF  TILE   INSTITUTE   OF   FRANCE. 

THE  causes  of  earthquakes  have  long  been  the  subject  of  many 
conjectures.  The  numerous  investigations  of  later  years  have 
contributed  much  to  define  their  characters  ;  and  several  data  recently 
acquired  tend  further  to  make  their  mechanism  clear.  It  is  known 
that  the  shocks  are  by  no  means  distributed  at  hap-hazard  over  the 
surface  of  the  globe.  The  countries  where  the  strata  have  preserved 
their  original  horizontal  position,  like  the  north  of  France,  a  part  of 
Belgium,  and  the  most  of  Russia,  are  privileged  with  tranquillity. 
Violent  commotions  are  manifested  particularly  in  regions  that  have 
suffered  considerable  mechanical  accidents,  and  have  acquired  their  last 
relief  at  a  recent  epoch,  like  the  region  of  the  Alps,  Italy,  and  Sicily. 
The  tracts  that  are  simultaneously  disturbed  by  the  same  shock 
most  frequently  comprise  arcs  of  from  5°  to  15°,  or  from  300  to  1,500 
kilometres.     They  rarely  include  a  much  more  considerable  fraction 


5i6  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

of  the  globe  ;  although  the  celebrated  catastrophe  at  Lisbon  on  the 
1st  of  November,  1755,  extended  over  some  17°  or  18°,  into  Africa 
and  the  two  Americas,  or  over  a  surface  equal  to  about  four  times 
that  of  Europe. 

The  detailed  examination  of  many  earthquakes  has  enabled  us  to 
determine  the  center  of  the  shocks  as  well  as  the  contours  of  the  dis- 
turbed areas.  From  the  manner  in  which  the  latter  surfaces  agree 
with  the  lines  of  pre-existing  dislocations,  several  of  the  most  distin- 
guished geologists,  including  Mr.  Dana,  M.  Suess,  and  Albert  Heim, 
have  considered  the  shocks  in  question  as  connected  with  the  forma- 
tion of  chains  of  mountains,  of  which  they  may  be  a  kind  of  continu- 
ation. 

In  fact,  the  crust  of  the  earth  everywhere  shows  the  enormous 
effects  exercised  by  the  lateral  pressures  that  have  been  in  operation 
at  all  epochs.  The  strata,  bent  and  bent  over  again  many  times  through 
thousands  of  metres  of  thickness,  as  w^ell  as  the  great  fractures  that 
traverse  them,  are  the  eloquent  witnesses  of  these  mechanical  actions. 
Notwithstanding  the  apparent  tranquillity  now  reigning  on  the  surface 
of  the  globe,  equilibrium  does  not  exist  in  the  earth,  and  commotions 
have  not  been  arrested  in  its  depths.  The  proof  of  this  is  found,  not 
only  in  earthquakes,  but  also  in  the  slow  movements  of  the  soil,  of 
elevation  and  depression — a  kind  of  warping,  which  has  continued  to 
manifest  itself  within  historical  times  in  all  parts  of  the  globe.  It  is 
conceivable  that  slow  actions  of  this  kind,  after  more  or  less  prolonged 
strains,  may  end  in  abrupt  movements,  as  i^lie  de  Beaumont  supposed. 
We  can  see,  also,  in  experiments  intended  to  imitate  the  bending  of 
strata,  how  gradual  inflections  lead  all  at  once  to  fractures  and  out- 
bursts. Simple  cavings-in,  in  deep  cavities,  have  also  been  regarded 
as  possibly  giving  rise  to  earthquakes ;  and  this  opinion  has  been 
adopted  by  M.  Boussingault  after  the  well-known  observations  he 
made  in  the  Andes.  There  is,  in  fact,  nothing  to  prove  that  disturb- 
ances of  these  different  kinds  do  not  take  place  in  the  interior  of  the 
globe  ;  but  we  may  certainly  consider  them  as  the  general  cause  of 
earthquakes.  These  shocks  are,  however,  most  commonly  in  evident 
connection  with  volcanoes  ;  and  it  is  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  latter 
that  they  are  especially  frequent.  As  is  well  known,  every  volcanic 
eruption  is  announced  by  precursory  earthquakes,  the  violence  of 
which  is  stilled  when  an  outlet  is  opened  for  the  vapor  of  water  which 
is  successively  the  cause  of  the  subterranean  agitations  and  the  pro- 
jecting agent  of  all  the  eruptions.  The  tension  of  the  vapor  in  the 
volcanic  reservoirs  must  be  very  high.  Thus,  that  pressure  which 
forces  the  lava  up  to  more  than  3,000  metres  above  the  sea,  to  the  top 
of  Etna,  can  not  be  less  than  a  thousand  atmospheres. 

An  attentive  study  of  the  phenomena  confirms  the  attribution  of 
the  cause  of  the  shocks,  however  violent  they  may  be,  to  the  vapor  of 
water.     It  is  sufficient  for  this  to  be  the  case  for  vaporization  to  take 


THE   CAUSES    OF  EARTHQUAKES.  517 

place  at  a  temperature  of  1,000°  C.  (1,800°  Fahr.),  approximately  that  of 
lava,  and  under  a  volume  equivalent  to  that  of  the  water  in  the  liquid 
state  whence  the  vapor  is  derived.  Under  these  conditions,  we  must 
suppose  the  vaporization  to  be  total,  for  the  critical  temperature, 
above  which  the  liquefaction  of  vapor  can  not  be  realized,  is,  accord- 
ing to  M.  Clausius,  332°  C.  (629°  F.).  The  pressure,  of  which  it  is 
also  possible  to  make  an  approximate  estimate,  then  becomes  compar- 
able to  that  of  the  most  powerfully  explosive  gases,  and  is,  conse- 
quently, capable  of  producing  very  considerable  dynamic  effects. 
These  effects  may  also  be  produced  at  a  much  lower  temperature  than 
that  of  lavas  at  500°  C.  (900°  F.)  ;  for  example,  if  we  suppose  that 
the  volume  imposed  upon  the  vapor  is  so  limited  as  to  correspond  to  a 
density  of  0*8  or  0*9.  Ko  doubt  such  conditions  are  realized  in  the 
lower  regions  of  the  globe,  where  water  is  confined  within  limited 
spaces,  and  as  hot  as  the  melted  rocks  which  we  see  gushing  out  from 
the  surface  at  a  temperature  of  1,000°  C.  (1,800°  F.)  or  more.  We 
shall  see,  however,  that  such  depths  and  such  a  temperature  are  not 
necessary. 

The  vapor  of  water  when  superheated  acquires  a  power  of  which 
the  most  terrible  boiler-explosions  could  give  no  idea  if  we  had  not 
the  result  before  our  eyes.  The  tubes  of  the  best  quality  of  iron  that 
I  used  in  observing  the  action  of  superheated  water  in  the  formation 
of  silicates  had  an  inside  diameter  of  twenty-one  millimetres  and 
were  eleven  millimetres  thick.  They  sometimes  exploded,  and  were 
projected  into  the  air  with  a  noise  like  that  of  the  firing  of  a  cannon. 
Before  bursting,  the  tubes  swelled  out  into  bulbous  forms,  and  rents 
were  opened  in  the  middle  of  the  bulbs.  If  the  iron  had  no  flaws  and 
according  to  the  estimate  that  it  would  preserve  up  to  450°  C.  (810°  F.), 
the  temperature  to  which  it  was  raised,  the  same  tenacity  it  had  when 
cold,  such  rents  must  have  indicated  a  pressure  of  several  thousand 
atmospheres.  A  few  cubic  centimetres  of  water  were  sufficient  to  pro- 
duce an  effect  like  that  ;  and,  considering  the  small  dimensions  of  the 
inside  of  the  tubes  as  compared  with  the  volume  of  the  water,  the 
vapor  must  have  reached  a  density  of  about  0-9.  If  we  apply  the  data 
we  possess  to  the  depths  of  the  globe,  it  is  not  difficult  to  conceive 
very  simple  dispositions  in  which  the  vapor  of  water,  under  the  condi- 
tions we  have  just  determined,  will  suddenly  provoke  shocks  or  series 
of  shocks  that  will  too  often  make  themselves  felt  on  the  surface. 
Whatever  conception  we  may  form  of  the  volcanic  reservoirs,  we  must 
admit  it  to  be  very  probable  that  solutions  of  continuity  exist  between 
the  soft  or  fluid  masses  in  fusion  and  the  solid  masses  superposed 
over  them.  Moreover,  cavities  may  also  exist  in  the  solid  rocks  them- 
selves that  lie  over  the  soft  masses.  On  the  other  hand,  the  incessant 
losses,  which  these  internal  reservoirs  suffer  in  consequence  of  the  enor- 
mous volumes  of  water  in  the  condition  of  vapor  which  they  disen- 
gage every  day,  are  probably  repaired  by  supplies  from  the  surface. 


5i8  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

I  have  shown  by  experiment  that  these  supplies  may  be  transmitted 
through  the  pores  of  some  kinds  of  rocks.  Simple  capillary  action, 
in  conjunction  with  gravity,  may  force  water  to  penetrate  against  very 
strong  counter-pressure,  from  the  superficial  and  cooler  regions  of  the 
globe,  to  deep  and  hot  regions,  where,  by  reason  of  the  temperature 
and  pressure  it  acquires  there,  it  becomes  capable  of  producing  very 
great  mechanical  and  chemical  effects.  If  we  suppose  that  water  pene- 
trates, either  directly  or  after  a  halt  in  a  reservoir  where  it  has  remained 
liquid,  to  masses  in  fusion,  so  as  to  acquire  there  an  enormous  tension 
and  an  explosive  force,  we  shall  have  the  cause  of  the  anterior  real  ex- 
plosions and  of  the  instantaneous  shocks  due  to  gases  at  high  pressure. 
If  the  cavities,  instead  of  forming  a  single  reservoir,  are  divided  into 
several  parts  or  distinct  compartments,  there  is  no  reason  why  the  ten- 
sion of  the  vapor  should  be  the  same  in  the  different  receivers,  pro- 
vided they  are  separated  by  walls  of  rock.  The  pressure  may  even  be 
very  different  in  two  or  more  of  them.  This  admitted,  if  a  separating 
wall  is  broken  by  excess  of  pressure  or  melted  by  the  heat,  vapor  at 
high  pressure  will  be  set  in  motion,  and  in  the  presence  of  the  solid 
masses  upon  which  it  will  strike  it  will  behave  just  as  if  there  had 
been  an  instantaneous  formation  of  vapor,  as  we  supposed  in  the  former 
case. 

It  is  very  hard  to  establish,  as  has  been  attempted,  a  clear  line  of 
demarkation  between  the  character  of  the  earthquakes  of  volcanic  re- 
gions proper  and  of  regions  without  volcanoes,  such  as  Portugal,  Asia 
Minor  (Chios,  April  3,  1881,  five  thousand  victims),  Syria,  Algeria,  and 
the  rim  of  the  Mediterranean  generally.  In  both  classes,  the  charac- 
teristic manifestations  which  we  perceive  are  the  same.  If,  as  some 
assume,  the  internal  movements  of  the  rocks  were  a  cause  of  real 
earthquakes,  it  could  only  be  because  those  internal  movements  me- 
chanically developed  heat,  and  in  that  way  provoked  the  formation  of 
vapor.  But,  in  the  recently  disturbed  regions  we  have  especially  in 
view,  which  are  the  seat  of  so  frequent  shocks,  another  cause  is  much 
more  probable.  There  doubtless  remain  in  them  interstices  and  inte- 
rior cavities  that  permit  the  access  of  water  to  the  hot  regions.  The 
depth  of  the  centers  of  disturbance  of  earthquakes  has  been  estimated, 
in  different  cases,  by  calculations  only  grossly  approximate,  at  eleven 
kilometres,  twenty-seven  kilometres,  and  thirty-eight  kilometres.  In 
any  case,  such  depth,  though  very  slight  in  comparison  with  the  length 
of  the  radius  of  the  earth,  is  great  enough  for  the  temperature  at  the 
normal  rate  of  increase  to  be  very  high  ;  and  the  same  will  also  be 
the  case  with  the  water  that  may  be  present  there.  Now,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  a  temperature  of  500°  C.  (900°  Fahr.)  is  sufficient  to  cause 
water  to  explode  with  violence. 

It  is  certainly  in  the  largest  number  of  cases  very  difficult  to  admit 
collisions  of  solid  bodies  in  the  interior  as  the  moving  causes  of  earth- 
quakes.    How,  for  instance,  can  we  conceive  that  so  violent  and  ex- 


THE   CAUSES    OF  EARTHQUAKES.  519 

tensive  an  earthquake  as  that  of  Lisbon  on  the  1st  of  November,  1755, 
was  produced  in  this  way  ?  John  Mitchell  (Royal  Society,  1760,  vol. 
X,  p.  751)  drew  from  this  memorable  example  the  conclusion  that  the 
vapor  of  water  intervenes  in  these  shocks  as  well  as  in  the  eruptions 
of  volcanoes.  Manifest  effects  of  a  class  of  internal  explosions,  un- 
doubtedly due  to  the  production  or  sudden  moving  of  a  great  quantity 
of  superheated  vapor,  are  exhibited  at  the  present  epoch,  and  are  not 
rare.  Such  explosions,  for  instance,  are  exceptionally  formidable  in 
the  region  of  Java,  and  the  mind  is  naturally  led  to  the  one  which  has 
just  convulsed  the  zone  between  that  island  and  Sumatra,  which  has 
caused  the  disappearance  of  the  island  of  Krakatoa  and  its  mountains, 
has  raised  other  mountains,  and  has  claimed  more  than  forty  thousand 
victims. 

At  a  period  more  remote  from  us,  the  explosive  force  of  interior 
gases  gave  rise  to  very  remarkable  circular  cavities,  which  have  been 
called  "  craters  of  explosion,"  and  are  well  known.  Examples  of  them 
are  found  in  Auvergne  (Lake  Pavin)  and  in  the  district  of  the  Eifel, 
where  the  stratified  beds  have  been  sharply  cut  as  if  with  a  punch. 
What  gases  thus  put  in  motion  are  capable  of,  as  a  mechanical  power, 
could  hardly  have  been  suspected  till  since  the  explosive  effects  of  gun- 
cotton,  nitroglycerine,  and  dynamite,  have  been  known.  The  effects  of 
compressed  air  in  the  air-gun  and  of  the  powder-gases  in  fire-arms  have 
been  wonderfully  surpassed,  for  we  now  measure  explosive  pressures 
of  six  thousand  atmospheres  and  more.  In  the  experiments  in  which 
I  have  had  occasion  to  observe  gases  at  high  pressure  in  order  to  ex- 
plain the  action  that  a  meteor  coming  with  planetary  speed  is  sub- 
jected to  on  the  part  of  the  atmosphere  into  which  it  plunges,  I  have 
been  surprised  at  witnessing  the  great  energy  of  gaseous  masses.  They 
engrave  themselves  deeply,  as  if  with  a  burner,  into  the  pieces  of  steel 
that  are  opposed  to  them,  and  of  themselves  reduce  a  part  of  it  to  an 
impalpable  dust  shot  into  the  atmosphere  as  if  it  were  volcanic  ashes. 
It  is  no  less  surprising — and  this  observation  is  of  much  importance  in 
explaining  the  problem  that  occupies  us — ^to  remark  the  tenuity  of  the 
gaseous  mass  that  produces  such  results.  Yet  its  force  causes  rup- 
tures which  the  pressure  of  a  weight  six  hundred  thousand  times 
heavier  than  the  gas  could  not  effect  ! 

In  short,  gaseous  movements  under  high  pressure,  put  in  operation 
from  time  to  time  by  a  simple  mechanism  like  what  Nature  can  and 
does  present,  will  account  for  all  the  essential  features  of  earthquakes. 
Much  better  than  the  hypothesis  of  interior  collisions  of  solid  bodies, 
they  explain  the  effect  of  the  shock,  resembling  the  blows  of  a  ram, 
their  violence,  their  frequent  succession,  and  their  recurrence  in  the 
same  regions  after  many  centuries  ;  they  explain  also  the  production 
of  earthquakes  in  regions  of  dislocation,  especially  in  those  in  which 
the  disturbance  is  recent,  and  their  subordination  to  deep  fractures  of 
the  crust  of  the  earth. 


52C  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Earthquakes  seem  to  be  volcanic  eruptions  that  are  suppressed 
because  they  can  not  find  any  outlet,  nearly  as  Dolomieu  thought.  The 
motive  power  of  gases,  the  immense  effects  of  which  we  can  see  in  the 
protuberances  or  jets  shot  out  from  the  sun  with  prodigious  speed  and 
of  enormous  dimensions,  appears  to  be  sufficiently  considerable  in  the 
depths  of  the  globe  also  to  explain  all  the  effects  of  earthquakes. — 
Translated  for  the  Popular  Science  Monthly  from  the  Hevue  Scienti- 
fique. 


LAST  WILLS  AND  TESTAMENTS. 

By  JOSEPH  W.  SUTPHEN. 

CAN  a  will  of  real  or  personal  property  be  so  prepared  and  executed 
as,  barring  questions  of  incapacity  and  undue  influence,  to  be  in- 
contestable ?  Protracted  and  expensive  litigation,  frequently  involv- 
ing a  period  of  years,  often  eating  up  large  portions  of  estates,  and 
finally  resulting  in  the  defeat  of  a  testator's  wishes,  suggests  this  oft- 
repeated  question.  Considering  the  matter  of  execution  first,  noth- 
ing would  appear  simpler.  Our  statutory  requirements  are  few  and 
explicit,  and,  if  properly  observed,  the  inquiry,  so  far  as  execution 
is  concerned,  is  easily  answered.  The  provisions  of  the  New  York 
Revised  Statutes  are — 

1.  That  the  will  shall  be  in  writing,  and  subscribed  by  the  testator 
at  the  end. 

2.  That  such  subscription  shall  be  made  by  the  testator  in  the 
presence  of  each  of  the  attesting  witnesses,  or  shall  be  acknowledged 
by  him  to  have  been  so  made  to  each  of  the  attesting  witnesses. 

3.  The  testator  at  the  time  of  making  such  subscription,  or  at  the 
time  of  acknowledging  the  same,  shall  declare  the  instrument  so  sub- 
scribed to  be  his  last  will  and  testament. 

4.  There  shall  be  at  least  two  attesting  witnesses,  each  of  whom 
shall  sign  his  name  as  a  witness,  at  the  end  of  the  will,  at  the  request 
of  the  testator. 

These  provisions  are  practically  the  same  in  most  of  the  United 
States,  with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  Louisiana,  unless  it  be  that 
some  of  the  States  require  three  or  more  in  the  place  of  two  wit- 
nesses. An  intelligent  compliance  with  the  above  directions  would 
seem  in  no  wise  difficult,  yet  many  an  intended  will  has  proved  an 
abortion,  solely  from  lack  of  their  observance,  ignorance,  and  careless- 
ness, and  in  some  instances,  no  doubt,  forgetfulness  on  the  part  of 
witnesses  as  to  what  actually  transpired  at  the  execution,  explaining 
the  circumstance.  A  witness's  stupidity  or  forgetfulness  can  not  easily 
be  guarded  against,  except  by  the  selection  of  intelligent  witnesses. 
This  sometimes,  as  in  the  case  where  the  testator  is  in  extremis,  is  im- 
possible ;  but  a  stupid  or  forgetful  witness  to  a  will  is  a  great  misfor- 


LAST  WILLS  AND    TESTAMENTS.  521 

tune,  for  he  may  utterly  destroy  its  value.  Unless  proof  aliunde  is 
obtainable,  showing  that  the  requirements  of  the  statute  were  duly 
observed,  there  is  great  probability  that  the  will  will  be  rejected  by 
the  surrogate,  and  his  decree  sustained  by  appellate  tribunals. 

In  November,  1850,  an  instrument,  dated  February  2,  1849,  w^as 
offered  for  probate  to  the  Surrogate  of  Kings  County,  New  York,  as 
the  last  will  and  testament  of  Thomas  Lewis.  It  devised  all  his  real 
and  personal  estate  to  his  wife  ;  but  its  probate  was  opposed  by  the 
heirs  of  the  deceased.  This  document  was  signed  in  the  proper  hand- 
writing of  Mr.  Lewis  ;  it  had  two  subscribing  witnesses,  while  attached 
to  the  will  and  above  the  signatures  of  the  witnesses  was  an  attesta- 
tion clause  in  the  following  words  : 

"  The  above-written  instrument  was  subscribed  by  the  said  Thomas 
Lewis  in  our  presence,  and  acknowledged  by  him  to  each  of  us,  and 
he  at  the  same  time  declared  the  above  instrument  so  subscribed  to  be 
his  last  will  and  testament,  and  we,  at  his  request,  have  signed  our 
names  as  witnesses  hereto." 

On  the  contest,  Ferris  Tripp,  one  of  the  witnesses,  swore  that  he 
was  a  clerk  in  the  store  of  the  deceased  at  the  date  of  the  will,  and 
that  Wing,  the  other  witness,  was  also  a  clerk  ;  that  he  (the  witness) 
signed  his  name  at  the  end  of  the  attestation  clause,  at  the  request  of 
the  testator  ;  that,  on  the  occasion  when  he  did  so.  Wing  and  he  were 
called  by  the  deceased  into  his  private  office,  where  he  had  a  paper,  of 
which  he  turned  up  so  much  as  would  allow  them  to  write  their  names 
thereon,  requesting  them  to  sign  the  same  and  add  their  residences  ; 
that  he  also  then  said,  "  I  declare  the  within  to  be  my  free  will  and 
deed  "  ;  that  this  was  all  that  was  said,  according  to  his  recollection, 
and  that  he  and  Wing  then  signed  their  names  to  the  instrument 
where  they  appeared  ;  that  he  did  not  then  know  to  a  certainty  what 
the  instrument  was,  but  thought  it  a  will  from  the  fact  that  the  de- 
ceased had  that  morning  sent  out  and  procured  a  blank  will.  On  cross- 
examination  this  witness  testified  that  at  the  time  he  signed  his  name 
to  the  instrument  it  was  so  folded  or  placed  upon  the  desk  that  he  saw 
no  part  of  the  contents,  and  that  neither  the  same  nor  any  part  of  it 
was  read  to  him  ;  that  he  did  not  see  the  testator  sign  it,  nor  did  he 
see  his  signature  to  it  when  he  signed  as  a  witness. 

The  other  witness  testified  in  substance  that  he  signed  his  name  to 
the  alleged  will  in  the  office  of  the  deceased  ;  that  he  was  unable  to  say 
what  occurred  on  that  occasion,  but  that,  according  to  his  recollection, 
he  signed  at  the  request  of  the  deceased  ;  that  he  had  no  recollection 
that  the  deceased  said  anything  else  to  him  at  the  time  he  signed,  un- 
less it  was  "  to  see  him  sign  the  document "  ;  that  he  did  not  recollect 
that  the  deceased  signed  the  instrument  in  his  presence  ;  that  he  had  no 
recollection  that  Tripp,  the  other  witness,  was  present  when  he  signed, 
and  could  not  state  anything  further  which  occurred  or  was  said  or 
done  by  the  deceased  on  the  occasion.     On  his  cross-examination  he 


522  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

further  testified  that  he  did  not  read  nor  was  any  part  of  the  instru- 
ment read  to  him  when  he  signed  it,  and  that  he  had  no  recollection 
that  he  then  knew  what  the  paper  was. 

Here  was  an  instrument  which  on  its  face  met  all  the  requirements 
of  the  law.  It  was  in  writing  ;  it  was  subscribed  by  the  testator  at 
the  end  ;  it  had  two  subscribing  witnesses,  and  a  full  attestation  clause. 
The  testimony  of  Tripp  and  Wing  completely  nullified  it  ;  their  want 
of  recollection,  although  less  than  two  years  had  elapsed  since  its 
execution,  effectually  prevented  its  probate.  The  probabilities  are, 
that  all  legal  technicalities  had  been  observed,  but  the  particular  facts 
had  escaped  the  memories  of  the  witnesses.  The  surrogate  adjudged 
it  no  will  ;  the  widow  appealed  to  the  General  Term,  which  afiirmed 
the  decree  of  the  surrogate,  and  then  to  the  Court  of  Appeals,  which 
affirmed  the  General  Term  (Lewis  vs.  Lewis,  UN.  Y.,  220). 

Ignorance  and  carelessness  are  even  more  reprehensible  than  stu- 
pidity or  forgetfulness,  and  each  has  proved  a  prolific  source  of  evil 
to  testators'  intentions,  of  expense  to  suitors,  and  of  disappointment  to 
apparent  legatees.  Assumption  of  the  sufficiency  of  one's  own  knowl- 
edge regarding  matters  concerning  which  he  has  little  or  no  informa- 
tion has  caused  the  wishes  of  more  than  one  testator  to  utterly  fail,  or 
ruined  his  estate  in  costly  litigation.  Books  entitled  "  Every  Man 
his  own  Lawyer,"  "Legal  Directory,"  "Legal  Remembrancer,"  are 
not,  as  a  rule,  the  best  fountains  from  which  to  quench  legal  thirst. 
Their  accuracy  is  often  subject  to  impeachment,  and  their  pages  have 
more  than  once  proved  to  the  layman  a  stumbling-block.  Nor  should 
relations  complain  of  the  courts  if  carelessness  has  led  him  into  the 
execution  of  an  instrument  which  proves  either  to  be  no  will  at  all, 
or  only  such  after  much  of  his  estate  has  been  squandered  to  ascer- 
tain the  fact.  It  is  always  wise  to  prepare  and  execute  such  a  docu- 
ment in  the  leisure  moments  of  life,  for  to  do  so  in  articulo  mortis  is 
a  serious  matter  in  more  senses  than  one,  concerning  which  a  man 
should  think  twice,  for,  if  he  leave  it  iintil  then,  he  will  have  little 
time  to  think  at  all.  Mr.  Gordon  undoubtedly  thought  he  knew  how 
to  draw  a  will  well  enough  when  he  executed  the  following  : 

"  Dear  old  Nance,  I  wish  to  give  you  my  watch,  two  shawls,  and 
also  $5,000.     Your  old  friend,  E.  A.  Gordon." 

After  much  litigation  this  was  established  as  a  will,  but  it  is  likely 
that  "old  Nance  "  was  obliged  to  content  herself  with  the  watch  and 
two  shawls  (Clarke  vs.  Ransom,  50  Cal.,  595). 

So,  too,  with  Ehrenberg's  will,  who  was  the  author  of  the  follow- 
ing laconic  testament — a  model  of  brevity  : 

"  Mrs.  Sophie  Loper  is  my  heiress." 

(Signature.) 
Following  which  appeared  : 

"  The  legatee's  name  is  correctly  spelled  Loeper." 


LAST  WILLS  AND   TESTAMENTS.  523 

To  this  there  were  no  witnesses,  the  law  of  Louisiana  requiring  none. 
After  ten  years'  litigation  or  controversy  this  was  also  sustained  as  a 
will  (Succession  of  Ehrenberg,  21  La.  Ann.,  280).  The  sufficiency  of 
the  legal  attainments  of  each  testator  in  these  instances,  it  is  true, 
was  enough,  but  to  establish  that  fact  old  Nance  and  Mrs.  Loper  un- 
doubtedly paid  handsomely.  In  the  following  case  the  success  of  the 
would-be  testator  was  not  so  signal  : 

In  1876  an  instrument  purporting  to  be  the  last  will  and  testament 
of  John  Kelly  was  offered  for  probate  to  the  Surrogate  of  the  County 
of  New  York.  It  was  partly  written  and  partly  printed,  and  was  ap- 
parently a  short  form  of  will  such  as  may  be  purchased  at  a  stationer's. 
After  disposing  of  his  property,  this  document  ran  as  follows  : 

"  Likewise  I  make,  constitute,  and  appoint  Edward  McCarthy  to 
be  executor,  J.  Kelly,  of  this  my  last  will  and  testament,  hereby  re- 
voking all  former  wills  by  me  made.  In  witness  whereof  I  have  here- 
unto subscribed  my  name  and  affixed  my  seal  the  24th  day  of  July, 
1874,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  sixty. 

Witnesses  : 

Edwakd  McCarthy, 
Daniel  Van  Clief. 

Subscribed  by  Joh7i  Kelly,  the  testator  named,  etc." 

When  the  deceased  requested  the  witnesses  to  sign  the  instrument, 
the  name  J.  Kelly  had  already  been  written  by  him  where  it  first  ap- 
pears. The  witnesses  then  signed  it,  and  afterward  the  deceased 
wrote  his  name  where  it  appears  in  the  attestation  clause.  The  point 
in  dispute  touched  the  first  requirement  of  the  statute  :  Was  the  sub- 
scription J.  Kelly  in  the  body  of  the  instrument  a  "  subscribing  at  the 
end  of  the  will "  ?  The  subscription  John  Kelly  in  the  attestation 
clause  was,  of  course,  bad,  being  made  after  the  witnesses  had  signed. 
It  appeared  from  the  evidence  that  the  testator  presented  the  instru- 
ment to  the  witnesses,  saying  :  "  I  drawed  up  a  will  for  fear  anything 
might  happen  me  before  coming  back ;  in  case  there  was  any  dispute 
about  the  trifle  of  money  I  have,  I  want  you  to  witness  this  will." 
The  name  J.  Kelly  had  been  written  in  before  this  was  said.  The 
surrogate  rejected  the  instrument,  as  not  executed  and  attested  in  the 
manner  prescribed  by  law.  The  General  Term  reversed  his  decree, 
directed  that  the  will  be  admitted  to  probate,  and  that  letters  testa- 
mentary issue  thereon  (7  Huec,  290).  The  Court  of  Appeals  then 
finally  settled  the  law  in  the  case  by  reversing  the  Supreme  Court  and 
setting  aside  the  instrument  as  absolutely  void  (67  N.  Y.,  409).  A 
curious  circumstance  in  connection  with  the  proof  of  this  instrument 
is  the  fact  that  the  Supreme  Court  were  unanimously  of  the  opinion 
that  this  document  was  a  will,  while  the  Court  of  Appeals  were  unani- 
mously of  the  opinion  that  it  was  not !  Even  when,  by  a  mistake  in 
turning  over  the  paper,  the  signature  is  put  on  the  back  of  a  blank 


524  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

page  occurring  in  the  middle  of  the  will,  it  can  not  be  sustained 
(Heady's  Will,  15  Abb.  Pr.,  N.  S.,  211). 

Instances  might  be  multiplied  to  illustrate  the  serious  consequences 
resulting  from  ignorance,  carelessness,  stupidity,  or  forgetfulness  in 
the  execution  and  proof  of  wills,  but  these  are  sufficient  to  emphasize 
the  necessity  of  intelligence,  accuracy,  and  forethought  in  the  matter. 
Returning  to  the  discussion  of  execution  : 

1.  The  will  must  be  in  writing,  and  subscribed  by  the  testator  at 
the  end. 

Apparently  this  is  plain  and  concise  enough,  and  adapted  to  the 
comprehension  of  a  child,  yet  a  long  list  of  expensive  appeals  attest  to 
the  difficulty  experienced  in  solving  the  meaning  of  this  phraseology. 
What  is  writing?  What  is  a  signature?  Where  is  the  end  of  a 
will  ?  are  questions  which  appellate  courts  have  been  called  upon  to 
determine.  If  a  will  be  printed  ;  if  it  be  done  by  a  type-writer  ;  if  it 
be  executed  wholly  in  lead-pencil,  instead  of  ink  ;  if  the  signature  be 
by  a  mark,  or  if  it  be  made  by  another  at  the  request  of  and  for  the 
testator  ;  if  the  signature,  as  in  the  case  of  the  will  of  J.  Kelly  (supra), 
be  not  immediately  at  the  foot  of  the  instrument — these  and  similar 
inquiries  call  for  an  answer  to  the  quaere,  "  Have  the  requirements  of 
the  statute  been  complied  with  ?  "  It  has  already  appeared  that  J.  Kel- 
ly's will  was  not  a  will.  The  Court  of  Appeals,  it  is  true,  decided  this 
case  on  other  grounds  than  the  single  fact  that  the  signature  occurred 
before  reaching  the  end  of  the  document.  Perhaps,  if  nothing  of  im- 
portance had  followed  the  signature  (McGuire  vs.  Kerr,  2  Brad.,  244), 
the  court  would  have  sustained  the  decision  of  the  General  Term,  and 
held  the  will  to  have  been  properly  executed  ;  but  the  fate  of  this 
instrument  conclusively  shows  that  it  is  not  safe  to  tamper  with  a 
statute,  and  that  the  end  of  a  will  is  at  the  end ;  in  other  words,  the 
testator  should  have  signed  immediately  above  the  witnesses,  at  the 
conclusion  of  the  document. 

Printed  wills  and  wills  executed  by  a  type-writer  have  been  held 
to  be  written  within  the  meaning  of  the  statute.  On  March  9,  1883, 
Judge  York,  at  New  Haven,  Connecticut,  admitted  the  will  of  James 
Willey,  which  was  in  type-writing,  to  probate,  holding  that  the  legal 
definition  of  writing  included  printing.  The  Supreme  Court  of  Penn- 
sylvania, in  the  case  of  Myers  vs.  Vanderbilt  (1  Schuylkill  Leg.  Reg., 
55),  recently  decided  that  ink  was  not  essential,  by  recognizing  as 
valid  a  will  which  was  wholly  written  in  lead-pencil  and  so  subscribed. 
This  agrees  with  the  views  of  ex-Surrogate  D.  C.  Calvin,  of  New 
York,  who,  in  October,  1878,  admitted  the  will  of  Henry  J.  Mann, 
otherwise  and  better  known  as  the  actor  Montague,  to  probate.  This 
will  was  written  and  signed  wholly  in  pencil,  upon  a  leaf  torn  from  an 
ordinary  diary  or  small  memorandum-book,  and  was  as  follows  : 

"  If  anything  happens  to  me,  I  make  this  my  last  will  and  testa- 


LAST    WILLS  AND    TESTAMENTS.  525 

ment  in  favor  of  my  mother,  who  is  to  take  everything  I  possess  ;  in 
case  of  her  death,  then  my  sister  inherits  all  my  effects.  L.  Simon 
and  Arthur  Sewell  I  appoint  executors. 

H.  J.  Montague." 

On  the  back  of  this  scrap,  also  in  pencil,  occurs  : 

"  Witnessed  by        T.  R.  Edwakds, 
Louis  M.  Simon." 

In  cases  of  contracts,  lead-pencil  agreements  have  repeatedly  been 
held  sufficient  (Merrit  vs.  Clason,  12  Johns.,  102  ;  Clason  vs.  Bailey, 
14  id.,  484  ;  Brown  vs.  Butchers'  and  Drovers'  Bank,  6  Hill,  443), 
and  the  same  reasoning  applicable  to  such  applies  also  to  testaments. 
It  is  certainly  to  be  hoped  that  the  tendency  of  the  decisions  in  this 
respect  will  change.  The  door  for  the  admission  of  fraud  is  here 
opened  too  wide.  To  erase  and  rewrite  in  the  body  of  the  will  is  much 
too  easily  and  cleverly  accomplished,  and  this  temptation  should  be 
removed  by  statutory  enactment  or  judicial  interpretation. 

A  mark  or  cross  has  been  held  a  good  subscription.  Some  years 
ago  Moses  W.  Jackson  left  a  will  signed — 

his 

Moses  W.   X  Jackson. 

mark. 

The  surrogate  adjudged  this  sufficiently  subscribed  ;  the  Supreme 
Court  upheld  the  surrogate,  and  the  Court  of  Appeals  sustained  the 
Supreme  Court,  holding  that  it  was  not  even  necessary  that  the  words 
*'  Moses  W.  Jackson,  his  mark  "  should  have  been  written  before  he 
made  the  X .  The  law  would  undoubtedly  admit  the  cross  if  the 
words  were  entirely  wanting,  under  proper  evidence  (Jackson  vs. 
Jackson,  39  U.  S.,  153).  If  the  testator  requests  a  third  person  to 
subscribe  the  will  for  him,  and  it  be  done  in  the  presence  of  the  wit- 
nesses, it  comes  within  the  statute  (Campbell  vs.  Logan,  2  Brad.,  90  ; 
Van  Hanswyck  vs.  Wiesl,  44  Barb.,  494).  But  such  third  person 
must  himself  also  sign  as  a  witness. 

2.  Such  subscription  shall  be  made  by  the  testator  in  the  presence 
of  each  of  the  attesting  witnesses,  or  shall  be  acknowledged  by  him 
to  have  been  so  made  to  each  of  the  attesting  witnesses. 

On  December  1,  1865,  William  Baskin  made  a  last  will,  and  five 
weeks  afterward  died  at  the  age  of  eighty-nine  years.  Thirteen  years 
before  he  had  made  a  previous  will,  which  still  continued  in  existence. 
At  his  death  the  will  of  1865  was  offered  for  probate  to  the  Surrogate 
of  Yates  County,  New  York,  but  its  admission  was  contested.  The 
evidence  showed  that  the  last  will  was  drawn  by  one  Henry  Smith  on 
the  morning  of  December  1,  1865,  at  the  bedside  of  the  deceased  ; 
that  the  whole  was  read  over  to  him,  clause  by  clause,  and  that  Mr. 
Baskin  at  the  completion  of  the  reading  sat  up  on  the  side  of  the  bed 
and  wrote  his  name  at  the  foot  of  the  will  without  assistance  and 


526  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

without  spectacles.  Mr.  Smith  then  affixed  his  own  signature  at  the 
request  of  the  deceased,  as  an  attesting  witness.  Mr.  Wilsey,  the  other 
witness,  was  then  called  in  from  the  adjoining  room,  when  the  testator 
said,  "I  want  you  to  sign  this  will,"  Mr.  Smith  at  the  same  time 
handing  it  to  him.  While  still  in  Smith's  hand,  the  latter  asked  the 
testator  if  he  acknowledged  it  to  be  his  last  will  and  testament.  He 
said  "  Yes."  Wilsey  then  signed,  when  Mr.  Baskin  said,  "  That  kills 
the  other  will."  No  conflict  of  evidence  existed.  Both  witnesses 
agreed  that  the  signature  of  the  testator  was  affixed  before  Wilsey 
came  into  the  room,  and  that  Mr.  Baskin  did  not  expressly  state  in 
his  presence  that  he  had  signed  the  will.  The  surrogate  said  this  was 
no  will,  for  it  had  not  been  signed  in  the  presence  of  each  attesting 
witness,  but  the  Supreme  Court  reversed  his  decree,  and  the  Court  of 
Appeals  affirmed  the  Supreme  Court,  holding :  "  Where  the  testator 
produces  a  paper  bearing  his  personal  signature,  requests  the  witnesses 
to  attest  it,  and  declares  it  to  be  his  last  will  and  testament,  he  thereby 
acJmoicledges  the  subscription  within  the  meaning  of  the  statute" 
(Baskin  vs.  Baskin,  S6  N.  Y.,  416).  In  fact,  it  is  not  even  necessary 
that  the  subscribing  witnesses  should  be  shown  the  signature  of  the 
testator  to  the  will  at  the  time  of  acknowledging  its  execution. 

In  1866  the  will  of  Samuel  Mott  came  before  the  Surrogate  of 
Queens  County,  Long  Island,  for  probate.  It  was  contested  upon  the 
ground,  among  others,  that  it  had  not  been  signed  in  the  presence  of 
each  witness,  they  signing  after  the  testator  but  on  different  days,  and 
that  at  least  one  of  them  had  not  so  much  as  seen  Mr.  Mott's  signa- 
ture, the  document  being  so  folded  when  executed  as  to  hide  the  name. 
The  surrogate  admitted  it,  however,  the  Supreme  Court  and  Court  of 
Appeals  affirming  his  decision  (Willis  vs.  Mott,  36  N.  Y.,  486 ; 
Hoystradt  vs.  Kingman,  22  N.  Y.,  372).  So  in  the  case  of  Ellis  vs. 
Smith,  decided  in  1754  (1  Yesey,  Jr.,  11)  by  Lord  Chancellor  Hard- 
wicke,  assisted  by  Sir  John  Strange  and  the  Chief-Justice  of  the  Com- 
mon Pleas  and  Chief  Baron  of  the  Exchequer,  it  was  held  that  a  tes- 
tator's declaration  was  equivalent  to  an  actual  signing  in  the  presence 
of  the  witnesses,  a  rule  unchanged  by  the  statute  under  consideration. 

These  cases  show  that  considerable  latitude  is  tolerated  under  this 
section,  but  that  one  of  two  facts  must  transpire  in  order  to  comply 
with  its  terms — either  an  actual  subscribing  by  the  testator  in  the 
presence  of  each  of  the  witnesses  before  they  sign  ;  or  a  clear,  indis- 
putable acknowledgment  to  each  of  them  that  the  instrument  has  been 
already  so  subscribed  by  him  (Chaffee  vs.  Baptist  Missionary  Conven- 
tion, 10  Paige,  R.  85).  Of  course,  in  the  latter  case,  if  the  subscrip- 
tion subsequently  appears  wanting,  such  acknowledgment  amounts  to 
nothing  ;  there  is  no  will. 

3.  The  testator,  at  the  time  of  making  such  subscription,  or  at  the 
time  of  acknowledging  the  same,  shall  declare  the  instrument,  so  sub- 
scribed, to  be  his  last  will  and  testament. 


LAST  WILLS  AND   TESTAMENTS,  527 

Here,  again,  nice  questions  have  arisen.  What  is  a  declaration  that 
"  this  is  my  last  will  and  testament "  ?  Is  it  sufficient  that  the  ques- 
tion be  asked  me  and  that  I  assent  thereto  by  "  yes  "  or  a  nod  ?  If  I 
say  "  This  is  my  free  will  and  deed,"  have  I  fulfilled  the  requirement, 
or  must  I  use  the  precise  words  "  This  is  my  last  will  and  testament "  ? 
These  and  kindred  inquiries  have  perplexed  the  courts,  and  weary 
litigants  have  been  forced  to  possess  their  souls  in  patience,  awaiting 
the  interpretation  of  blunders  which  could  easily  have  been  avoided  in 
this  particular  of  execution.  The  courts  say  it  is  not  imperative  that 
the  word  "  declare  "  should  be  employed — I  "  acknowledge  "  this  paper 
to  be  my  last  will  and  testament  is  enough  (Seguine  vs.  Seguine,  2 
Barb.,  385).  But  a  mere  nod  of  assent  to  the  inquiry,  "  Is  this  your 
last  will  and  testament  ?  "  observed  only  by  one  of  the  persons  pres- 
ent, is  not  enough  (Burritt  vs.  Silliman,  16  Barb.,  198),  while  an  an- 
swer "  yes  "  to  the  inquiry  has  been  held  sufficient  (Coffin  vs.  Coffin, 
23  N.  Y.,  9).  To  say  "  This  is  my  free  will  and  deed  "  is  not  good, 
for,  as  above  appeared,  the  Court  of  Appeals  has  held  that  Thomas 
Lewis  failed  to  acknowledge  his  will,  although  he  used  these  particular 
words,  and  rejected  his  final  testamentary  disposition  as  a  nullity. 
What  apparently  could  be  easier  than  to  say  "  This  is  my  last  will 
and  testament  "  at  the  proper  time  and  under  the  proper  circumstances  ? 
yet  that  many  fail  to  either  use  these  simple  words,  or  to  know  the  pro- 
prieties of  time  or  circumstance,  is  shown  by  the  foregoing  cases. 

4.  There  shall  be  at  least  two  attesting  witnesses,  each  of  whom 
shall  sign  his  name  as  a  witness  at  the  end  of  the  will,  at  the  request 
of  the  testator. 

A  will  with  but  one  witness  is  bad  on  its  face — it  is  no  will ;  it  is 
a  plain  failure  to  observe  an  all-important  formality,  but  questions 
"  What  is  a  signing  by  a  witness  ?  "  "  Where  is  the  end  of  a  will  ?  "  and 
"  What  constitutes  a  testator's  request?"  have  been  before  the  courts 
for  determination.  To  answer  the  first  two  inquiries  briefly,  it  is 
enough  to  state  that  the  same  rules  which  apply  to  the  testator's  sig- 
nature and  to  the  place  of  his  subscription  apply  with  equal  force  to 
witnesses.  A  witness's  mark  is  good  (Meehan  vs.  Rourke,  2  Brad., 
385  ;  Morris  vs.  Kniffen,  37  Barb.,  336),  and  he  should  sign  after  the 
testator,  immediately  at  the  conclusion  of  the  instrument.  Concerning 
the  third  "  inquiry  "  as  to  the  request,  some  contrariety  of  opinion  has 
existed  as  to  what  shall  be  deemed  sufficient.  The  following  cases  are 
in  point : 

A  request  may  be  implied  ;  it  need  not  be  in  express  terms,  as,  if 
the  testatrix  be  told  in  the  presence  of  the  witnesses  that  they  have 
come  to  witness  her  will,  and  she  then  bow  assent  and  they  sign  it, 
it  is  a  request  (Brown  vs.  De  Selding,  4  Sand.,  10  ;  Peck  vs.  Carey,  27 
N.  Y.,  9).  Handing  a  will  to  the  witnesses,  at  the  same  time  evincing 
a  desire  to  have  them  sign  it,  is  enough  (Gamble  vs.  Gamble,  89  Barb., 
373).    But  a  mere  request  to  sign,  without  in  some  way  disclosing  the 


528  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

nature  of  the  paper,  is  bad  (Harris's  Estate,  1  Tuck.,  293).  Such  ques- 
tions as,  "  Will  you  witness  my  will  ?  "  or  "  I  want  you  to  witness  my 
will,"  if  addressed  to  both  witnesses,  are  good  (Van  Hooser  vs.  Van 
Hooser,  5  N.  Y.  Surr.,  365),  but  bad  if  addressed  to  only  one  of  them 
(Rutherford  vs.  Rutherford,  1  Denio,  33). 

Touching  the  question  of  the  formalities  of  execution,  a  word  on 
foreign  wills  is  in  place.  All  wills  of  residents  of  this  State  executed 
in  foreign  countries  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  the  country  where 
executed,  but  not  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  New  York,  and  all 
wills  of  foreigners  executed  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  their  for- 
eign domicile,  if  not  also  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  this  State, 
who  die  leaving  no  property  situated  or  which  afterward  comes  here, 
are  not  admissible  to  probate,  not  because  they  are  necessarily  il- 
legal, but  because  the  statute-book  declares  this  to  be  the  law.  The 
importance  of  this  provision  must  particularly  commend  itself  to  the 
mind  of  every  citizen  intending  to  make  a  will,  and  contemplating 
a  visit  beyond  the  jurisdiction  of  his  own  domicile.  Sometimes  an 
action  in  the  Supreme  Court  to  establish  such  succeeds  ;  but  who  can 
be  found  willing  to  unnecessarily  involve  his  estate  in  litigation  to 
ascertain  the  validity  of  a  will  when  it  can  easily  be  avoided  ?  The 
surrogate  has  certainly  no  power  to  admit  such  wills. 

In  concluding  this  discussion  on  the  execution  of  a  will,  it  may 
properly  be  said  that  the  instrument  must  be  fully  completed  before 
death — that  is,  it  must  have  been  subscribed  by  the  testator  at  its 
foot,  in  the  presence  of  the  witnesses,  or  the  subscription  so  acknowl- 
edged ;  it  must  have  been  declared  to  them  to  be  his  last  will  and 
testament,  and  the  witnesses  must  actually  have  signed  it,  at  his  re- 
quest, for,  if  he  die  ere  this  is  accomplished,  there  is  no  will  (Vernon 
vs.  Spencer,  3  Brad.,  16).  Simple  as  these  statutory  requirements  are, 
the  instances  cited  prove  that  even  the  question  of  execution  is  not 
free  from  serious  snares.  Yet  a  literal  compliance  with  the  formali- 
ties of  the  statute  is  not  required,  a  substantial  observance  of  them 
being  sufficient  (Coffin  vs.  Coffin,  supra). 

It  is  entirely  possible  to  execute  a  will  so  as  to  he  technically  incon- 
testable. 

Touching  the  graver  question  as  to  preparing  or  drawing  the  will — 
in  other  words,  considering  its  contents,  whether  its  provisions  offend 
the  law  or  not — the  scope  of  the  inquiry  broadens  and  becomes  very 
comprehensive.  It  presupposes  on  the  part  of  the  draftsman  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  law  as  determined  in  unnumbered  decisions  adjudicated 
both  in  England  and  the  United  States.  The  common  law,  principles 
of  international  comity,  and  statute-books,  all  must  be  resorted  to 
in  answering  the  question.  It  assumes  in  the  writer  of  the  will  an 
accurate  and  extended  fund  of  information  upon  the  subject  of  trusts, 
powers,  and  uses,  and  generally  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  all  the 
nice  details  relating  to  that  great  branch  of  jurisprudence — real  estate. 


LAST   WILLS  AND    TESTAMENTS.  529 

It  suggests  a  familiarity  witli  laws  past  and  laws  present,  and  it  means, 
if  it  means  anything,  that  competent  intelligence  must  guide  the  hand 
which  guides  the  pen. 

In  view  of  these  facts,  there  is  small  reason  to  complain  at  the 
litigation  so  frequently  entailed  in  connection  with  estates.  To  pre- 
pare or  draw  a  will  is  not  the  simple  matter  some  imagine  it  to  be, 
even  when  short  and  free  from  intricate  questions  of  law.  The 
slightest  ambiguity  in  language,  giving  opportunity  for  dispute  as  to 
the  testator's  real  intentions  ;  ignorance  of  the  legal  effect  of  certain 
dispositions  made  in  the  instrument  ;  wishes  imperfectly  expressed ; 
illegible  writing  ;  erasures  ;  interlineations,  and  circumstances  similar 
in  character,  are  all  fruitful  of  evil  consequences.  The  books  are  full 
of  instances  where  instruments  have  been  propounded  as  wills,  but 
which  have  proved  to  be  still-born,  or,  if  initiated  into  existence  as 
living,  genuine  wills,  only  so  after  the  ordeal  of  many  years'  litigation 
to  determine  their  genuineness,  sufficiency,  or  construction,  has  been 
endured.  Like  surgery,  law  is  a  science.  The  unscientific  man  may 
with  equal  propriety  endeavor  to  amputate  his  own  limb  as  draw  his 
own  will.  In  each  case  he  has  ventured  upon  a  field  in  which  he  has 
neither  knowledge,  experience,  nor  skill.  He  may  succeed,  but  every 
probability  points  to  a  fatal  result. 

The  antiquity  of  testaments  is  such  that  many  imagine  that  to  pre- 
pare and  execute  one  is  a  matter  of  general  information — one  concern- 
ing which  all  are  competent  to  speak.  It  is  true  that  this  mode  of 
transferring  title  or  ownership  dates  far  back  into  remote  ages. 
Writers  assert  that  abundant  evidence  exists  that  wills  were  in  use 
among  the  Hebrews  in  the  earliest  times.  Plutarch  speaks  of  their 
introduction  by  Solon  into  Athens,  some  six  hundred  years  before  the 
Christian  era.  The  Twelve  Tables  gave  to  the  Romans  the  right  of 
hequeathing  their  property,  a  power  which  in  England  is  coeval  with 
the  invasion  of  the  Saxon,  for  no  record  or  memorial  exists  of  a 
period  when  this  right  did  not  obtain.  But  this  antiquity  proves 
nothing.     Other  sciences  are  equally  old. 

To  prepare  or  draw  a  loill  can  only  safely  he  iindertaJcen  hy  hitn 
wliose  intelligence  and  experience  have  earned  him  the  right  to  assmne 
the  task. 

The  subject  of  incapacity  and  undue  influence  is  not  embraced  in 
this  inquiry,  but  a  word  in  reference  to  it  may  not  be  out  of  place. 
No  will  was  ever  yet  drawn,  nor  can  one  be,  which  was  or  will  be 
proof  against  attack  from  this  quarter.  That  many  have  been  dis- 
gracefully contested  by  shameless  relatives  is  true;  for,  to  forget  such 
in  his  will,  even  if  related  to  the  deceased  but  in  the  remotest  degree^ 
is  conclusive  evidence  to  the  minds  of  some  that  the  sanest  or  most 
self-willed  man  while  living  has  proved,  in  spite  of  all,  weak  and  in- 
sane at  death.  Because  contests  frequently  arise,  however,  from  this 
cause,  it  does  not  follow  that  this  is  not  at  times  a  very  proper  ground 
VOL.  XXIV. — 34 


530  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

to  take  in  resisting  the  probate  of  a  will.  To  do  so  would  be  to  fly- 
directly  in  the  face  of  the  decision  of  Delafield  vs.  Parrish  (22  N.  Y.,  9), 
where  the  question  of  incapacity  was  so  ably  and  exhaustively  pre- 
sented to  the  Court  of  Appeals  by  Mr.  Evarts,  Mr.  O'Conor,  and  other 
illustrious  counsel.  No  one  can  fairly  doubt,  after  reading  the  able 
opinion  of  the  Court  in  that  celebrated  case,  that  Henry  Parrish  was 
incompetent  to  execute  the  last  two  codicils  to  his  will.  It  is  true  he 
had  been  a  keenly  intelligent  man  ;  he  had  amassed  a  large  fortune  ; 
he  had  never  acted  in  life  from  impulse,  for  wisdom,  discretion,  and 
reflection  prevailed  in  his  counsels.  Yet,  after  his  paralytic  stroke, 
he  became  a  changed  man.  The  quiet,  urbane  gentleman  became  a 
fretful  invalid,  forgetful  of  even  the  proprieties  of  life.  Idiotic  de- 
mentia took  possession  of  his  once-active  brain.  It  was  in  this  condi- 
tion, and  after  the  stroke  of  paralysis,  that  the  last  two  codicils  were 
executed.  It  should  occasion  no  surprise  that  the  courts  utterly  refused 
to  receive  them.  Still,  that  much  abuse  of  this  objection  to  the  pro- 
bate of  a  will  is  prevalent,  is  undeniable.  Nor  does  there  seem  to  be 
any  cure  for  the  disease,  unless  the  theory  "  omne  testamentum  morte 
consummatwinj  est  y  et  voluntas  tcstatoris  est  amhulatoria  usque  ad 
mortem,'''*  be  changed,  and  every  man  allowed  to  probate  his  own  will 
before  he  dies,  if  he  desire.  Let  him  summon  all  who  have  the  right 
to  contest  his  ability,  etc.,  to  execute  a  will,  and,  if  they  do  not  appear, 
or  if  they  do  not  succeed  in  showing  his  inability  so  to  do,  they  shall 
be  forever  estopped  from  attacking  the  will  thereafter.  Of  course, 
there  are  serious  objections  to  this  course,  for  all  beneficiaries  would 
then  know  the  contents  of  the  document,  and  few  men  care  to  let  the 
world  into  the  secret  of  their  final  intentions  or  ulterior  purposes  ;  still 
this  law  has  been  tried  in  some  of  the  States  successfully  and  satisfac- 
torily. Whatever  is  contained  in  this  paper  on  last  wills  and  testa- 
ments applies  with  equal  force  to  codicils. 


FIFTY  YEABS  OF  MECHANICAL  ENGINEEEING.* 

By  ABNER  C.  IIAEDING. 

I  WILL  begin  by  referring  to  the  steam-plant  employed  for  manu- 
facturing purposes.  In  1832  the  stationary  engine  was  commonly 
the  beam-engine,  often  condensing  but  seldom  compounded.  Steam 
was  supplied  by  boilers  having  but  little  resemblance  to  the  boilers 
which  most  of  us  are  familiar  with.  The  name  given  the  boilers  ex- 
plains their  form  ;  they  were  variously  called  tun,  hay-stack,  balloon, 
elephant,  chimney,  and  ring  boiler,  to  each  of  which  they  severally 
bore  a  striking  resemblance.  They  were  built  in  utter  disregard  of  all 
*  Read  before  the  Peoria  Scientific  Society,  March  24,  18S3. 


FIFTY   YEARS    OF  MECHANICAL   ENGINEERING.   531 

laws  relating  to  the  strength  of  material,  but  were  well  adapted  for 
the  convenience  of  the  firemen,  in  that  the  flues  were  of  such  size  that 
a  man  could  pass  through  them  to  remove  accumulated  soot. 

The  result  was,  that  the  boilers  were  incapable  of  withstanding  an 
internal  pressure  of  more  than  four  or  five  pounds  to  the  square  inch. 
The  low  pressure  made  a  large  cylinder  necessary  to  secure  the  required 
power,  and  the  size  of  the  cylinder  restricted  the  speed,  which  rarely 
exceeded  250  feet  a  minute.  The  boilers  were  commonly  fed  by  a  tank 
situated  high  enough  to  enable  the  water  to  overcome  the  pressure  of 
the  steam.  The  low  pressure  and  slow  piston-speed  necessitated  very 
large  cylinders  relatively  to  the  power  obtained.  The  consumption  of 
fuel  was  about  ten  pounds  to  the  one  horse-power  per  hour. 

The  governing  was  done  by  slowly-revolving  pendulum-arms  scarce- 
ly securing  centrifugal  force  enough  to  raise  the  balls  and  actuate  the 
butterfly-valve  in  the  steam  supply-pipe,  thus  making  a  very  poor  and 
ineflicient  governor.  The  low  speed  made  a  very  heavy  fly-wheel 
necessary  to  secure  uniformity  of  motion,  also  costly  trains  of  gear- 
wheels to  secure  the  rotative  speed  required  for  factory-work. 

In  1882  the  boilers  are  cylindrical,  frequently  internally  fired,  and, 
thanks  to  Sir  William  Fairbairn's  circumferential  bands,  the  flue,  sub- 
jected to  external  pressure,  is  so  strengthened  that  the  danger  of  col- 
lapse is  removed  even  with  our  present  high  pressures.  The  tendency 
of  the  day  seems  to  incline  toward  the  water-tube  sectional  type  of 
boiler  and  a  rational  system  of  inspection  and  test.  The  pressures  in 
use  to-day  vary  from  80  to  150  pounds.  The  piston-speed  is  nearer 
500  feet  per  minute,  often  800  and  1,000.  An  engine  of  1832  capable 
of  exerting  25  one  horse-power  to-day  would  indicate  about  250  work- 
ing under  fair  conditions.  The  same  expenditure  of  fuel  to-day  would 
give  nearly  four  times  the  power. 

The  decrease  in  size  of  the  cylinder  due  to  the  higher  pressures  has 
made  higher  rotative  speeds  possible  ;  hence,  the  engine  requires  a 
much  lighter  fly-wheel,  and  the  governing  is  made  more  effective.  The 
most  eflicient  engines  of  to-day  are  found  in  our  city  pumping-stations. 
Here  the  conditions  are  favorable  for  securing  the  highest  economy, 
a  duty  of  100,000,000  foot-pounds  being  frequently  secured.  The 
engine  of  to-day  for  mill-use  is,  comparatively  speaking,  a  portable 
engine  requiring  nothing  but  a  foundation  to  bolt  it  to.  The  engine  of 
fifty  years  ago  was  not  self-contained  or  self-supporting,  but  required 
to  be  built  from  the  ground  up,  and  the  support  of  walls  and  timbers. 

To-day  the  practice  is  to  make  large  engines  condensing  and  often 
compound,  expanding  the  steam  in  some  instances  ten  volumes.  The 
higher  pressures  and  rotative  speeds  of  to-day  have  made  the  use  of 
high  expansions  possible  in  comparatively  small  engines,  and  economies 
are  secured  which,  but  a  few  years  ago,  would  have  been  wonderful 
for  large  engines.  The  governing  is  done  by  quick-running  govern- 
ors which  either  throttle  the  supply-pipe  or  alter  the  point  of  cut-off, 


532  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

and  thus  secure  uniformity  of  motion  with  the  highest  expansive  use 
of  the  steam. 

In  1832  no  steamship  had  essayed  the  passage  across  the  Atlantic. 
The  marine  boilers  of  1832  were  unfit  for  resisting  any  considerable 
]jressure,  in  fact,  so  weak  were  they  that  they  have  been  known  to  col- 
lapse when  steam  had  been  let  down.  The  engine  and  boilers  took  up 
so  much  of  the  tonnage  of  the  vessel,  and  used  such  enormous  quanti- 
ties of  coal,  that  it  was  predicted  that  it  would  never  be  possible  to 
cross  the  Atlantic  unaided  by  sail.  In  fact,  the  prediction  held  good 
for  a  long  time,  for  transatlantic  steamship  lines  were  compelled  to 
establish  coaling-stations  at  Halifax  and  Queenstown  in  order  to  re- 
duce the  coal  carried,  and  allow  of  a  little  cargo  being  taken  on.  In 
1832  all  hulls  were  wood,  and  salt-water  w^as  invariably  used  in  the 
boilers,  much  to  their  injury.  The  speed  rarely  exceeded  eight  knots 
an  hour. 

In  1882  the  ships  are  almost  invariably  of  iron  or  mild  steel,  and 
this  enables  the  introduction  of  an  element  of  safety  impossible  with 
the  use  of  wood  :  I  refer  to  the  compartment  and  cellular  system  of 
naval  construction.  The  use  of  iron  and  steel  has  made  the  construc- 
tion of  ships  of  great  length  possible. 

The  boilers  are  of  enormous  strength,  and  carry  from  80  to  125 
pounds  pressure.  The  cylinder  or  cylinders  are  now  adapted  to  the 
economical  utilization  of  all  the  expansive  force  due  to  the  pressure 
used.  To  secure  this,  more  than  one  cylinder,  is  used  ;  all  the  expan- 
sion could  be  had  in  one  cylinder,  but  the  difference  in  temperature  of 
the  cylinder,  due  to  the  temperature  of  the  steam  before  and  after 
expansion,  would  cause  undue  condensation.  The  substitution  of  the 
propeller  for  the  paddle-wheel  for  sea-navigation  and  the  high  speeds 
required  by  the  former  have  done  much  to  reduce  the  size  and  weight 
of  the  marine  engine  ;  and  have  also  had  a  marked  effect  on  the  econ- 
omy.    The  paddle-wheel  has  practically  disappeared,  except  on  rivers. 

A  piston-speed  of  800  feet  a  minute  is  often  attained  in  daily 
practice.  Hence,  enormous  powers  are  secured  with  comparatively 
little  loss  of  carrying-space. 

The  marine  governor  of  to-day  is  almost  endowed  with  prophecy. 
It  anticipates  the  pitching  of  the  ship  and  withdrawal  of  the  screw 
from  the  water,  and  cuts  off  steam  just  before  its  occurrence,  thus 
avoiding  the  dangerous  racing  of  the  engine  when  the  screw  leaves  its 
work.  This,  for  a  long  time,  has  been  almost  the  only  danger  in  bad 
weather  ;  the  racing  of  the  engines  subjected  the  screw- shaft  to  strains 
for  resisting  which  the  shaft  was  inadequate.  The  twisting  off  of  the 
propeller-shaft  of  an  Atlantic  steamer  is  not  an  uncommon  occurrence. 
Condensation  is  now  had  almost  in  all  cases  by  the  surface  condenser, 
thus  returning  all  the  water  to  the  boiler  to  be  used  again.  It  might 
be  well  to  speak  here  of  a  steamship  built  in  1882.  Steamships  are 
now  making  long  voyages  at  a  high  rate  of  speed,  voyages  which  till 


FIFTY   YEARS    OF  MECHANICAL  ENGINEERING.  533 

a  short  time  ago  had  been  left  to  sailing-vessels.  This  steamship  has 
some  points  of  interest,  and  illustrates  the  most  advanced  ideas  on 
steam-engineering  as  applied  to  the  mercantile  marine.  The  engines 
of  this  steamer  are  triple  expansive,  having  one  high -pressure,  one  in- 
termediate, and  one  low-pressure  cylinder,  using  steam  at  125  pounds 
pressure,  generated  by  boilers  whose  only  peculiarity  consists  in  the 
fact  that  they  are  capable  of  withstanding  such  a  pressure.  On  trial 
these  engines  gave  one  horse-power  for  1*28  pound  of  coal  burned 
per  hour.  This  would,  according  to  the  usual  analogy,  indicate  a 
daily  working  efficiency  of  about  1*50  pound  to  the  one  horse-power. 
This  steamer  can  carry  coal  for  a  voyage  of  12,000  miles,  and,  with 
proper  use  of  sails,  could  probably  keep  under  steam  for  two  months 
without  coaling.  The  weight  of  the  engine  and  boilers  of  1832  was 
about  1,000  pounds  to  the  horse-power  ;  to-day  it  is  about  300,  and 
in  some  instances  has  been  reduced  to  forty-five  pounds  to  the  horse 
power. 

An  English  firm  have  recently  completed  a  small  light  compound 
engine,  which,  in  point  of  weight,  eclipses  anything  heretofore  built. 
This  engine  is  made  of  steel  and  phosphor-bronze  ;  all  parts  are  built  as 
light  as  possible,  the  rods  and  shafting  and  all  parts  possible  being  bored 
out  to  reduce  weight.  At  a  speed  of  only  300  revolutions  a  minute 
they  indicate  over  twenty  horse-power,  and  weigh  but  105  pounds  all 
told.  This  engine  would  give  fully  thirty  horse-power  actual  at  a 
piston-speed  of  500  feet  a  minute.  The  size  is  three  and  three  quar- 
ters high  pressure,  seven  and  a  half  low  pressure,  and  five  stroke.  That 
thirty  horse-power  can  be  had  from  a  proper  utilization  of  steam  and 
proper  distribution  of  105  pounds  of  metal  is  certainly  most  astonish- 
ing, especially  so,  considering  that  the  engine  is  compound.  A  ship  of 
2,500  tons  displacement  was  almost  unknown  fifty  years  ago  ;  to-day 
the  transatlantic  steamer,  the  highest  class  of  the  mercantile  marine, 
has  from  8,000  to  13,500  tons  displacement,  and  engines  of  5,000  to 
10,000  one  horse-power.  Several  of  the  transatlantic  liners  have  shown 
a  mean  ocean-speed  of  twenty  miles  an  hour,  and  make  the  passage  in 
less  than  seven  days. 

The  present  generation  has  grown  so  accustomed  to  the  results  of 
the  progress  of  mechanical  science  that  it  has  long  ceased  to  wonder 
at  its  greatest  works. 

It  may  be  well  here  to  speak  of  the  torpedo-boats  which  have  been 
recently  built  for  the  English  Government  ;  they  indicate  the  extreme 
limit  of  naval  construction  of  this  day.  These  little  instruments  of 
destruction  are  only  eighty-seven  feet  in  length,  ten  and  a  half  feet  in 
beam,  forward  draught  eighteen  inches,  aft  fifty-two  inches,  total  dis- 
placement thirty-three  tons.  The  engines  are  compound  condensing, 
of  the  intermediate  receiver  type,  high-pressure  cylinder  twelve  and 
three  fourths  inches,  low-pressure  twenty  and  three  fourths,  stroke 
twelve  inches,  and  indicated  over  500  horse-power,  with  a  gross  weight 


534  TH^  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

of  only  eleven  tons,  boiler,  water,  engine,  condenser,  propeller,  and 
shaft  included. 

The  special  feature  of  the  boat  is  the  enormous  power  developed  per 
hundredweight  of  propelling  machinery.  The  boilers  evaporate  eight- 
een pounds  of  water  per  hour  per  square  foot  of  heating  surface,  and 
120  pounds  of  coal  per  square  foot  of  grate-surface.  This  is  fully  six 
times  the  amount  of  water  and  coal  usually  dealt  with  per  square  foot 
of  surface  in  furnace  and  boiler.  Such  a  forced  combustion  precludes 
all  thought  of  economy,  yet  a  one  horse-power  is  secured  at  full  speed 
with  an  expenditure  of  three  and  a  half  pounds  of  coal.  The  forced 
draught  is  secured  by  maintaining  in  the  stoke-hole  an  air-pressure  cor- 
responding to  a  column  of  water  six  inches  high  ;  this  renders  the 
stoke-hole  quite  cool  and  comfortable. 

One  ton  of  coal  will  last  for  a  run  of  100  miles  at  a  ten-knot  speed. 
A  speed  of  twenty-two  and  a  half  knots  has  been  secured  in  trials  last- 
ing three  hours.  This  is  a  speed  of  2,250  feet  a  minute,  or  thirty- 
seven  and  a  half  feet  a  second,  and  seems  almost  incredible. 

But,  remarkable  and  important  as  these  results  are  in  the  phase  of 
steam -engineering,  these  little  vessels  have  revealed  in  their  perform- 
ances under  speed-trials  facts  of  equal  importance  to  another  depart- 
ment. The  speeds  attained  are  high  even  for  large  steam- vessels,  but 
enormously  high  for  such  small  vessels.  It  is  found  that  passing  the 
ten  and  twelve  knot  point,  which  bears  about  the  same  ratio  to  these 
little  boats  that  eighteen  knots  an  hour  does  to  large  steamers,  the 
ratio  of  resistance  to  the  speed  decreases,  and  at  the  fifteen-knot  point 
it  is  about  the  3J-power,  at  the  eighteen-knot  point  about  the  3-power, 
and  sometimes  at  the  twenty-two-knot  point  is  as  low  as  the  l|-power 
of  the  speed. 

Effort  has  been  frequently  made  to  utilize  steam  at  much  higher 
pressures  than  I  have  mentioned,  but,  owing  to  the  solvent  nature  of 
steam  or  water  at  a  high  temperature,  the  results  have  not  been  satis- 
factory ;  among  many  difficulties  encountered  was  that  of  lubricating 
the  cylinders. 

Loftus  Perkins,  an  English  engine-builder  of  prominence,  is  devot- 
ing much  time  to  the  use  of  steam  at  about  five  hundred  pounds  press- 
ure, and  with  some  success.  Unfortunately,  the  gain  to  be  anticipated 
from  the  use  of  these  exceedingly  high  pressures  does  not  seem  to  be 
very  great  on  trial.  The  Anthracite,  a  small  steamer  fitted  with  en- 
gines and  boilers  specially  adapted  to  the  utilization  of  steam  at  five 
hundred  pounds  pressure,  was  more  wasteful  than  many  steamers  using 
steam  at  one  hundred  pounds.  However,  here  is  a  wide  field  and  one 
that  promises  well. 

Should  the  same  change  of  law  as  to  the  resistance  increasing  as 
the  square  of  the  speed  be  found  to  hold  good  in  large  steamers  as  in 
the  little  torpedo-boats,  we  shall  most  of  us  live  to  see  locomotive 
speeds  at  sea.     There  is  now  building  in  this  country  an  engine  which 


FIFTY   YEARS    OF  MECHANICAL   ENGINEERING.  535 

will  exert  the  greatest  power  as  yet  secured  from  one  cylinder.  The 
stroke  is  fourteen  feet  and  the  diameter  of  the  cylinder  is  nine  feet 
two  inches,  and  the  engine  is  expected  to  develop  eight  thousand  horse- 
power. As  an  illustration  of  the  size  of  the  engine,  the  wrist-pin  is 
almost  exactly  the  size  of  a  flour-barrel. 

We  now  come  to  the  engines  and  boilers  used  for  railways.  The 
year  1832  was  the  beginning  of  our  present  passenger  and  railway 
system  on  this  side  of  the  water,  and,  if  the  engines  imported  in  that 
year  to  run  on  American  roads  are  any  indication  of  the  state  of  the 
science  of  steam-engineering  abroad,  they  could  not  have  been  much 
in  advance.  At  this  time  tlie  engine  and  boiler  weighed  about  eight 
tons,  carried  forty  pounds  pressure,  and  could  make  about  twenty 
miles  an  hour  under  light  load  and  favorable  conditions.  The  engine 
of  that  date  could  not  pull  more  than  three  or  four  times  its  own 
weight,  and  had  to  stop  at  stations  to  fill  boilers,  as  they  could  not 
pump  while  running. 

The  speed  to-day  is  from  forty  to  sixty  miles  an  hour,  and  the  en- 
gines weigh  from  thirty-five  to  eighty  tons,  and  draw  as  high  as  eight 
hundred  tons  of  paying  freight  in  addition  to  the  weight  of  the  train. 
To-day  the  pressures  run  from  one  hundred  and  thirty-five  to  two  hun- 
dred pounds.  The  latter  pressure  is  used  in  Switzerland.  The  auto- 
matic and  continuous  breaks  now  stop  a  heavy  train  within  four  hun- 
dred yards  at  a  speed  of  sixty  miles  an  hour.  Recent  trials  show  that 
these  breaks  will  absorb  twenty  miles  of  speed  in  one  minute. 

In  1832  the  transmission  of  power  was  by  flat  tumbling-rods  and 
cast-iron  shafting  of  great  weight  and  little  strength.  To-day  we  have 
smooth,  light,  rapidly  revolving  steel  or  iron  shafting,  supplemented 
and  aided  with  rubber  and  leather  belting  where  the  latter  will  serve 
and  the  former  can  not.  Where  power  has  to  be  transmitted  at  a  great 
distance,  wire  ropes,  moving  at  a  high  rate  of  speed,  are  used.  Wire- 
rope  transmission  commences  at  the  point  where  the  belt  and  shafting 
become  too  long  or  heavy  to  be  useful.  It  is  much  cheaper  than  its 
equivalent  of  shafting  or  belting.  In  fact,  a  long  line  of  shafting 
would  cost  more  for  oil  in  a  year  than  a  wire  rope  would  in  fifteen. 

At  the  Rhine-fall,  in  Svvitzerland,  eight  hundred  horse-power  is 
transmitted  a  distance  of  two  miles  to  a  village  where  fifty  small 
manufacturing  industries,  situated  in  every  conceivable  position  rela- 
tive to  the  cable-line,  secure  power.  For  ten  years  the  cable  street- 
railway  system  has  been  in  use  in  San  Francisco.  The  same  system,, 
slightly  modified,  is  being  adopted  in  many  Eastern  cities. 

Fifty  years  ago  compressed  air  had  not  been  successfully  employed' 
in  engineering,  though  its  application  as  a  blast  to  forges  is  coextant 
with  history.  Sir  Henry  Bessemer's  steel  process  was  made  possible 
only  upon  the  ability  of  engineers  to  furnish  air  under  pressure  in  the 
converter.  The  importance  of  compressed  air  and  the  part  it  has 
taken  in  recent  engineering  undertakings  can  not  be  overestimated.. 


536  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Without  it  the  boring  of  most  of  our  tunnels  and  the  placing  of  ma- 
sonry foundations  under  water  could  not  have  been  accomplished.  In 
1832  the  turbine  wheel  had  just  been  invented,  but  not  brought  into 
use  ;  in  fact,  hydro-mechanics  has  made  as  great  steps  forward  in  the 
last  fifty  years  as  any  of  her  sister  sciences. 

A  recent  invention  of  Sir  W.  Armstrong  deserves  mention.  A 
steam-engine  actuating  a  pump  is  used  to  secure  an  artificial  head  of 
water,  which  water  is  afterward  employed  in  driving  various  hydraulic 
motors  operating  cranes,  lifts,  driving  riveting  machinery,  and  the 
artificial  head  is  secured  by  loading  a  ram  of  sufficient  size  with  weight 
enough  to  place  a  pressure  of  seven  or  eight  hundred  pounds  to  the 
inch  in  the  cylinder.  The  pumping-engine  pumps  against  this  ram, 
the  chamber  of  which  is  connected  with  each  of  the  machines  requir- 
ing to  be  driven  ;  whenever  the  work  done  in  the  various  motors  is 
less  than  the  work  of  the  engine,  the  surplus  is  expended  in  raising 
the  ram,  and  when  the  ram  is  fully  extended  an  automatic  device 
stops  the  pump,  which  again  resumes  work  on  the  withdrawal  of  water 
from  the  ram  by  leakage  or  use  in  motors.  By  the  aid  of  this  system 
of  storing  power,  a  small  steam-pump  attached  to  an  accumulator  is 
capable  of  furnishing  three  hundred  or  more  horse-jjower  for  a  short 
time.  This  arrangement  is  adopted  in  all  docks  and  ship-yards  of  any 
pretensions. 

Our  modern  turreted  man-of-war  handles  its  eighty  and  one  hun- 
dred ton  guns,  and  all  the  loading  machinery,  by  the  aid  of  similar 
hydraulic  devices.  These  accumulators  give  an  efiiciency  of  ninety- 
eight  per  cent  in  practice,  which  amounts  to  perfection. 

In  1832  rolled  plates  such  as  are  now  rolled  were  unknown,  and 
the  rolling  of  armor-plates  twenty-two  inches  thick,  weighing  thirty 
tons,  was  not  thought  of. 

The  process  of  making  wrought-iron  by  puddling  has  not  changed 
much,  though  larger  masses  are  handled.  The  manufacture  of  iron 
by  puddling  seems  doomed  ;  steel  is  taking  its  place  rapidly  ;  in  1832 
masses  of  steel  of  over  sixty  pounds  were  not  made  ;  steel  was  dealt  in 
by  the  pound  for  cutlery-use.  Thanks  to  Sir  Henry  Bessemer  and 
Dr.  Siemens,  steel  is  made  on  the  Bessemer  and  open-hearth  process, 
and  in  masses  of  many  tons'  weight.  The  rapid  advancement  made 
in  engineering  skill  is  due  in  a  great  measure  to  the  cheapening  of 
iron  and  steel  making.  Never  in  the  history  of  the  iron  industry 
were  there  so  many  partially  developed  processes,  the  completion  of 
which  will  revolutionize  the  industry,  and  furnish  iron  and  steel  at 
a  cost  much  below  present  prices. 

The  unprecedented  expanding  of  our  railway  interests  since  18C5 
has  had  much  to  do  with  the  development  of  the  iron  interests.  In- 
ventors of  prominence  promise  us  steel  at  one  cent  a  pound,  and  in 
the  light  of  the  past  it  is  not  safe  to  assert  that  it  will  not  be  done. 
Steel  rails  have  been  sold  within  a  few  years  at  one  hundred  dollars  a 


FIFTY   YFARS    OF  MECHANICAL  ENGINEERING,  537 

ton  ;  to-day  they  are  worth  thirty-eight  dollars.  It  is  confidently  pre- 
dicted by  those  who  have  made  it  a  study,  that  the  downward  tend- 
ency can  not  be  checked,  and  that  one  cent  a  pound  will  be  reached  as 
soon  as  the  experimenters  have  worked  out  plans  now  in  hand. 

Considering  the  many  improvements  which  are  now  proposed  and 
tested,  we  can  safely  assume  that  the  steel-plant  of  the  future  will 
differ  widely  from  the  plant  of  to-day.  All  the  available  heat  and.  all 
the  useful  elements  in  the  ore  will  be  used.  Briefly  this  is  as  follows  : 
The  ores,  limestone,  and  fuel  will  be  placed  in  the  furnace,  the  molten 
metal  will  be  run  to  converters,  and  there  the  foreign  elements  will  be 
removed  by  a  blast,  the  metal  then  recarbonized  and  cast  into  ingots, 
the  ingots  will  be  rolled  into  blooms,  then  the  bloom  into  rails,  and 
the  rails  will  then  be  placed  on  small  cars,  and,  while  at  a  temperature 
of  about  1,000°  Fahr.,  will  be  placed  in  the  flues  of  steam-boilers  until 
they  have  given  up  about  700°  Fahr.,  and  then  passed  on  as  finished. 
The  slag  flowing  from  the  blast-furnace  will  be  placed  on  cars,  and, 
while  at  a  temperature  of  3,000°  Fahr.,  be  run  into  the  flues  of  other 
boilers  used  to  generate  steam  for  operating  the  blowers,  rolls,  etc. 
This,  in  brief,  is  one  of  the  proposed  steps  in  steel-making,  viz.,  the 
utilization  of  all  the  heat  in  the  coal,  and  afterward  all  the  heat  given 
to  the  iron  and  slag  by  the  coal ;  by  so  placing  the  iron  and  slag  as 
to  give  up  their  heat  again  to  boilers  used  to  generate  steam  for  the 
roller-mills  and  blowing-engines,  which  in  turn  aid  the  smelting  of  the 
iron. 

A  rail-mill  of  500  tons  a  day,  at  a  low  estimate,  would  secure  heat 
to  run  a  1,000  horse-power  battery  of  boilers  from  the  cooling  rails 
alone,  and  4,000  horse-power  in  heat  from  the  slag.  Hence  the  steel- 
plant  of  the  future  will  have  no  heating-furnaces,  no  gas-producers,  no 
coal-consuming  boilers,  no  cupolas,  no  ash-piles,  and  no  fuel  to  be  con- 
sumed except  that  required  to  melt  the  iron.  The  converter-slag  can 
now  be  used  instead  of  limestone  by  the  new  process.  This,  in  brief, 
will  be,  it  is  confidently  predicted,  the  new  rail-mill  of  the  immediate 
future.  Everything  is  done  by  the  aid  of  air,  steam,  and  water.  Mus- 
cle will  be  in  little  demand,  brains  at  a  premium.  In  1832  cast-iron 
bridges  existed  of  short  span,  but  wrought-iron  had  not  been  used. 
To-day  we  think  little  of  trusses  of  500  feet  span,  and  suspension- 
bridges  of  1,000  feet ;  while  it  is  proposed  to  build  a  steel  truss-bridge 
over  a  mile  long,  with  two  spans  of  1,700  feet  each.  In  the  power- 
printing  press,  an  invention  of  the  eighteenth  century,  we  find  that 
the  last  half -century  has  wrought  wonders.  In  1832  the  best  presses 
could  turn  out  about  1,000  poorly  printed  sheets  of  printed  matter ; 
to-day,  thanks  to  Hoe's  revolving  type  and  the  processes  of  electro- 
plating and  stereotyping,  we  have  presses  capable  of  printing  50,000 
impressions  an  hour  ;  and,  what  is  almost  as  wonderful,  it  will  num- 
ber, fold,  and  stick  together  the  whole.  Such  a  machine  costs  about 
6100,000. 


538  TEE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

We  live  in  an  age  of  progress.  The  additions  to  our  knowledge 
made  during  the  last  fifty  years  seem  to  excel  in  utility  and  lasting 
benefits  the  knowledge  acquired  in  centuries.  Popular  belief  is  that 
the  possibilities  of  progress  in  all  directions  are  unlimited.  Those  who 
should  know,  think  that  in  mechanics  we  have  nearly  reached  the  limit 
which  theory,  well  established,  places  before  us.  The  steam-engine, 
using  but  one  tenth  of  the  power  to  be  obtained  from  the  coal,  is 
nearer  its  limit  than  most  people  imagine. 

The  science  of  the  future  is  undoubtedly  in  chemistry,  and  our  great 
discoveries  and  greatest  progress  will  be  in  that  science.  Mechanics 
may  hereafter  expect  to  take  a  secondary  part.  In  the  iron  industry 
chemistry  and  mechanics  have  stood  side  by  side  ;  chemistry  gener- 
ally propounds  the  problems,  pointing  the  way  to  the  chemical  solu- 
tion, and  calling  upon  mechanics  to  devise  means  for  carrying  out  the 
undertaking. 

One  of  the  most  notable  features  of  modern  industrial  progress  is 
the  utilization  of  w^hat  has  always  been  considered  waste  material. 
This  is  done  by  devising  and  constructing  special  machinery  to  meet 
the  case.  Sometimes  costly  experiments  are  necessary  ;  but,  in  this 
age  of  speculation,  those  who  gain  the  prizes  offered  in  legitimate  busi- 
ness are  those  who  are  willing  to  accept  ventures  involving  large  risks. 
There  is  no  limit  to  human  wants,  and  the  industrial  expansion  we  are 
engaged  in  will  not  be  restricted  except  by  the  impossible. 

Photography  and  the  electric  sciences  are  two  arts  of  which  nothing 
was  known  fifty  years  ago  :  what  a  gap  the  removal  of  one  of  these 
would  make  in  our  civilization  to-day  ! 

Sir  Henry  Bessemer's  steel  process  has  had  a  very  marked  influence' 
on  the  mechanical  advancement  of  the  last  half-century.  Yet  so 
closely  allied  are  all  the  great  steps  in  progress,  that  one  can  not  be 
taken  without  the  other,  and  Sir  Henry  was  himself  compelled  to  seek 
or  invent  numerous  devices  before  his  original  steel  process  merited 
the  name. 

We  daily  complete  engineering  works  which,  in  the  amount  of 
human  labor  they  represent,  far  exceed  the  labor  represented  by  the 
great  Pyramid  of  Cheops.  Undoubtedly  the  progress  of  the  age,  which 
is  so  largely  engineering  progress,  does  greatly  increase  the  welfare  of 
man.  The  forces  of  Nature  now  do  the  hard  work,  and  the  labor  of 
the  toiling  millions  is  lightened  many  fold.  The  laboring-man  now 
works  with  brain  and  eye,  and  his  occupation  is  to  direct  and  apply 
some  principle  of  science.  He  now  has  time  for  improvement,  comfort, 
and  refinement  ;  the  forces  of  Nature  having  become  obedient  to  the 
will  of  man,  are  made  to  produce  for  him  not  only  plenty,  but  con- 
veniences and  luxuries  formerly  undreamed  of. 


A  PREHISTOBia   WATER-SYSTEM.  539 

A  PREHISTORIC  WATER-SYSTEM. 

Br  M.   A.  LtDERS. 

THE  canton  of  Valais,  though  not  so  much  frequented  by  travelers 
as  some  of  the  others,  is  really  one  of  the  most  attractive  can- 
tons of  Switzerland,  and  possesses,  in  its  Alpine  heights  and  its  tem- 
perate valleys,  many  beauties  peculiarly  its  own.  There  are  also 
many  features  worthy  of  notice  in  the  customs  and  the  economical 
devices  of  its  population.  One  of  the  most  interesting  features  of 
the  latter  class  is  its  system  of  conduits  for  watering  the  pasturage 
and  tillage  lands.  This  canton,  in  fact,  possesses  the  model  system  of 
water-supply  in  the  Alps.  The  people  have  maintained  it  from  primi- 
tive times,  and  have  by  it,  during  the  whole  period  of  their  history, 
drawn  the  water  from  the  glaciers  and  mountain-springs,  to  be  applied 
directly  to  every  part  of  their  farms  and  garden-plots.  Without  such 
watering  as  it  makes  practicable,  the  production  of  the  district  would 
fall  off  one  half.  This  was  exemplified  in  the  experience  of  some  of 
the  towns  during  the  building  of  the  Simplon  road  in  1802,  when  their 
canals  were  interrupted  and  their  water-supply  was  cut  off.  The 
grass-crop  was  so  greatly  diminished  that  the  number  of  cattle  fell  off 
to  one  fourth  of  what  it  had  been,  and  the  former  productiveness  of 
the  fields  was  not  restored  till  new  canals  were  made  in  1810.  In  the 
little  town  of  Zenegger,  also,  the  springs  were  dried  up,  in  conse- 
quence of  an  earthquake  in  1855,  and  the  number  of  cattle  that  could 
be  maintained  was  reduced  from  two  hundred  to  fifty.  New  conduits 
had  to  be  made  for  this  place  also,  with  much  labor  and  at  great  expense. 

The  maintenance  of  the  water-system  of  the  Canton  Valais  is  inti- 
mately associated  with  the  communal  and  family  life  of  the  people. 
The  water  is  brought  down  in  wooden  flumes,  that  have  to  cross  pre- 
cipitous clefts  at  hundreds  of  metres  above  the  bottom.  A  watchman 
has  to  go  over  them  daily,  and  sometimes  at  night.  His  pay  is  very 
small,  and  his  office  is  rather  one  of  honor,  full  of  dangers,  to  which 
some  fall  victims  in  nearly  every  year.  By  an  ancient  prescription, 
no  one  can  hold  a  public  office  till  he  has  served  for  some  time  as  a 
guard  of  the  aqueducts.  It  is  not  unusual,  when  repairs  are  to  be 
made  in  particularly  dangerous  places,  to  send  a  priest  along  with  the 
workmen,  so  that,  if  any  of  them  meet  with  an  accident,  they  may  be 
provided  with  the  consolations  of  religion. 

The  water  is  drawn  from  glaciers,  lakes,  or  reservoirs,  springs,  and 
melted  snow.  Glacier-water  is  best  esteemed,  and  is  preferred  if  it  is 
turbid,  for  then  it  holds  valuable  mineral  constituents  ;  lake  or  reser- 
voir water  contains  less  of  such  matters,  for  they  have  settled.  Spring- 
water  is  least  in  favor,  because  it  is  most  deficient  in  mineral  sub- 
stances, and  because  the  time  it  occupies  in  running  down  the  conduits 


540  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

is  so  short  that  it  does  not  become  warm  enough  to  be  used  with  advan- 
tage. The  same  objection  is  alleged  against  snow-water.  The  glacier- 
water,  however,  which  is  exposed  to  the  sun  for  hours  while  running 
down  the  flumes,  reaches  the  fields  at  an  agreeable  temperature,  and 
ready  for  immediate  application.  This  water  is  here  free  from  oxide 
of  iron,  and  is  entirely  fertilizing  ;  but  additional  richness  is  some- 
times given  to  it  by  carrying  it  around  through  the  barn-yards,  and 
making  it  the  means  for  transporting  manure  directly  to  the  fields. 

The  chief  canals  which  bring  the  w  ater  down  from  the  mountains 
vary  in  length  from  one  thousand  to  fifty -five  thousand  metres  ;  or, 
measured  by  the  time  it  takes  the  w^ater  to  run  through  them,  from  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  to  six  hours.  The  total  length  of  the  canals  in  the 
canton  is  one  million  five  hundred  thousand  metres,  or  two  hundred 
and  fifty  hours.  The  skill  with  w^hich  they  have  been  located  and 
constructed  excites  an  admiration  that  is  increased  when  it  is  remem- 
bered that  they  date  from  a  remote  antiquity  and  are  the  work  of  a 
simple  country-people.  Beginning  often  in  the  immediate  neighbor- 
hood of  the  glaciers,  crossing  treacherous  hills  and  lofty  precipices, 
and  spanning  deep  abysses,  passing  through  tunnels  and  cuts,  led 
along  artificial  terraces,  that  sometimes  require  additional  embank- 
ments or  walls  to  support  them,  these  canals  are  really  formidable 
works.  They  furnish  the  life-blood  of  civilization  to  the  canton,  and 
stand  for  a  capital  of  incalculable  value.  They  have  been  built  and 
are  kept  up  by  the  villages  ;  and  a  badly  kept  one  is  an  exception. 
In  most  of  the  valley-slopes  they  lie  in  groups  of  three  or  four,  the 
uppermost  one  being  the  longest,  and  reaching  far  up  toward  the 
glacier-source,  and  have  an  average  descent  of  about  0*5  per  cent. 
The  subordinate  ditches  are  of  a  simpler  character,  till  finally  a  mere 
mark  on  the  ground  is  all  that  directs  the  water  to  the  particular  spot 
where  it  is  wanted. 

The  application  of  the  water  begins  at  about  the  first  of  April  in 
the  valleys,  and  later  as  the  height  of  the  locality  increases,  till,  on 
the  highest  cultivated  grounds,  it  is  delayed  till  the  middle  of  June, 
and  is  continued  for  from  two  and  a  half  to  three  months.  The  right 
to  draw  off  the  water  is  apportioned  out  by  village  ofiicers  into  turns, 
of  which  there  are  from  four  to  twelve  in  the  season,  of  from  eight  to 
twenty-one  days  or  more  each,  according  to  the  number  of  land-owners 
claiming  to  share  in  it. 

Among  the  most  remarkable  of  the  main  aqueducts  arc  those  of 
the  Gradetsch  Valley,  where  the  water  is  led  down  by  eleven  canals, 
the  highest  of  which  starts  from  an  altitude  of  2,300  metres,  or 
nearly  7,500  feet  above  the  sea.  Some  of  the  canals  require  wooden 
conduits  three  or  four  thousand  metres  long,  that  have  at  times  to  be 
supported  by  poles  for  six  hundred  metres  at  a  stretch.  To  reach 
them  for  repairs  the  workmen  have  in  some  places  to  be  let  down  the 
perpendicular  rock-walls  with  ropes. 


A  PREHISTORIC    WATER-SYSTEM.  541 

The  oldest  of  the  canals  date  unquestionably  from  pre-Roman 
times.  The  "  Roth  "  Canal  supplies  three  villages  with  water,  and  is 
19,200  metres  (more  than  eleven  miles),  or  four  hours  and  twenty- 
three  minutes  long.  It  starts  from  "  La  Plaine  Morte  "  glacier,  on  the 
Weisshorn,  2,673  metres  above  the  sea,  crosses  several  clefts,  is  con- 
ducted through  a  tunnel  more  than  three  hundred  metres  long,  is  cov- 
ered for  9,600  metres,  exhibits  other  features  of  high  engineering 
skill,  has  an  average  section  of  a  metre  and  three  tenths,  and  delivers 
nearly  a  cubic  metre  of  water  a  second.  An  artificial  lake,  or  reser- 
voir, has  been  built  in  the  same  district,  to  hold  the  water  that  is  not 
wanted  for  immediate  use.  Its  water,  however,  has  not  the  same 
value  as  that  taken  directly  from  the  glaciers,  because  it  has  lost 
most  of  its  mineral  constituents  by  settling  ;  but,  as  it  has  become 
thoroughly  warmed,  it  is  admirably  adapted  to  those  applications  in 
which  water  is  wanted  simply  to  refresh  vegetation,  and  make  the 
soil  more  friable. 

The  villages  of  Ried  and  Bietsch  have  three  aqueducts  (Kehr- 
wasser,  Bietscherrinne,  and  Riederrinne),  severally  8,400,  2,400,  and 
12,000  metres  long,  to  bring  down  the  muddy  water  from  the  great 
Aletsch  glacier,  which  are  led  for  long  distances  along  vertical  cliffs 
and  over  giddy  chasms.  At  one  point  on  the  "  Kehrwasser "  three 
men  have  been  killed,  within  twenty-five  years,  by  falling  into  the 
gorge.  The  water  of  the  Bietscherrinne  issues  foaming  from  a  fear- 
ful-looking chasm.  The  canal,  having  a  border  formed  of  stones  laid 
with  sods,  and  masked  by  bushes  from  the  Massa  ravine  that  yawns 
beneath  it,  is  safe  to  walk  along  at  first.  The  bushes  soon  disappear, 
and  the  aqueduct  becomes  simply  a  wooden  conduit,  made  of  planks 
that  have  to  be  drawn  to  the  place,  and  adjusted  there  with  great 
danger,  while  the  narrow,  slippery  gang-plank,  which  is  the  only  walk, 
offers  but  the  most  precarious  footing  to  one  who  has  to  look  down 
through  the  high  trestles  or  into  the  steep  ravine  of  the  wild  Massa, 
on  one  side,  while  he  must  watch  on  the  other  side  lest  he  hit  his  head 
against  the  overhanging  rocks  and  lose  his  balance.  The  highest  of 
the  three  canals,  the  Riederrinne,  is  distinguished  from  the  others  by 
its  loftier  rock- walls  and  deeper  chasms.  It  reaches  to  the  foot  of  the 
Aletsch  glacier,  and  draws  the  water  from  its  source.  Near  it  may  be 
seen  older,  abandoned  canals. 

Near  where  these  three  canals  start  is  the  Marjillen  Lake,  having 
its  surface  covered,  even-  in  summer,  with  floating  ice.  Its  natural 
outlet  is  by  the  valley  of  Yiesch  into  the  Rhone,  but  occasionally,  in 
seasons  of  extraordinarily  high  water,  it  overflows  in  the  opposite 
direction,  and  pours  its  floods  into  the  Massa,  causing  breaks  in  the 
canals  and  stopping  the  conveyance  of  water.  The  existence  of  the 
villages  of  Bietsch  and  Ried  depends  upon  their  obviating  the  mis- 
chievous effects  of  these  overflows,  and  it  is  customary  to  give  a  pair 
of  shoes  to  the  mountaineer  who  first  notifies  the  dwellers  in  the 


542  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

valley  of  the  occurrence  of  a  break.     A  canal  has  been  built  to  reduce 
the  level  of  the  lake,  but  it  is  not  sufficient  for  the  purpose. 

The  irrigation-canals  of  Lombardy  and  Lucca  are  more  scientifically 
constructed,  and  display  more  technical  skill,  but  they  are  not  laid  out 
on  a  more  extensive  scale  than  those  of  the  Canton  Yalais.  It  is  a  fact 
deserving  admiration  that  all  of  these  colossal  works  have  been  and 
are  still  being  built  without  the  aid  of  technical  knowledge,  without 
any  expensive  instruments,  by  the  people  of  the  country  ;  and  that 
these  people  not  only  make  great  sacrifices  of  money  and  labor,  but 
put  their  lives  at  stake,  to  assure  themselves  of  a  supply  of  water. 
Certainly  a  real  struggle  for  existence  is  going  on  here  ;  for,  without 
a  system  of  water-supply,  there  would  be  in  many  of  the  villages  no 
grass,  no  vegetable  crops,  no  corn,  and  no  wine. — Translated  for  the 
Popular  Science  Monthly  from  Das  Ausland. 


TTOEKING  CAPACITY  OF  UNSHOD  HOESES. 

By  AETHUE  F.  ASTLEY. 

I  SEND  herewith  a  photograph  of  the  near  fore-foot  of  my  unshod, 
white-hoofed,  low-heeled  chestnut  horse  "  Tommy."  This  photo- 
graph was  taken  after  I  had  driven  the  old  horse  (he  may  be  twenty 
years  old),  in  a  phaeton,  a  hundred  miles  on  hard  roads  in  and  around 
London.  This  does  not  include  drives  for  exercise.  It  is  impossible 
to  say  that  the  hoofs  of  this  old  horse  (bought  chiefly  in  order  to  test 
this  question)  are  exceptionally  good.  The  reverse  is  the  case,  as  any 
of  your  readers,  who  may  favor  me  with  a  call,  shall  see  for  them- 
selves. That  this  animal,  after  having  been  for  years  "  the  victim  of 
the  farrier,"  should  work,  as  he  does,  barefoot,  is,  I  think,  remarkable. 
As  the  old  horse  is  nearly,  if  not  quite,  thorough-bred,  he  must  have 
been  shod  (as  is  the  vicious  custom  on  the  turf)  very  early  ;  yet  over 
all  these  evil  influences,  incidental  to  "  the  miserable  coerced  shod 
foot,"  the  unshod  foot  has  triumphed.  Shod,  my  horse  "brushed" 
and  stumbled  badly,  but  barefoot  he  does  neither. 

In  Africa,  a  horse  working  in  a  post-cart  does  barefoot,  over  bad 
ground,  twenty-four  miles  in  two  hours.  In  New  Mexico,  horses  are 
ridden  barefoot  forty  miles  day  after  day,  and  perhaps  twenty  miles 
of  this  will  be  over  a  rough  mountain-track.  In  Brazil,  little  horses 
(they  seldom  exceed  fourteen  hands)  carry,  slung  across  pack-saddles, 
barefoot  (they  have  never  been  shod)  some  thirty-two  stone!  Thus 
loaded  (or,  rather,  overloaded)  they  do  twenty  to  thirty  miles  a  day. 
Their  journey  may  be  some  three  hundred  miles,  and  they  load  back 
the  same.  In  England,  even  race-horses  are  shod  !  To  gallop  over 
a  race-course,  which  no  doubt  may  be  hard  at  times,  it  is  actually 


WORKING   CAPACITY  OF   UNSHOD  HORSES.      543 

thought  necessary  to  shoe  a  horse  !  Here,  where  weight  is  of  the  very- 
utmost  consequence,  the  heels  of  the  English  race-horse  must  be 
weighted  with  plates  !  The  fact  that  Harden,  when  he  ran  barefoot 
in  the  Sandown  Derby  on  June  2,  1882,  beat,  in  the  deciding  heat,  his 
two  shod  opponents  by  three  lengths  (though  in  his  first  race  with 
them  that  day  Harden,  with  his  plates  on,  could  only  dead  heat  them), 
such  a  fact  as  this  weighs  little  with  the  horsey  Englishman,  who  will 
still  be  found  to  set  his  thoughts  or  opinions  against  facts  !  After  all 
that  can  be  said  as  far  as  argument  goes,  he  will  still  be  found  to  pre- 
fer mere  assertion  y  it  will  still  be  the  "  I  think  this,"  and  "  I  don't 
thiiiJc  the  other,"  with  him  !  But  then  is  not  the  horsey  (and  for  the 
most  part  untraveled)  Englishman,  as  a  rule,  in  the  language  of  *'  Free- 
lance "  in  "  Horses  and  Roads,"  "  energetically  conservative  "  ? 

Any  one  who  will  read  this  book  will  thereby  much  increase  his 
knowledge  as  to  the  real  capability  of  the  horse's  hoof.  *'  Horses  and 
Roads  "  was  published  in  1880,  by  Longman,  Paternoster  Row.  I  find 
quoted  in  it  the  saying,  "  An  ounce  at  the  heel  tells  more  than  a  pound 
on  the  back."  This  explains  Harden's  success  when,  by  removal  of 
"  plates,"  his  heels  were  lightened  for  the  deciding  heat. 

But  many  of  our  countrymen  connected  with  horses,  deeming 
themselves  practical  men,  are  too  apt  to  think  that  they  have,  as  Hr. 
Ransom  ("  Freelance  ")  says,  "  gone  into  everything,"  and  they  may 
consider  their  knowledge  as  to  the  real  capability  of  the  horse's  hoof 
complete.  Now,  is  it  complete?  Is 
not  shoeing  horses  very  much  a  mat- 
ter of  routine  with  us  ?  I  will  give  two 
instances  in  order  to  prove  this  : 

1.  Some  weeks  ago  I  received  a 
letter  in  which  the  writer  said  that  he 
had  been  told  by  a  veterinary  surgeon 
that  if  a  horse  were  worked  barefoot 
his  hoofs  "  would  wear  down  to  the 
quick  in  a  few  hours.''''  Now,  I  saw 
the  other  day  a  horse  which  has  been 
doing  the  w^ork  of  his  master,  a  doc- 
tor, barefoot^  not  for  "  a  few  hours," 
but  for  over  five  years!  During  this 
time  the   horse  must  have  traveled,     * 

shoeless  as  he  is,  some  thirteen  thousand  miles  over  the  not  too  good 
roads  of  the  east  of  London,  and  often  with  a  heavy  brougham  behind 
him.  The  hoofs  of  this  horse  are  the  admiration  of  veterinary  sur- 
geons, and  they  show  no  sign  of  undue  wear.  TJiis  horse  icas  unshod 
when  eight  years  old. 

2.  I  recently  saw  a  pony  seventeen  or  eighteen  years  old,  never 
shod,  except  for  a  short  time  when  in  the  breaker's  hands.  This 
breaker  shod  the  pony.     This  was  done  against  the  master's  wish  and 


544  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

without  his  knowledge.  The  breaker  was,  I  dare  say,  practical  enough 
in  other  details  of  his  calling,  but,  like  the  majority  of  his  countrymen, 
he  "  had  always  seen  horses  shod,  and  he  thought  they  always  must  be 
shod."  The  pony  was  sure-footed  without  shoes,  but  with  them  she 
nearly  fell  with  her  master  as  he  rode  her  home  from  the  breaker's. 
The  shoes  were  taken  off,  and  the  pony  did  her  work  admirably  with- 
out them  for  years.  She  has  done  plenty  of  work,  for  her  owner  tells 
me  that  he  has  frequently  driven  her,  and  also  ridden  her,  over  forty 
miles  in  the  day.  The  saying,  "  One  horse  can  wear  out  four  sets  of 
legs,"  does  not,  of  course,  apply  to  this  pony.  The  application  of  this 
saying  is  to  the  shod  horse,  whose  every  step  is  made  upon  iron.  As 
a  writer  has  well  said,  "  It  is  the  shoe^  not  the  road,  that  hurts  the 
horse." 

Now,  we  see  that  both  veterinarian  and  breaker  mistook  the  nail- 
lacerated,  contracted,  unused  foot  for  the  natural  healthy  foot.  The 
former,  raised  off  the  ground  with  an  iron  ring  called  a  shoe,  and  with 
the  insensitive  sole  and  frog  pared  away,  is  not  (when  the  shoe  is  first 
pulled  off)  fit  for  contact  with  the  ground.  In  such  a  case  time  must 
be  given  for  the  foot  to  recover  before  the  unshod  horse  can  be  asked 
to  work  barefoot. 

I  have  a  cast  of  the  off  fore-foot  of  a  mare  belonging  to  Mr. 
Whitmore  Baker.  This  cast  was  taken  in  December,  1882,  after  the 
mare  had  worked  barefoot  on  stony,  hilly  Devon  roads  for  two  years. 
She  was  unshod  in  December,  1880,  being  then  seven  years  old.  This 
foot  shows  no  signs  of  undue  wear,  and  I  shall  be  happy  to  show  the 
cast  to  any  one. — Land  and  Water, 


HOUSE-BUILDING  IN  THE  EAST. 

IN  England  house-building  is  a  matter  on  which,  in  spite  of  "jerry" 
builders,  one  can  look  with  comparative  equanimity.  In  Indo- 
China  it  is  a  very  different  affair.  Everything  that  is  a  source  of 
trouble  in  the  West  disappears  in  those  comfortable  latitudes.  A  site 
can  be  found  practically  anywhere.  The  jungle  furnishes,  for  the 
trouble  of  cutting  it,  as  much  material  as  may  be  required.  Com- 
paratively so  little  skill  is  wanted  to  start  as  an  architect  that  every 
man  can  be  his  own  house-builder,  and,  if  he  is  tolerably  diligent  and 
not  too  ambitious,  might  finish  his  house  in  a  few  days.  But,  as  a  set- 
off to  all  these  advantages,  it  is  a  very  difiicult  matter  to  raise  up  a 
house  which  is  not  rendered  dangerous  or  ineligible  by  the  nature  of 
the  soil,  the  idiosyncrasies  of  the  surrounding  spirits,  or  the  revolu- 
tionary character  of  the  timber  used.  Building  houses  is,  therefore, 
a  very  critical  operation,  and  not  to  be  undertaken  without  very  con- 
siderable Sabaistic  lore  and  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  all  the  ani- 


HOUSE-BUILDING  IN  THE  EAST.  545 

mistic  peculiarities  of  the  neighborhood.  Otherwise  the  house-builder 
simply  courts  disaster,  and  may  involve  not  only  his  own  family,  as 
well  as  himself,  in  overwhelming  difficulties,  but  may  actually  render 
a  whole  district  uninhabitable  by  his  unwarrantable  irritation  of  the 
spirits  dwelling  in  the  soil,  in  the  air,  and  in  the  very  logs  of  timber 
which  are  recklessly  used,  or  are  put  up  with  an  improper  exposure 
to  the  south  instead  of  to  the  north,  or  set  in  position  at  a  time  of 
year  when  presiding  demons  hold  that  such  things  ought  not  to  be 
done.  It  is,  however,  a  necessity,  even  of  Indo-Chinese  existence,  that 
mankind  should  have  houses  to  live  in.  For  the  instruction,  therefore, 
of  those  who  are  forced  by  necessity,  or  are  foolhardy  enough  to  be- 
lieve that  they  can  build  themselves  houses  without  coming  to  any 
particular  harm,  there  are  elaborate  text-books,  both  in  Burmese  and 
Siamese.  The  Burman  Dehtton  is  a  bulky  treatise,  containing  a  far- 
rago of  omens  and  signs  with  regard  to  all  possible  events  and  circum- 
stances, and  not  merely  to  the  process  of  building.  The  Siamese 
"  Tamra,"  or  "  Manual  of  House-Building,"  is  considerably  more  sys- 
tematic, and,  in  addition,  possesses  the  advantage  that  it  sticks  to  the 
subject  of  which  it  professes  to  treat.  The  theories  in  both  works  are 
based  on  and  elaborated  from  the  Shastras  which  record  the  customs 
of  the  Brahmans.  Notwithstanding  their  Buddhism,  which  prohibits 
all  such  beliefs,  the  Indo-Chinese  have  a  very  strong  regard  for  the 
Brahmanical  observances.  They  are  much  easier  to  comprehend,  or 
at  any  rate  more  fitted  to  seize  on  the  imagination,  than  the  abstruse 
problems  of  the  faith  of  the  Buddha.  Buddhist  metaphysical  posi- 
tions are  fine  things  to  confound  hostile  controversialists  with,  but  the 
common  Indo-Chinese  mind  yearns  for  something  more  concrete.  The 
house-building  code  is,  therefore,  a  very  popular  institution.  It  per- 
suades a  man  that  he  is  pious  when  he  has  an  internal  conviction  that 
he  ought  to  be  damned. 

The  first  thing  the  would-be  house-builder  has  to  do  is  to  find  out 
the  situation  of  the  great  dragon  that  encircles  the  earth  with  his 
body,  like  the  Midgard  serpent  of  Northern  mythology.  This  must 
be  ascertained  before  operations  are  begun  at  all,  for  it  will  have  a 
great  influence,  not  only  on  the  time  of  beginning  the  building,  but 
on  the  way  in  which  the  foundations  must  be  dug  and  the  method  of 
hoisting  the  posts  into  position.  This  the  Burmese  have  recorded  for 
them  in  a  rhyme  which  every  school-boy  can  repeat.  The  Siamese  are 
not  less  alive  to  the  necessity  of  accurate  information  on  the  subject, 
and  it  is  fully  set  out  in  the  "  Tamra."  The  reason  of  this  is  that 
when  you  come  to  dig  the  hole  for  the  main  post  of  the  house  you 
must  heap  up  the  earth  on  the  side  toward  the  Nagah's  belly.  Ter- 
rible consequences  follow  if  you  do  not  observe  this  preliminary  pre- 
caution. If  you  should  pile  up  your  mound  in  the  direction  of  the 
head  of  the  dragon,  your  negligence  or  ignorance  will  involve  the 
death  of  your  parents,  your  brothers,  and  the  patrons  of  your  house. 
VOL.  XXIV. — 35 


546  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

To  be  without  a  patron  in  Siam  or  Cambodia  is  to  get  your  name  put 
down  on  the  list  of  royal  slaves.  Insulting  the  dragon's  tail  is  even 
more  calamitous,  for  the  tail  is  a  most  touchy  member,  and  would  as 
soon  create  an  earthquake  and  ruin  the  whole  township  as  not.  The 
reckless  builder  who  did  such  a  thing  would,  therefore,  be  stoned  out 
of  the  community  as  a  public  enemy.  Touching  the  dragon's  back  is 
simple  lese-majeste.  The  lord  of  the  house  will  soon  find  out  his  crime, 
but  the  knowledge  will  come  too  late.  He  will  die.  The  belly  is  the 
only  safe  part.  If  you  choose  that  quarter  toward  which  to  heap  up 
your  earth,  then,  subject  to  a  number  of  other  precautions  to  be  men- 
tioned, you  are  comparatively  safe.  It  is  to  be  observed,  however, 
that  you  have  only  three  months  to  do  your  digging  in.  The  Kagah, 
for  all  that  he  is  so  testy,  sleeps  during  that  period,  or,  rather,  it  is 
the  disturbing  him  in  his  sleep  that  causes  all  the  mischief.  When  the 
quarter-year  has  passed  he  rouses  himself,  and  shifts  round  to  the  next 
point  of  the  compass,  and  there,  like  the  Korway  kraken,  composes 
himself  to  sleep  again.  Digging  operations  must  then  be  conducted 
according  to  the  new  rules.  Still,  the  time  allowed  is  not  unreasona- 
ble. Even  an  average  Indo-Chinese  can  dig  a  hole  for  a  house-post  in 
three  months.  When  you  have  settled  generally  how  you  ought  to 
dig,  there  are  a  number  of  special  rules  to  be  observed  in  the  digging 
itself.  It  will  never  do  to  go  blindly  ahead,  for  all  the  world  as  if 
you  were  a  navvy  on  piece-work.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  well  to  dig 
at  large  all  over  the  space  your  house  is  intended  to  cover.  In  fact, 
if  you  have  any  regard  for  yourself,  you  certainly  will.  There  are 
divers  reasons  for  this.  If  you  find  costly  articles,  silver  or  gold,  or 
the  images  of  men  and  deities,  it  is  a  most  happy  sign,  and  will  go 
far  to  counteract  all  but  willful  remissness  in  other  matters.  On  the 
other  hand,  when  bones  or  ashes  or  the  figures  of  wild  animals  are 
found,  the  deductions  are  most  unpropitious,  and,  if  you  persist  in 
going  on,  the  house  will  have  neither  luck  nor  peace.  If  the  remains 
of  previous  house-posts  are  found  still  lying  buried  in  the  ground,  they 
must  be  carefully  dug  out  and  carried  away,  for  if  this  were  not  done, 
and  a  new  building  were  to  be  run  up  over  the  old  remains,  sickness 
and  quarrelings  would  be  the  certain  result. 

In  addition  to  such  elementary  rules,  which  are  matters  of  universal 
knowledge  in  Indo-China,  there  are  so  many  others  that  every  one  but 
a  very  self-sufficient  person  will  submit  his  surface  soil  to  the  inspec- 
tion of  a  regular  professional  man,  an  expert  in  the  science  of  founda- 
tion-digging, before  he  makes  a  final  decision.  For  example,  though 
it  is  undoubtedly  most  lucky  to  find  silver  or  old  bricks  in  your  exca- 
vations, you  may  at  the  same  time  come  upon  a  colony  of  ants  or  other 
living  creatures  settled  upon  the  spot.  It  is  one  of  the  fundamental 
rules  of  Buddhism  that  the  breath  of  no  living  thing  is  to  be  taken, 
and  to  dispossess  them  is  not  by  any  means  a  creditable  proceeding. 
Moreover,  irrespectively  of  this  objection,  ants  can  bite  through  even 


HOUSE-BUILDING  IN  THE  EAST. 


547 


sun-toughened  skins,  so  that  there  is  a  direct  personal  argument  to  sup- 
port the  sentimental  objection.  Then,  again,  you  may  find  lead  in 
your  soil-turning.  There  is  not  the  smallest  hesitation  in  the  books  on 
a  question  like  this.  If  you  go  on  and  build  you  will  lose  slaves  and 
goods.  But,  for  all  the  lead  that  is  there,  the  turned-up  earth  may 
smell  of  beans,  or  may  have  the  fragrance  of  the  sacred  lotus  itself. 
This  is  a  most  happy  omen.  The  dwellers  in  a  house  raised  on  such 
land  will  be  most  fortunate,  and  the  soil  round  about  is  the  best  pos- 
sible for  cultivation.  In  such  a  dilemma  there  is  nothing  for  it  but  to 
call  in  a  Sayah  and  pay  him  to  work  out  the  problem,  to  make  a  reso- 
lution of  forces  for  you.  There  are  certain  amateur  ways  of  arriving 
at  a  conclusion  by  means  of  split  bamboos  and  heaps  of  paddy,  but 
they  are  apt  to  be  fallacious  and  afford  no  real  satisfaction  to  a  well- 
constituted  mind.  It  is  not  surprising  to  be  told  that  sand  is  not  a 
good  foundation  on  which  to  raise  a  house,  or  that  a  soil  which  is 
mainly  composed  of  small  stones  is  undesirable  ;  but  when  it  comes  to 
the  slope  of  the  ground,  or  the  friability  or  stiffness  of  the  earth,  none 
but  a  thoroughly  reckless  man  will  trust  to  his  own  unaided  intelligence. 
At  any  rate,  whether  you  get  the  advice  of  an  expert  or  not,  it  is 
imperative  that  you  should  carefully  turn  over  all  the  ground  where 
the  new  building  is  to  be.  Having  done  this,  it  is  a  matter  of  reason- 
able precaution  to  make  offerings  to  the  earth-spirit.  Acquaintance 
with  this  Phra  Phum  and  his  belongings  is  no  light  matter,  and  is 
likely  to  be  as  good  as  an  annuity  to  the  man  who  has  mastered  the 
details.  As  he  is  an  earthy  spirit  he  is  especially  liable  to  mortal  fail- 
ings, and  notably  possesses  a  very  short  temper,  which  will  brook  no 
deficiency  in  reverence.  It  will  not  do  to  be  ignorant  of  the  names  of 
his  father  and  mother  and  of  his  nine  children.  Forgetfulness  of  his 
possessions  is  equally  likely  to  cause  trouble.  There  must  be  no  hesi- 
tation as  to  the  proper  titles  of  his  house  and  the  tower  on  it,  his  cat- 
tle-shed, his  granary,  his  bridal  chamber,  his  thrashing-floor,  his  lands, 
his  garden,  his  monastery,  and  his  three  chief  servants.  Remissness 
in  any  one  of  these  particulars  is  apt  to  make  an  offering  dangerous 
rather  than  otherwise.  This  offering,  by  whomsoever  brought,  must 
be  set  down  at  the  extremity  of  the  toes  of  the  Phra,  who  thereupon 
graciously  takes  up  his  broom  and  sweeps  the  place  clean,  and  gives 
the  pious  votary  his  blessing.  If  an  ignorant  or  presumptuous  man 
should  place  his  gifts  near  the  head,  the  earth-spirit  would  curse  him 
with  terrible  imprecations,  and  brush  everything  away,  worshiper  and 
all.  Negotiations  with  this  deity  are  therefore  rather  ticklish  work, 
but  it  is  perilous  to  leave  them  undone.  The  site  being  settled,  and 
things  made  right  with  the  guardian  spirit  of  the  earth,  the  next  thing 
to  be  done  is  to  dig  holes  for  the  reception  of  the  posts.  It  is  neces- 
sary to  begin  with  that  for  the  chief  post,  and  the  hole  for  this  must 
not  be  dug  square,  but  in  the  form  of  a  triangle.  This  may  imply 
more  work,  but  that   can   not   be   helped.      When  the  hole  for  the 


548  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

main  post  is  finished,  go  on  with  the  others,  but  be  sure  to  do  it  in 
regular  order,  working  round  in  circles  from  right  to  left,  so  as  to  fol- 
low the  line  of  the  dragon's  body  from  head  to  tail.  When  it  comes 
to  the  hoisting  of  the  posts  into  position,  the  face  must  throughout  be 
turned  toward  the  back  of  the  Nagah,  a  little  inclining  toward  the  tail, 
and  the  post  must  be  heaved  up  toward  this  point  of  the  compass. 
Thus  in  the  first  three  months  of  the  year  you  must  face  west-south- 
west, and  haul  up  the  beam  from  the  northeast,  and  so  on  for  the  other 
quarters.  It  is  also  necessary  to  be  very  careful  in  the  selection  of  the 
timber  for  the  house.  Trees  especially  to  be  avoided  are  those  which 
have  no  flowers,  those  which  have  no  leaves,  trees  which  grow  on  ant- 
hills, trees  with  birds'  nests  on  them,  and  those  from  which  the  bark 
has  been  torn  off  from  whatever  cause.  Unhappily  these  distinctions 
are  not  obvious  in  timber  which  you  have  not  cut  yourself,  and  rascally 
Chinese  carpenters  will  not  hesitate  to  palm  off  upon  the  unwary 
wood  from  a  tree  on  which  scores  of  egrets — the  Eyeing,  or  sacred 
paddy-bird  of  the  Talaings — have  nested.  Chinamen  in  their  way  are 
nearly  as  unscrupulous  as  Manchester  piece-goods  manufacturers,  and 
have  as  little  regard  for  the  comfort  and  ultimate  opinion  of  their  cus- 
tomers. The  beams  for  the  house  must  all  be  measured  with  the 
standard  of  your  own  hand.  This,  however,  is  a  detail  which  hardly 
needs  to  be  strongly  urged  in  a  country  where  the  three-foot  rule  is 
unknown.  After  you  have  got  the  posts  up,  the  surface  of  the  ground 
must  be  smoothed  down,  and  then  the  posts  are  decorated  with  little 
bags  of  shells,  coins,  husked  rice,  and  the  like.  These  must  be  hung 
up  by  the  hands  of  a  maiden,  and  not  by  any  rude  male.  The  heads 
of  the  posts  are  also  covered  over  with  cloth,  for  the  safe  keeping  of 
the  guardian  spirit  of  the  house.  It  would  be  neither  seemly  nor  safe 
to  leave  him  exposed  to  the  elements.  The  final  ramming  in  of  the 
posts  is  done  at  an  hour  fixed  by  the  astrologers,  the  culminating  point 
of  some  happy  constellation.  There  is  much  shouting  and  feasting  on 
the  occasion. 

With  the  foundation  of  his  house  settled  satisfactorily,  the  sensi- 
bilities of  the  great  world-dragon  and  the  guardian  spirit  of  the  earth 
soothed  and  conciliated,  and  the  house-posts  raised  and  decorated  with 
proper  profusion,  the  house-builder  may  consider  himself  past  all  his 
troubles.  If  anything  has  been  done  wrong,  it  is  now  too  late  to  re- 
pair the  error.  If  everything  has  been  carried  out  in  seemly  and  or- 
derly fashion,  he  may  deem  himself  particularly  fortunate.  The  put- 
ting on  of  the  roof  and  the  fitting  up  of  the  plank  or  split  bamboo 
matting  walls  is  a  simple  matter,  and  may  be  done  according  to  the 
light  of  nature  and  with  what  dilatoriness  and  adornments  the  builder 
pleases,  so  long  as  he  does  not  depart  from  the  mundane  laws  of  use 
and  wont  and  infringe  upon  the  sumptuary  regulations.  That  is  even 
a  greater  offense  than  flouting  the  great  Nakh,  or  setting  up  posts  in 
defiance  of  the   angel   of  the  soil.     It  certainly  meets   with  swifter 


SKETCH  OF  SIR    CHARLES   WILLIAM  SIEMENS.    549 

and  more  obvious,  if  not  more  exemplary,  punishment.  "  There  are 
two  chances  in  the  stare  of  a  demon,"  says  the  Burmese  proverb,  "  there 
is  none  in  that  of  a  king."  One  formality,  indeed,  remains,  which  is 
often  omitted,  it  is  true,  but  which  no  man  of  well-ordered  mind  should 
fail  to  observe.  It  relates  to  the  setting  up  of  the  stair,  or  rather  lad- 
der, by  which  the  house  is  entered,  all  the  dwellings  in  Indo-China 
being  raised  off  the  ground  on  piles.  If  this  stair  is  turned  to  the 
south,  let  a  cat  be  the  first  living  creature  to  ascend.  If  you  manage 
this,  then  you  will  always  have  abundance  in  your  house.  The  diffi- 
culty is  to  make  the  cat  see  the  matter  in  the  same  light.  If  your 
steps  face  the  west  the  question  is  simpler.  All  you  have  to  do  is  to 
take  some  iron  in  your  hand  along  with  a  few  lotus-leaves  and  a  wisp 
of  kaing,  or  elephant-grass.  Everything  you  attempt  will  thereafter 
come  easy  to  you.  A  cock  should  crow  at  the  top  to  inaugurate  the 
stair  ascending  on  the  north  side  of  the  house.  This  also  is  a  matter 
likely  to  keep  you  out  of  your  dwelling  for  a  long  time  if  you  persist 
in  waiting  for  it.  Stairs  never  ascend  from  the  east,  for  the  same 
reason  that  no  Buddhist  should  sleep  with  his  feet  pointing  to  that 
quarter.  It  was  from  the  east  that  the  Lord  Buddha  came,  and  it 
would  be  scandalous  to  show  to  that  quarter  a  disrespect  that  would 
entail  severe  punishment  if  it  were  exhibited  toward  the  king  or  a  great 
man.  It  will  hardly  be  necessary  to  mention  that  there  is  only  one 
set  of  stairs  and  one  entrance  to  the  house,  if  built  according  to  the 
national  model. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that,  though  a  wooden  house  or  a  walled  hut 
does  not  seem  to  imply  much  expenditure  of  time,  labor,  or  capital  in 
its  construction,  yet,  in  reality,  what  with  the  perplexing  rules  to  be 
attended  to,  the  dangers  to  be  avoided,  and  the  spirits  to  be  propiti- 
ated, the  Eastern  house-builder  has  emphatically  a  hard  time  of  it,  and 
is  not  to  be  envied  by  Westerns  who  have  no  greater  grievances  than 
damp  walls,  defective  drainage,  perpetual  draughts,  and  chimneys  that 
will  not  draw. — Saturday  Review. 


SKETCH  OF  SIK  CHAELES  WILLIAM  SIEMENS. 

IN  a  paper  giving  an  account  of  the  British  Association  of  1882,  of 
which  Dr.  Siemens  was  president.  Professor  Emil  du  Bois-K-ey- 
mond  referred,  with  some  expressions  of  admiration,  to  the  many  ways 
in  which  the  name  of  Siemens  is  identified  with  the  most  important 
of  the  recent  advances  in  technical  science.  What  Krupp  is  among 
German  industrials  in  warlike  arts,  he  said,  the  collective  name  of 
Siemens  is  in  the  arts  of  peace.  Siemens  telegraph  wires  gird  the 
earth,  and  the  Siemens  cable-steamer  Faraday  is  continually  engaged 
in  laying  new  ones.  By  the  Siemens  method  has  been  solved  the 
problem,  by  the  side  of  which  that  of  finding  a  needle  in  a  hay-stack 


550  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

is  one  of  childish  simplicity,  of  fishing  out  in  the  stormy  ocean,  from 
a  depth  comparable  to  that  of  the  vale  of  Chamouni,  the  ends  of  a 
broken  cable.  Electrical  resistance  is  measured  by  the  Siemens  mer- 
cury unit.  "  Siemens  "  is  written  on  water-metres,  and  Russian  and 
German  revenue  officers  are  assisted  by  Siemens  apparatus  in  levying 
their  assessments.  The  Siemens  processes  for  gilding  and  silvering 
and  the  Siemens  anastatic  printing  mark  stages  in  the  development 
of  those  branches  of  industry.  Siemens  differential  regulators  control 
the  action  of  the  steam-engines  that  forge  English  arms  at  Woolwich 
and  that  of  the  chronographs  on  which  the  transit  of  the  stars  is 
marked  at  Greenwich.  The  Siemens  cast-steel  works  and  glass-houses, 
with  their  regenerative  furnaces,  are  admired  by  all  artisans.  The 
Siemens  electric  light  shines  in  assembly-rooms  and  public  places,  and 
the  Siemens  gas-light  competes  with  it ;  while  the  Siemens  electro- 
culture  in  greenhouses  bids  defiance  to  our  long  winter  nights.  The 
Siemens  electric  railway  is  destined  to  rule  in  cities  and  tunnels.  The 
Siemens  electric  crucible,  melting  three  pounds  of  platinum  in  twenty 
minutes,  was  a  wonder  of  the  Paris  Exposition,  which  might  well 
have  been  called  an  exposition  of  Siemens  apparatus  and  productions, 
so  prominent  were  they  there.  It  is  a  rare  phenomenon  when  a  whole 
family  becomes  so  distinguished  by  eminent  talent  in  a  particular  field 
of  activity  as  the  four  Siemens  brothers  have  been.  They  all  seem  to 
share  their  peculiar  talent  in  a  nearly  equal  degree,  and  to  use  it  for 
a  common  purpose  ;  and  so  heartily  have  they  assisted  each  other  that 
in  the  list  of  their  inventions  it  is  often  hard  to  draw  the  line  between 
what  shall  be  accredited  to  one,  what  to  another  of  the  brothers.  They 
all  worked  so  harmoniously  together,  says  the  biographer  of  Sir  Will- 
iam in  the  London  "  Times  " — "  the  idea  suggested  by  one  being  taken 
up  and  elaborated  by  another — that  it  is  hardly  possible  to  attribute 
to  each  his  own  proper  credit  for  their  joint  labor.  The  task,  too,  is 
rendered  all  the  harder  by  the  fact  that  each  brother  was  always  ready 
to  attribute  a  successful  invention  to  any  of  the  family  rather  than  to 
himself."  William  was  most  appreciated  in  England  because  he  lived 
and  worked  there  ;  Werner,  in  Germany,  because  there  was  his  home 
and  field  of  activity. 

Charles  William  Siemens  was  born  at  Lenthe,  in  Hanover,  April 
4,  1823.  He  received  his  early  education  at  the  "  Catharinum,"  in 
Lubeck  ;  then  studied  engineering  in  the  Polytechnical  School  at 
Magdeburg  ;  and  in  1841  and  1842  studied  in  the  University  of  Got- 
tingen,  where  he  enjoyed  the  instructions  of  Wohler  and  Himly.  Hav- 
ing finished  his  academical  career  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  and  dis- 
playing already  some  of  that  inventive  faculty  by  which  his  brother, 
six  years  older,  was  distinguished,  he  entered  the  engine-works  of 
Count  Stolberg,  where  his  attention  was  directed  in  the  line  of  the 
practical  applications  of  science  to  industry.  He  and  Werner  having 
devised  an  improved  process  in  electro-plating  with  silver  and  gold, 


SKETCH  OF  SIR    CHARLES   WILLIAM  SIEMENS.    551 

William  went  to  England  in  1843  to  dispose  of  the  invention.  In  his 
lack  of  knowledge  of  the  strange  land,  and  his  ignorance  of  our  lan- 
guage, he  made  his  first  visit  to  an  undertaker,  thinking  that  he  must 
be  the  proper  person  to  take  up,  or  "  undertake,"  and  push  the  new 
application.  A  call  upon  Mr.  Elkington,  who  then  controlled  the  gild- 
ing industry  in  England,  was  attended  by  a  more  satisfactory  result, 
and  Siemens  went  home  so  well  paid  for  his  trouble  that  he  came  back 
the  next  year  with  his  chronometric  regulator  for  steam-engines.  This 
invention  was  less  successful,  commercially,  than  the  other  had  been, 
but  it  made  Siemens  known  to  the  engineering  world,  and  it  has  been 
applied  to  the  regulation  of  the  great  transit  instrument  at  the  Green- 
wich Observatory.  The  process  of  anastatic  printing,  another  of  the 
earlier  inventions  of  the  brothers,  was  made  the  subject  of  a  lecture 
at  the  Royal  Institution,  by  Faraday,  in  1845.  It  is  worthy  of  remark 
that  the  last  lecture  by  Faraday  at  this  Institution  was  on  the  advan- 
tages of  the  Siemens  furnace.  Another  of  the  inventions  of  this  pe- 
riod was  the  water-metre,  which,  according  to  Sir  William  Thomson, 
"  exactly  met  an  important  practical  requirement,  and  has  had  a  splendid 
thirty  years'  success."  The  adoption  of  England  as  his  home  by  Will- 
iam Siemens  was  determined  by  the  fact  that  he  found  the  patent 
laws  of  that  country  more  favorable  to  the  inventor  than  those  of  his 
own  land. 

Turning  his  attention  to  finding  means  for  recovering  the  heat 
which  is  allowed  to  go  to  waste  in  engineering  and  manufacturing 
processes,  William  Siemens  constructed  a  four  horse -power  steam- 
engine  with  regenerative  condensers,  which  he  set  up,  in  1847,  in  the 
factory  of  Mr.  John  Hicks  at  Bolton.  This  machine  failed  to  become 
commercially  successful ;  but  Mr.  Siemens,  continuing  his  studies  in 
the  same  direction,  and  having  become  acquainted  and  impressed  with 
the  dynamical  theory  of  heat,  read  a  paper  before  the  Institution  of 
Civil  Engineers  in  1853,  "  On  the  Conversion  of  Heat  into  Mechanical 
Effect,"  for  which  he  obtained  the  Telford  prize.  In  this  paper  he  de- 
fined a  perfect  engine  as  one  in  which  all  the  heat  applied  to  the  elastic 
medium  is  consumed  in  its  expansion  behind  a  working  piston,  leaving 
no  portion  to  be  thrown  into  a  condenser  or  into  the  atmosphere,  and 
advised  that  expansion  should  be  carried  to  the  utmost  possible  limit. 
Two  years  afterward  he  exhibited  two  steam-engines,  with  regener- 
ative condensers,  at  the  Paris  Exhibition. 

The  greatest  of  the  inventions  with  which  the  name  of  Siemens  is 
associated  is  that  of  the  regenerative  furnace  for  glass-making  and 
metallurgical  operations,  which  he  worked  out  in  connection  with  his 
brother  Frederick,  who  was  also  his  pupil.  By  its  means  the  defects 
of  the  discharge  of  the  products  of  combustion  at  a  very  high  tempera- 
ture, and  in  an  incompletely  combined  state,  are  remedied  ;  a  nearer  ap- 
proach is  made  to  saving  and  applying  to  the  work  all  the  heat  which 
the  combustibles  are  capable  of  aJffording  ;  a  very  high  temperature  is 


552  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

attained,  and  steel  is  produced  on  the  open  hearth.  Having  matured 
his  process  at  his  experimental  works  in  Birmingham,  he  laid  the  foun- 
dations of  an  industry  which  has  attained  a  very  great  development 
in  England,  and  lies  at  the  base  of  extensive  factories  all  over  the 
world.  The  application  of  the  principle  of  the  regenerative  furnace 
has  been  extended  to  numerous  industrial  purposes  in  which  great  heat 
is  required ;  for  the  powers  of  the  furnace  are  limited  in  practice  only 
by  the  nature  of  the  materials  of  which  it  is  constructed.  For  the  kind 
of  services  exemplified  in  this  invention  the  Society  of  Arts  awarded 
to  Dr.  Siemens,  in  1874,  its  Albert  medal  "for  his  researches  in  con- 
nection with  the  laws  of  heat,  and  the  practical  applications  of  them  to 
furnaces  used  in  the  arts,  and  for  his  improvements  in  the  manufac- 
ture of  iron,  and  generally  for  the  services  rendered  by  him  in  connec- 
tion with  economization  of  fuel  in  its  various  applications  to  manu- 
factures and  the  arts."  Only  a  week  before  his  death,  the  Council  of 
the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers  awarded  him  the  Howard  quinquen- 
nial prize,  which  had  been  previously  awarded  only  to  Sir  Henry  Bes- 
semer for  a  similar  meritorious  service. 

Sir  William  Siemens  and  his  brother  Werner  have  co-operated  in 
electrical  invention,  beginning  with  the  Siemens  armature,  which  they 
introduced  about  twenty-five  years  ago.  The  brothers,  with  Mr.  Halske, 
of  Berlin,  established  the  Siemens  telegraph-works  in  London,  whence 
the  most  important  telegraph  and  cable  lines  in  the  world  have  been 
supplied,  and  where  valuable  improvements  have  originated.  The 
house  has  constructed  four  transatlantic  cables — the  Indo-European 
line,  the  North  China  Cable,  the  Platino-Brazilian  Cable,  and  others. 
The  want  of  a  suitable  vessel  had  been  a  serious  difiiculty  in  laying 
the  long  cables  across  the  Atlantic,  and  Dr.  Siemens  had  the  Fara- 
day constructed,  with  novel  features  that  made  it  admirably  adapted 
for  its  work.  In  1860,  while  experimenting  with  the  Malta  and  Alex- 
andria Cable,  he  devised  a  pyrometer  for  measuring  temperature 
through  the  amount  of  resistance  developed  in  conductors  by  increas- 
ing heat.  In  1867  he  read  before  the  Royal  Society  a  paper  on  the 
conversion  of  dynamical  into  chemical  force,  at  the  same  meeting  at 
which  Sir  Charles  Wheatstone  announced  his  simultaneous  discovery 
of  the  same  principle,  while  Mr.  Cromwell  Varley  had  applied  for  a 
patent  embodying  the  idea.  Subsequently  the  Siemens  dynamo  was 
developed.  We  next  find  Dr.  Siemens's  name  associated  with  the  elec- 
tric light,  electric  railways,  and  the  electrical  transmission  of  power.  A 
fine  illustration  of  the  latter  application  is  given  by  the  Portrush  and 
Bushmills  Railway  in  the  north  of  Ireland,  opened  last  September, 
where  passengers  are  carried  on  a  line  six  and  a  half  miles  long  of 
steep  gradients  and  sharp  curves  "  at  a  good  ten  miles  an  hour,"  solely 
by  the  water-power  of  the  river  Bush,  applied  through  turbines  to  a 
dynamo  at  a  distance  of  seven  miles.  At  his  own  residence,  near  Tun- 
bridge  Wells,  "  not  only  did  electricity  perform  a  large  part  of  the 


SKETCH   OF  SIR   CHARLES   WILLIAM  SIEMENS,   553 

actual  work  of  the  farm,  sawing  wood  and  pumping  water,  but  it  was 
made  to  supply  in  part  the  place  of  the  sun  itself,  and  assist  the  growth 
of  plants  and  fruits." 

The  latest  research  having  a  practical  bearing,  with  which  Dr.  Sie- 
mens's  name  is  associated,  was  that  which  had  for  its  ultimate  end  econ- 
omy of  the  fuel  used  in  domestic  consumption  and  the  abolition  of 
smoke.  With  these  purposes  he  was  studying  plans  for  extracting 
the  gas  from  coal,  and  burning  the  gas  and  the  coke  separately,  with  a 
promise  of  successful  realization  which  Sir  William  Thomson  has  well 
indicated  in  relating  an  incident  that  happened  on  the  day  of  Dr.  Sie- 
mens's  death.  On  the  19th  of  November  Sir  William  was  accosted 
in  a  manner  of  which  most  persons  occupied  with  science  have  not 
infrequent  experience  ;  "  Can  you  scientific  people  not  save  us  from 
these  black  and  yellow  city  fogs  ?  "  The  instant  answer  was  :  "  Sir  Will- 
iam Siemens  is  going  to  do  it ;  and  I  hope,  if  we  live  a  few  years  longer, 
we  shall  have  seen  almost  the  last  of  them."  An  apparatus  which  he 
had  devised  for  the  application  of  his  plan  to  steam-machinery  was  to 
have  been  set  in  operation  at  the  end  of  November. 

Another  research  in  which  Dr.  Siemens  was  engaged,  all  theoreti- 
cal, was  into  the  manner  in  which  the  solar  heat  is  kept  up  ;  and  he 
sought  to  show  that,  as  in  his  own  regenerative  furnaces,  none  of  the 
heat  is  lost,  but  that  all  is  kept  alive  in  some  form,  ultimately  to  be 
returned  to  the  sun  and  to  renew  its  energies  in  perpetuity, 

One  of  Sir  William  Siemens's  biographers  well  says  of  him  that,  in 
whatever  direction  he  turned,  his  thoughts  seemed  to  perceive  new 
methods  of  working  out  old  problems,  or  to  discover  new  problems 
which  it  immediately  became  his  province  to  solve  ;  and  it  is  said  to 
have  been  a  common  saying  in  his  workshops,  that  as  soon  as  any 
particular  problem  had  been  given  up  by  everybody  as  a  bad  job,  it 
had  only  to  be  taken  to  Dr.  Siemens  for  him  to  suggest  half  a  dozen 
ways  of  solving  it,  two  of  which  would  be  complicated  and  imprac- 
ticable, two  difficult,  and  two  perfectly  satisfactory. 

Sir  William  Siemens  was  not  a  voluminous  writer,  but  thirty-five 
papers  are  attributed  to  him  in  the  Royal  Society's  catalogue  of  scien- 
tific papers,  published  in  1873.  He  has  done  much  since,  which  is 
probably  represented  by  literary  results.  Plis  last  public  lecture  was 
delivered  March  13, 1883,  and  was  on  "  The  Electrical  Transmission  and 
Storage  of  Power."  He  was  fully  supplied  with  honors  and  titles,  sci- 
entific and  civil,  and  was  a  member  of  numerous  learned  societies. 

Sir  William  Thomson  says  that  "  in  private  life,  Sir  William  Sie- 
mens, with  his  lively,  bright  intelligence,  always  present,  and  eager  to 
give  pleasure  and  benefit  to  those  around  him,  was  a  most  lovable 
man,  singularly  unselfish,  and  full  of  kind  thought  and  care  for  others." 

Dr.  Siemens  died  on  the  19th  of  November  last,  of  ossification  of 
the  heart,  in  connection  with  the  results  of  a  fall  which  he  had  suffered 
on  the  5th.     His  funeral  was  held  in  Westminster  Abbey. 


554 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


correspond;ence 


THE  AGE  OF  TEEES. 
Messrs.  Editors : 

HAVING  been  a  regular  reader  of  "  The 
Popular  Science  Monthly  "  from  its 
commencement,  I  have,  of  course,  noticed 
the  various  articles  having  reference  to  the 
value  of  the  concentric  rings  in  determin- 
ing the  age  of  trees  which  from  time  to 
time  have  appeared  in  its  columns,  the  last 
of  which,  in  your  August  issue,  induces  me 
to  give  you  the  result  of  my  observations 
upon  this  subject.  I  have  had  my  atten- 
tion directed  to  it  during  a  residence  of  over 
forty  years  in  Florida,  during  which  my 
views  as  to  the  value  of  the  rings  in  deter- 
mining the  age  of  trees  have  undergone  a 
change.  For  the  first  few  years  my  efforts 
were  directed  toward  securing  a  grateful 
shade  for  the  streets  of  the  city  of  Jackson- 
ville, and  for  this  purpose  the  water-oak  was 
selected  on  account  of  its  beauty,  symme- 
try of  form,  and  rapid  growth.  And  now 
the  appellation  of  "  Forest  City,"  applied  to 
it  by  visitors,  is  in  no  sense  inappropriate, 
for  many  of  the  older  trees  have  attained 
a  size  which  in  the  State  of  New  York, 
whence  I  came,  would  have  required  a  hun- 
dred years  to  reach.  Strangers  from  the 
North  are  apt  to  overestimate  the  age  of 
our  trees,  and  the  number  of  rings  pre- 
sented appears  to  confirm  in  many  instances 
the  correctness  of  their  estimate.  When 
first  called  upon  to  account  for  the  discrep- 
ancy shown  by  the  rings,  and  the  known 
age  of  the  tree,  I  was  perplexed  and  at  a 
loss  to  find  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the 
problem.  But,  having  from  my  first  arrival 
here  kept  a  careful  record  of  the  weather, 
an  analysis  of  my  tables,  a  comparison  with 
the  record  made  by  Nature  on  her  infallible 
tablets  in  the  trees  furnished  me  the  key 
to  it. 

Here,  as  well  as  at  the  North,  the  cold 
of  winter  puts  a  stop  to  vegetable  growth, 
and  in  all  exogenous  trees  a  concentric 
ring  will  be  formed,  embracing  all  woody 
matter  deposited  since  the  preceding  stop 
to  its  growth  ;  but  here  in  this  climate  causes 
are  in  operation  that  frequently  produce  as 
complete  a  stop  to  vegetable  growth  as  docs 
the  cold  of  winter. 

Our  'spring  begins  in  February,  when 
growth  commences  a  new  deposit  between 
the  bark  and  wood,  but  often  (not  always) 
there  comes  so  severe  a  drought  during  late 
spring  and  early  summer  as  to  produce  as 
full  and  complete  a  stop  to  vegetable  growth 
as  does  the  cold  of  winter ;  immediately 
after  comes  on  our  rainy  season,  generally 


about  the  middle  or  last  of  June,  producing 
a  rapid  and  luxuriant  growth,  which  con- 
tinues until  winter  again  puts  a  stop  to  it. 
Our  rainy  seasons,  however,  do  not  consist 
of  deluges  of  rain  that  overflood  the  country, 
but  of  daily  showers,  occurring  in  the  early 
pai't  of  the  afternoon,  lasting  an  hour  or 
two,  leaving  the  sky  bright  and  clear,  the 
air  cool  for  the  rest  of  the  twenty-four 
hours,  comfortable  to  man,  and  favorable 
to  luxuriant  vegetable  growth.  The  rainy 
seasons,  when  regular,  continue  day  after 
day,  for  about  sixty  days,  but  often  there 
is  an  interval  of  clear,  sunshiny  weather, 
for  about  a  fortnight,  between  the  rainy 
periods,  which  carries  the  rainy  season  into 
the  fall  months.  Upon  examination  of 
the  tree,  it  will  be  found  that,  when  those 
severe  droughts  have  put  a  stop  to  vegetable 
growth,  a  concentric  ring  well  defined  has 
been  produced,  and  the  growth  which  has 
occurred  during  the  rainy  season  and  until 
winter's  cold  has  formed  another  and  per- 
haps a  thicker  ring,  making  two  rings  in 
one  year.  But  the  phenomena  of  such  a  year 
are  not  necessarily  repeated  each  year,  for 
considerable  variation  occurs. 

What  physiological  meaning  is  attached 
to  these  rings  ?  They  simply  mark  the 
amount  of  growth  of  woody  matter  depos- 
ited day  by  day  between  the  periods  when 
a  stop  to  vegetable  growth  has  prevented 
daily  deposit  and  produced  a  line  of  demar- 
kation,  whether  from  drought  of  summer  or 
cold  of  winter. 

For  some  two  or  three  years  before  his 
lamented  death,  Professor  Jeffries  Wyman 
was  exploring  the  mounds  of  Florida.  It 
was  my  privilege  to  enjoy  his  acquaint- 
ance and  learn  his  views  on  matters  of  sci- 
ence in  which  we  were  both  interested. 
I  have  heard  him  express  his  belief  that 
he  had  reached  an  approximate  age  of 
some  of  the  mounds  which  he  had  explored, 
by  the  indications  which  the  trees  growing 
upon  them  had  furnished.  It  so  happened 
that  we  were  one  time  walking  down-town 
together  and  passed  a  lot  where  prepara- 
tions for  building  a  dwelling-house  were 
going  on,  and  a  tree  which  stood  upon  the 
proposed  site  was  being  cut  down.  He  re- 
marked that  it  was  sacrilege  to  cut  down 
so  noble  a  tree  ;  he  would  have  changed 
the  site  of  the  house  and  let  the  tree  re- 
main as  a  shade,  "for,"  said  he,  "  it  would 
take  a  hundred  years  to  produce  such  an- 
other tree."  In  that,  I  told  him,  he  was 
mistaken,  as  I  knew  the  age  of  that  tree, 
and  it  was  not  yet  thirty  years  old.   "  Impos- 


CORRESP  ONDENCE, 


555 


siblc ! "  said  he,  and  proposed,  as  the  tree 
had  been  felled  and  lay  on  the  ground,  to 
go  over  and  count  the  rings,  to  which  I  as- 
sented, and  looked  on  while  the  professor 
undertook  the  task.  I  soon  saw  that  he 
was  under  considerable  perplexity.  He  said 
he  found  it  no  easy  matter,  as  some  of  the 
rings  were  so  indistinct  that  he  was  un- 
able to  decide  whether  they  were  single  or 
double,  ''  but,"  said  he,  "  I  can  make  out 
thirty  or  more,  but  how  many  more  I  will  not 
venture  to  say."  I  carefully  examined  the 
rings,  and  saw  what  I  had  seen  before.  I 
have  no  doubt  that  at  least  forty  rings  could 
have  been  identified  by  a  close  and  critical 
examination.  I  reiterated  my  statement  as 
to  the  real  age  of  the  tree,  for  thirty  years 
before  I  had  seen  corn  growing  on  this  spot. 
I  told  him  the  tree  which  he  had  just 
examined  presented  a  true  record  of  the 
weather,  so  far  as  drought  and  rainfall  were 
concerned,  since  it  had  been  a  tree,  and  in- 
vited him  to  call  at  my  office  and  examine 
the  records  which  I  had  kept  during  the 
same  period,  and  he  would  find  a  confirma- 
tion of  what  I  had  stated.  "  This  theory," 
says  he,  "  is  new  to  me,  but  it  is  plausible, 
and  the  facts  here  presented  seem  to  sub- 
stantiate it."  His  death,  after  his  return 
North  that  year,  put  a  stop  to  further  sci- 
entific investigations  in  Florida  on  his  part, 
but  the  reasons  then  given  have  induced 
many  others  to  change  their  views  as  to  the 
value  of  concentric  rings  in  determining  the 
age  of  trees.  In  a  climate  like  that  of 
Florida  they  certainly  are  not  to  be  de- 
pended on  ;  how  it  may  be  in  a  more  north- 
ern latitude  I  will  not  undertake  to  assert 
or  deny,  but  it  seems  to  me  probable  that 
any  arrest  of  growth,  from  climatic  or  other 
causes,  will  be  indicated  by  some  peculiarity 
in  the  formation  of  the  concentric  rings  of 
the  tree ;  and  it  may  in  some  instances  pre- 
sent two  rings  instead  of  one  to  mark  an 
entire  year's  growth. 

Very  respectfully, 

A.  S.  Baldwin,  M.  D. 
Jacksonville,  Fla.,  September  27, 1883. 


BIRTH-RATE    IN    A   NEW    HAMPSHIRE 
TOWN. 
Messrs.  Editors : 

While  preparing  a  history  of  Chester- 
field, Cheshire  County,  New  Hampshire,  the 
writer  has  had  occasion  to  collect  the  birth- 
records  of  several  hundred  families,  includ- 
ing both  original  settlers  and  their  descend- 
ants. These  families  may  be  regarded  as 
typical  New  England  families,  the  original 
settlers  having  come,  for  the  most  part, 
from  Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  and  Rhode 
Island.  The  foreign  element  has  always 
been  very  small  in  the  town.  A  careful  in- 
spection of  the  birth-records  in  question 
(taking  into  account  the  children  of  one 


marriage  only,  in  cases  in  which  the  father 
married  more  than  once,  and  excluding  the 
still-born)  yields  the  following  results : 

1.  The  total  number  of  births  in  165 
families,  from  1750  to  1810,  was  1,359,  or 
an  average  number  of  S^f  to  each  family. 

2.  The  total  number  of  births  in  328 
famihes,  from  1810  to  1870,  was  1,825,  or 
an  average  number  of  5^|f^  to  each  family. 

3.  The  average  number  of  births  in  140 
families,  from  1810  to  1840,  was  6f  g. 

These  figures  show  that  there  was  a 
marked  decrease  in  the  birth-rate  of  Ches- 
terfield families  between  1810  and  1840, 
and  that  in  the  period  of  sixty  years,  from 
1810  to  1870,  this  decrease  was  still  more 
marked. 

If  what  is  true  of  this  town,  in  this  re- 
spect, is  also  true  of  the  majority  of  New 
England  towns,  as  is  quite  probable,  it 
would  appear  that  the  birth-rate  in  New 
England  families  has  steadily  decreased 
since  the  introduction  of  railroads  and  the 
extensive  establishment  of  manufactories. 
0.  E.  Randall. 

West  Cuesteefikld,  N.  H.,  September  3, 1883. 


"TIDAL  ANOMALIES." 
Messrs.  Editors  ' 

In  the  January  number  of  your  journal 
there  is  a  communication  under  the  above- 
named  title,  from  G.  W.  Grim,  of  the  bark 
Coryphene.  Referring  to  a  preceding  letter 
of  mine,  he  says  of  my  article,  "After  dem- 
onstrating, as  a  result  of  Professor  Schnei- 
der's theory,  a  great  inequality  in  the  daily 
range  of  the  tides,"  etc. 

The  gentleman  entirely  misconceives  the 
purport  of  my  criticism.  I  showed  that 
Professor  Schneider's  theory  is  demonstra- 
bly false,  and  my  reference  to  the  New 
York  tides  was  merely  to  show  by  them  that 
the  tlieory  does  not  conform  to  the  facts. 
The  "  daily  inequality  "  is  easy  to  explain  : 
most  of  those  given  by  Mr.  Grim  present  no 
difficulty  at  all — with  others,  when  the  fads 
are  established,  the  explanation  will  follow. 

No  theory  of  the  tides  is  of  any  value 
except  as  based  on  facts — in  which  respect 
Mr.  Grim's  theory  is  worse  off  than  Mr. 
Schneider's.  A  theory  of  the  tides  resting 
solely  on  one's  inner  consciousness  is  not  a 
valuable  contribution  to  knowledge. 

R.  W.  McFarland. 
Ohio  State  Univeesity,  December  27, 1883. 


CARRYING-POWER  OP  FLUID  CURRENTS. 
Messrs.  Editors  : 

I  SEE  that  in  your  November  number, 
page  95,  Mr.  Carter  applies  the  "  law  of 
carrying-power  of  currents  "  (R  a  v®)  to 
blood-currents  carrying  waste  matter.  Now, 
I  make  no  objection  to  the  general  correct- 
ness of  Mr.  Carter's  conclusions,  but  I  am 


556 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


sure  that  this  is  an  entire  misapplication  of 
the  law. 

The  fact  is,  this  law  is  so  often  misun- 
derstood and  misapplied  that  it  becomes 
dangerous  to  use  it  without  clear  concep- 
tions of  its  nature.  By  many  good  hy- 
draulic engineers  it  has  been  confounded 
with  the  law  of  erosive  power  of  currents ; 
by  others,  with  the  quantity  of  material  car- 
ried in  suspension  ;  and  now  Mr.  Carter  con- 
founds it  with  quantity  of  matter  carried  in 
solution.  It  were  well  if,  in  popular  lan- 
guage^ the  name  of  the  law  were  changed. 
Perhaps  it  would  be  less  liable  to  be  misun- 
derstood if  it  were  called  *■'' lifting-power 
of  currentsJ'^  It  expresses  only  the  size  of 
the  largest  transportable  particle.     It  is  a 


law  which  concerns  mainly  the  geologist  and 
the  ore-dresser.  The  geologist  finds  certain 
bowlders  scattered  about  in  the  lower  part 
of  a  valley.  The  question  is.  Were  they 
brought  by  currents ;  and,  if  so,  what  was 
the  velocity  ?  It  is  applied  thus,  by  Dana, 
in  discussing  the  material  brought  down  by 
the  Connecticut  River  during  the  Champlain 
epoch.  Again,  the  ore-dresser  has  crushed 
rock,  which  he  wishes  to  sort  by  means  of  a 
current  decreasing  in  velocity  in  its  course. 
The  question  is,  Where  will  the  particles  of 
different  sizes  drop  ?  I  do  not  know  any 
other  cases  of  practical  application.  Cer- 
tainly it  can  have  no  application  to  matters 
in  solution.  Joseph  Le  Conte. 

Beekeley,  Cal.,  Kovember  22, 1883. 


EDITOR'S    TABLE. 


SCIENCE  AS  A  nOPE  IN  POLITICS. 

THE  following  paragraph  has  been 
circulating  through  the  newspa- 
pers :  "  The  Lord  Mayor  of  London,  in 
welcoming  Professor  Huxley  to  the  city 
recently,  suggested  that  the  position  of 
President  of  the  Royal  Society  was 
really  one  of  even  greater  importance 
than  that  of  Prime  Minister ;  Mr.  Glad- 
stone is  chief  Minister  of  England,  but 
Professor  Huxley  was  '  the  head  of  the 
intellectual  life  of  the  world.' "  The 
complaisant  utterances  of  eminent  offi- 
cials, who  are  ever  expected  to  say  the 
agreeable  thing  that  shall  put  their 
guests  at  ease,  are  not  to  be  taken  too 
seriously;  yet  there  is  considerable  sig- 
nificance in  this  declaration  of  the  Lord 
Mayor  of  London,  both  from  its  impli- 
cation of  the  vast  changes  that  have 
been  wrought  by  science  in  the  views 
of  human  affairs,  and  from  the  open 
recognition  of  these  changes  by  so  con- 
spicuous a  party. 

The  advance  of  science  is  evinced  in 
numberless  ways,  but  our  weightiest 
proof  of  it  is  found  in  the  gradual  ac- 
ceptance of  enlarged  in  place  of  nar- 
rower views  of  the  subject.  New  dis- 
coveries are  important;  the  widening 
of  the  ranges  of  research  is  important ; 
the  extension  of  generalizations  and  the 
better  organization  of  positive  knowl- 


edge are  important;  but  more  impor- 
tant still  is  the  growing  general  recog- 
nition that  science  is  the  grand  agency 
in  modern  times  for  reshaping  the  com- 
mon opinions  of  the  community. 

By  the  narrower  view  of  science,  we 
mean  what  may  be  called  that  profes- 
sional conception  of  it  by  which  it  is  re- 
stricted to  certain  definite  experimental 
results.  Our  literary  and  theological 
friends  are  especially  solicitous  that  the 
term  science  should  be  confined  to  pTxys- 
«c.7Z  science  merely — laboratory  science, 
observatory  science,  manipulatory  sci- 
ence of  any  sort  that  can  be  regarded  as 
belonging  properly  to  specialists.  But 
they  grow  jealous  of  it  when  it  takes  on 
that  wider  and  deeper  meaning  which 
has  been  given  to  it  by  the  growth  of 
ideas  in  these  later  times,  and  when  it 
is  seen  to  involve  a  new  method  of 
thought,  of  the  most  comprehensive  ap- 
plication, and  bearing  upon  the  whole 
circle  of  human  interests.  They  are 
very  commendatory  of  science,  so  long 
as  it  is  busy  establishing  new  physical 
facts  and  extending  new  physical  truths, 
but  they  regard  it  as  an  impertinent 
usurper  when  it  interferes  Avith  that 
old  order  of  conceptions  which  per- 
vades the  common  life. 

But  it  has  long  been  seen  by  the 
more  discerning  that  one  of  the  great 


EDITOR'S   TABLE. 


SS7 


results  of  the  striking  advance  and  wid- 
ening influence  of  modern  scientific 
knowledge  must  be  a  sharp  revision  of 
the  ancient  and  current  valuations  of 
great  men.  The  old  standards  can  not 
continue  to  be  accepted,  and  the  decla- 
ration of  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London  is  a 
clear  admission  of  it.  He  represents  the 
position  of  Professor  Huxley  as  Presi- 
dent of  the  Royal  Society  not  merely 
as  the  head  of  an  eminent  body  of  Eng- 
lish investigators,  distinguished  as  that 
position  would  be,  but  as  "the  head  of 
the  intellectual  life  of  the  world,"  and 
he  gives  greater  emphasis  to  the  state- 
ment by  affirming  that  Huxley's  position 
is  "  really  one  of  even  greater  impor- 
tance" than  that  of  Gladstone,  Prime 
Minister  of  England.  This  is  in  no 
sense  a  comparison  of  the  talents  or 
genius  of  two  distinguished  personali- 
ties, but  a  comparison  of  their  positions 
as  representative  men,  and  an  affirma- 
tion of  the  superiority  of  the  illustrious 
scientist  to  the  illustrious  politician. 
The  deeper  meaning  of  this  averment 
is  that  it  brings  into  contrast  two  types 
of  character — that  formed  under  scien- 
tific influences  and  embodying  its  spirit, 
and  that  formed  under  political  influ- 
ences and  embodying  its  spirit.  The 
immense  import  of  the  statement  arises 
from  its  recognition  that  a  new  order 
of  men  has  arisen  in  these  times  and 
worked  its  way  to  acknowledged  su- 
pereminence  as  leaders  in  "  the  intel- 
lectual life  of  the  world."  This  means 
a  great  deal. 

Undoubtedly  the  great  changes  of 
modern  thought  which  threaten  to  dis- 
place an  old  ideal  of  great  men,  and  to 
substitute  a  new  ideal,  have  far-reaching 
consequences,  which  may  turn  out  to 
be  of  the  most  practical  kind.  It  would 
be  folly  to  deny  that  in  recent  years 
there  has  been  a  rapid  decline  in  the 
respect  generally  entertained  for  emi- 
nent political  men.  The  world  has  al- 
ways worshiped  successful  politicians, 
and  will  no  doubt  long  continue  to  wor- 
ship them  as  the  embodiments  of  power 


in  society;  but,  as  the  possession  of  po- 
litical power  becomes  more  and  more 
a  matter  of  accident,  there  will  be  in- 
creasing hoUowness  in  the  homage  ren- 
dered to  those  who  have  had  the  good 
luck  to  get  possession  of  official  places. 
Already  political  success  has  altogether 
ceased  to  imply  greatness  of  character  ; 
the  machinery  of  partisan  politics  may 
give  prominence  to  a  wary  and  skillful 
manager — the  tricky  manoeuvring  of  a 
convention  may  furnish  a  President — 
but  nobody  is  deceived  into  supposing 
that  distinguished  merit  is  thereby  dis- 
closed, or  that  genuine  greatness  has 
met  with  the  honor  to  which  it  is  en- 
titled. Incontestably,  there  are  no  such 
shams  and  humbugs  in  modern  society 
as  successful  politicians.  "We  do  not 
expect  them  to  be  men  of  solid  acquisi- 
tions, to  have  mastered  the  knowledge 
that  is  needful  for  statesmen,  or  to  ex- 
emplify anything  like  manliness  and  in- 
dependence of  character.  These  traits 
are  all  in  the  way  of  political  success. 
Transparency  and  uprightness  of  mind 
are  not  wanted,  insincerity  and  crook- 
edness of  mind  are  indispensable  to  the 
political  manager.  He  views  all  things 
with  reference  to  immediate  results, 
and  holds  any  expedients  justifiable 
that  will  enable  him  to  win  in  partisan 
conflict.  The  school  of  politics,  in  short, 
gives  us  men  that  are  not  entitled  to 
public  respect,  and  this  scandalous  fact 
is  universally  understood. 

But  are  we  to  regard  this  as  the 
hopeless  finality  of  things  in  the  po- 
litical and  public  sphere?  There  are 
strong  reasons  for  taking  a  different 
view  and  indulging  in  better  anticipa- 
tions. Agencies  are  at  work  which 
will  form  men  of  more  elevated  char- 
acter. We  look  to  the  extension  of 
science  and  the  deepening  of  scientific 
influences  to  give  us  minds  capable  of 
improving  the  existing  state  of  things. 
It  is  impossible  to  overestimate  the  good 
that  may  be  hoped  from  this  scientiflo 
influence,  as  it  becomes  strengthened 
and  organized   and  brought    to    bear 


558 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


upon  public  affairs,  because  science  is 
allegiance  to  truth,  while  current  poli- 
tics is  little  else  than  allegiance  to  lies. 
No  man  expects  that  a  politician  will 
be  honest,  or  candid,  or  truthful,  or 
make  a  bold  and  honorable  avowal  of 
principles;  nor  is  there  any  possible 
ground  to  hope  that  our  politics  will 
purify  themselves  by  any  working  of 
their  internal  elements  so  that  men  of 
probity,  high  character,  and  real  great- 
ness will  be  put  in  the  positions  of 
power.  The  regenerative  influence,  if 
it  comes  at  all,  must  come  from  other 
sources,  and  we  expect  it  to  come 
sooner  or  later  from  the  great  move- 
ment of  modern  science,  which  must 
bring  with  it  a  new  training  in  the 
intellectual  virtues.  It  is  to  the  new 
conceptions  and  new  culture  of  science 
that  we  look  for  the  production  of  men 
of  a  higher  quality  for  public  use  to 
replace  that  lower  quality  which  has 
ceased  to  command  the  admiration  of 
intelligent  and  honorable-minded  peo- 
ple. Our  politics  is  to-day  the  despair 
of  our  most  earnest  citizens,  and  we 
can  see  no  possible  escape  from  its  cor- 
ruption and  its  degradation  but  by  the 
supply  of  new  men  animated  by  higher 
ideas,  qualified  by  superior  intelligence, 
and  trained  in  reverence  for  truth,  and 
these  men  are  to  be  produced  by  the 
slowly  ripening  influence  of  science,  as 
it  comes  gradually  to  pervade  our  edu- 
cational systems.  Of  course,  no  great 
change  of  this  kind  can  be  suddenly 
precipitated ;  it  must  be  a  slow  growth, 
to  work  effectual  results;  but  science 
advances  with  its  work,  and  gives  us 
some  ground  of  hope  even  in  the  most 
discouraging  of  all  the  fields  of  human 
effort. 


EDUCATION   WITHOUT  DEAD  LAN- 
GUAGES. 

One  would  think  that  the  advocates 
of  the  classics,  as  the  one  superior  sys- 
tem for  the  unfolding  of  the  human 
mind,  would  have  long  ago  abated  their 
exclusive  pretensions  in  face  of  the  fact 


that  such  multitudes  fail  with  it,  and 
that  so  many  succeed  without  it.  It  is 
not  found  difficult  to  evade  the  force  of 
the  first  objection  that  great  numbers 
of  dead-language  students  come  to  noth- 
ing with  their  classics,  because  it  is  said 
that  they  neglect  their  opportunities,  or 
get  far  more  good  from  this  source  than 
they  are  ever  aware  of.  But  it  is  not 
so  easy  to  escape  the  objection  to  the 
wonderful  worth  of  defunct  speech  in 
the  cultivation  of  the  human  faculties 
with  such  multiplying  evidence  as  we 
have  of  great  intellectual  power  acquired 
by  a  mental  cultivation  into  which  the 
dead  languages  have  never  entered. 
That  these  studies  have  declined  in  con- 
sideration, and  are  put  upon  the  de- 
fensive, and  fall  back  upon  tradition 
and  authority  for  backing,  is  simply  be- 
cause other  instruments  of  culture  in 
these  modern  times  are  not  only  com- 
peting with  them  but  are  beating  them 
everywhere.  Accompanying  the  de- 
cline of  the  classics,  there  has  arisen 
an  outside  education,  irregular  in  form, 
unguided  by  institutions,  self-inspired 
and  self-shaped,  which  is  full  of  great  re- 
sults. The  past  generation  has  abound- 
ed in  men  who  have  either  turned  their 
backs  upon  the  universities,  after  trying 
them,  or  who  have  never  gone  near 
them,  but  who  have  become  leaders  of 
thought  in  all  departments  of  intellect- 
ual activity.  The  unfortunate  creatures 
who  have  been  enticed  to  college,  and 
there  loaded  down  with  a  knapsack  of 
dead  languages  have  found,  as  was  very 
natural,  that  they  were  overweighted 
in  the  competitive  race  of  practical  life, 
and  left  behind  by  those  whose  acqui- 
sitions are  better  adapted  to  the  new 
requirements  of  the  age.  Charles  Dar- 
win went  to  the  university,  neglected 
the  classics,  and  made  what  he  could 
out  of  it  for  the  promotion  of  his  natu- 
ral history  studies;  and  Herbert  Spen- 
cer refused  to  be  lured  there  at  all. 
Yet  these  are  the  men  who  are  guiding 
the  mind  of  the  age,  while  for  twenty 
years  we  have  been  afflicted  with  the 


EDITOR'S    TABLE, 


559 


pitiful  protestations  of  classical  gradu- 
ates (with  their  incomparable  "  mental 
discipline")  that  they  could  not  even 
understand  the  epoch-making  books  of 
these  great  thinkers. 

From  this  point  of  view,  the  English 
experience  with  classical  studies  is  espe- 
cially rich  in  instruction.  Every  pubhc 
influence  in  that  old,  aristocratic,  tradi- 
tion-ridden country  has  favored  the  as- 
cendency and  the  perpetuity  of  dead 
languages  in  all  grades  of  education. 
Whatever  benefits  could  be  got  from 
them  have  been  there  obtained  in 
abounding  measure.  Modern  knowl- 
edge has  been  hindered  and  repressed 
that  the  classics  might  have  free  course 
and  undisputed  sway;  and  yet,  as  we 
have  before  observed,  the  system  worked 
out  such  miserable  and  scandalous  re- 
sults that  the  state  was  compelled  to 
look  into  the  subject  and  do  what  it 
could  to  expose  if  not  to  correct  the 
abuses.  The  Government  reports  on 
the  condition  of  education  in  the  uni- 
versities and  great  public  schools  re- 
vealed a  state  of  things  which  will  be 
the  wonder  of  all  future  ages.  Some 
twenty  years  ago,  Prof.  W.  P.  Atkinson, 
of  Boston,  printed  a  very  valuable  pam- 
phlet devoted  to  these  English  educa- 
tional reports.  We  regret  to  say  that 
it  is  now  out  of  print,  for  it  would  be 
an  invaluable  contribution  to  the  dis- 
cussion now  going  forward  upon  this 
question.  As  its  contents  will  be  new 
to  many,  we  reprint  some  passages  il- 
lustrating the  extent  to  which,  even  at 
that  time,  the  classical  university  edu- 
cation had  been  practically  superseded 
by  forms  of  culture  more  suited  to  the 
necessities  of  the  times  : 

This  view  [that  the  English  universities 
have  lost  the  hold  they  once  had  on  the  edu- 
cated classes]  "will  be  corroborated  if  we  con- 
sider how  many  of  the  most  influential  minds 
of  the  century,  in  science,  literature,  art,  and 
politics,  have  either  had  no  connection  what- 
ever with  the  universities,  or  are  under  small 
obligation  to  them  for  any  connection  they 
may  have  had.  In  politics,  and  political 
economy,  we  might   name,   among  others. 


Eomilly,  Bentham,  Eicardo,  Bright,  Cobden, 
Stuart  Mill.  Though  the  government  of  Eng- 
land is  monopolized  by  the  aristocracy,  the 
political  thought  which  governs  her  govern- 
ors comes  daily  more  and  more  from  the 
people.  The  list  of  "uneducated"  men  of 
science — if  I  may  be  allowed  the  absurdity  of 
such  a  phrase — is  far  longer,  as,  after  what 
has  been  said,  might  reasonably  be  expected, 
than  any  the  universities  can  show— Davy, 
Wollaston,  Dalton,  Faraday,  Wheatstone,  De 
la  Beche,  Murchison,  Hind,  South,  Fitzroy, 
Playfair,  Carpenter — it  might  be  indefinitely 
extended;  and  we  shall  find  that  the  most 
eminent  of  her  college  -  educated  men  of 
science  are  the  foremost  in  denouncing  her 
university  system.  Of  coui'se,  all  her  great 
engineers,  inventors,  and  builders,  are  un- 
educated men — Watt,  Telford,  Smeaton,  Ken- 
nie,  Brindley,  the  Brunels,  the  Stephcnsons, 
Sir  Joseph  Paxton — it  is  with  these  names 
that  that  sad  but  glorious  volume,  "  The  Pur- 
suit of  Knowledge  under  Difificulties,"  is 
filled.  Her  great  artists  are  all  "  uneducated  " 
men— Flaxman  and  Gibson,  Landseer,  Tur- 
ner, and  Stanfield,  Kemble  and  Macready, 
and  all  the  rest.  And,  when  we  turn  to  liter- 
ature itself,  the  greatest  English  historical 
work  of  this  generation — a  work  on  classic 
history,  too — was  written  by  an  "  unedu- 
cated" London  banker.  The  greatest,  1 
might  almost  say  the  only,  English  attempt  at 
a  philosophy  of  history,  a  work  which,  with 
all  its  errors  and  paradoxes — and  I  shall  not 
deny  tliat  they  are  many  and  great — is  still 
one  which  can  not  be  matched  by  any  similar 
academic  performance,  was  the  work  of  the 
"■uneducated"  son  of  a  London  merchant. 
Her  novelists — Dickens,  Thackeray,  Jerrold, 
MaiTyat — come  from  all  quarters  save  the 
banks  of  the  Cam  and  the  Tsis ;  not  to  men- 
tion so  many  of  that  sex  which  is  excluded 
altogether  from  their  sacred  borders.  Bulwer 
is,  indeed,  a  Cambridge  man,  but  I  think 
Cambridge  will  be  slow  to  put  forward  that 
pretentious  charlatan  as  an  example  of  the 
fruits  of  her  classical  training.  Even  of  her 
poets,  critics,  and  essayists,  what  a  long  list 
are  among  the  wholly  "uneducated,"  or  must 
be  classed  among  those  who  derived  no  bene- 
fit from  their  stay  at  a  university,  save  that 
(undoubtedly  great)  one  which  comes  from 
mere  residence  at  a  place  of  learning !  The 
names  at  once  occur  of  Crabbe,  Rogers, 
Lamb,  Moore,  Montgomery,  Hunt,  Gifford, 
Hazlitt,  Hood.  Who  would  hesitate  to  say 
where  Scott's  real  education  lay  ?  Who  has 
criticised  the  education  of  Oxford  so  wittily 
as  Sydney  Smith,  or  so  grimly  as  Carlyle? 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  in  their  short 


560 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


stay  at  the  university,  o-^ed  little  or  nothing 
to  the  studies  of  the  place.  Southcy  says  he 
only  learned  to  swim  there — badly;  Byron 
was  ruined  there  ;  and  the  beautiful  genius 
of  Shelley  found  there,  instead  of  the  help 
and  guidance  it  so  much  needed,  only  cruel 
and  ignominious  abuse.  Keats,  some  of 
whose  exquisite  poems  breathe  the  very  spirit 
of  classical  antiquity,  was  a  stable-keeper's 
son,  and  never  studied  at  public  school  or 
university.  England's  eminent  surgeons  and 
physicians  are  not  university  men ;  and  what 
is  it  that  in  that  country  keeps  theology  so 
far  behind  all  other  sciences,  but  the  fact 
that  the  clergy  are  the  only  profession  who 
are  compelled  to  subject  their  minds  to  the 
full  "  dementalizing  "  power  of  Oxford  train- 
ing ?  What  power  less  potent  could  produce 
the  bigotry  of  an  English  High -Church 
bishop  ?  I  am  not  forgetful  of  the  eminent 
names  that  may  be  produced  on  the  other 
side;  but,  even  in  regard  to  these,  the  ques- 
tion must  always  be  asked.  How  far  was  their 
eminence  due  to  their  education  ?  The  real 
relation  in  which  the  English  schools  and 
universities  stand  to  her  greatest  minds,  even 
in  the  past,  and  the  share  which  university 
teaching  really  had  in  training  them,  is  a 
problem  that  still  needs  elucidation.  "  We 
are  not  sure,"  says  the  present  Lord  Brough- 
am, writing  in  1826,  "  whether  the  result  of 
the  investigation  would  be  so  favorable  as 
is  commonly  supposed  to  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge. And  of  this  we  are  sure,  that  many 
persons,  who,  since  they  have  risen  to  emi- 
nence, are  perpetually  cited  as  proofs  of  the 
beneficial  tendency  of  English  education, 
were  at  college  never  mentioned  but  as  idle, 
frivolous  men,  fond  of  desultory  reading,  and 
negligent  of  the  studies  of  the  place.  It 
would  be  indelicate  to  name  the  living ;  but 
we  may  venture  to  speak  more  particularly 
of  the  dead.  It  is  truly  curious  to  observe 
the  use  that  is  made,  in  such  discussions,  of 
names  which  we  acknowledge  to  be  glorious, 
but  in  which  the  colleges  have  no  reason  to 
glory — that  of  Bacon,  who  reprobated  their 
fundamental  constitution ;  of  Dry  den,  who 
abjui'ed  his  Alma  Mater,  and  regretted  that 
he  had  passed  his  youth  under  her  care  ;  of 
Locke,  who  was  censured  and  expelled ;  of 
Milton,  whose  person  was  outraged  at  one 
university,  and  whose  works  were  committed 
to  the  flames  at  the  other. 

It  may,  perhaps,  be  argued  that  many  of 
the  "  uneducated  "  men  whom  I  have  been 
enumerating  would  have  been  the  better  for 
a  university  training.  For  a  true  university 
training,  no  doubt  they  would — one  that 
would  have  developed  all  their  powers  har- 


moniously, while  it  gave  full  play  to  their 
special  genius.  With  the  advocates  of  such 
a  training,  I  have  here  no  controversy  ;  I 
will  even  grant  that  many  of  these  writers, 
in  spite  of  their  genius,  betray  the  faults 
which  are  wont  to  mark  the  self-educated 
man.  But  would  it  have  been  better  for  Mr. 
Buckle  himself  if,  by  a  long  course  of  non- 
sense-verses, the  attempt  had  been  made  to 
flatter  and  polish  him  down  to  the  regulation 
standard  of  Oxford  mediocrity  ?  Mr.  Buckle 
at  least  stimulates  us  to  think  ;  can  as  much 
be  said  of  Oxford  bishops  ?  There  is  a  pas- 
sage in  a  recently  published  book  of  travels 
in  Russia,  by  Professor  Piazzi  Smyth,  the 
Astronomer-Eoyal  for  Scotland,  which  bears 
on  this  question  and  records  a  somewhat  sur- 
prising conclusion.  Describing  a  conversa- 
tion he  had  with  that  eminent  astronomer, 
Struve,  as  to  the  results  of  their  experience 
in  university  teaching,  both  agreed  that  on 
many  points  further  inquiry  was  greatly 
needed;  but  Professor  Struve  said  that  "this 
conclusion  had  been  drawn  independently 
by  so  many  difierently  circumstanced  men 
in  the  Eussian  and  German-Baltic  provinces, 
from  the  general  impressions  which  their 
recollections  gave  them,  that  there  could  be 
little  doubt  of  its  containing  much  truth — 
truth,  too,  of  a  startling  character:  the  first 
hoys  at  school  disappear  at  the  colleges^  and 
those  xvho  are  first  in  the  colleges  disappear  in 
the  world. ''^  I  am  not  sure  that  a  similar 
conclusion  would  not  follow  from  a  similar 
investigation  into  our  own,  as  well  as  into 
English  and  German  academical  history,  and 
that  it  would  not  be  found  that  the  men  most 
useful  and  successful  in  after-life  were  not 
those  who  had  placed  themselves  most  fully 
under  the  influence  of  college  training,  or 
been  stimulated  to  exertion  by  mere  hope  of 
college  rewards,  but  those  who  had  been  mos^ 
successful  in  escaping  its  narrowing  influences, 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  they  had  also  es- 
caped the  still  greater  dangers  of  idleness  and 
dissipation  in  the  formative  period  of  their 
history — men  who  had  cast  from  them  the 
trammels  of  pedantry,  and  with  independent 
energy  marked  out  their  own  career. 


We  publish  the  first  of  a  series  of 
articles  on  some  of  the  political  tend- 
encies of  the  times,  by  Herbert  Spen- 
cer. The  present  paper,  though  treat- 
ing of  affairs  in  England,  and  there- 
fore full  of  English  illnstrations,  will  be 
found  to  have  a  bearing  upon  urgent 
questions  in  this  country,  and   to  in- 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


56: 


volve,  indeed,  some  of  the  most  radical 
problems  of  popular  government.  We 
have  been  told  that  the  price  of  liberty 
is  eternal  vigilance,  and  the  truth  is 
far  more  preguant  than  is  generally 
supposed.  But  we  require  to  learn  a 
still  more  elementary  lesson,  that  is, 
what  liberty  is.  Our  common  notion 
of  slavery  has  come  to  be  negroes  sold 
at  auction,  and  our  notion  of  liberty  has 
come  to  be  the  privilege  of  locomotion 
and  of  voting.  A  people  with  such  no- 
tions of  the  subject  will  hardly  be  very 
vigilant  in  paying  the  price  of  liberty 
by  strenuously  resisting  all  encroach- 
ments upon  individual  rights.  There- 
fore, every  discussion  which  makes  the 
subject  clearer,  and  calls  attention  to 
considerations  which  are  apt  to  be  gen- 
erally overlooked  and  forgotten,  is  im- 
portant ;  and  novvhere  is  it  more  impor- 
tant to  guard  against  the  indifference  of 
citizens  and  the  fallacies  by  which  they 
are  misled  on  the  subject  of  liberty 
than  where  government  is  popularly 
administered.  Mr.  Spencer's  future  pa- 
pers will  probably  bear  much  more  di- 
rectly upon  American  political  prob- 
lems than  the  present. 

LITERARY  NOTICES. 

World  -  Life  ;  or,  Comparative  Geology. 
By  Alexander  Winchell,  LL.  D.,  Pro- 
fessor of  Geology  and  Paleontology  in 
the  University  of  Michigan.  Chicago  : 
S.  C.  Griggs  &  Co.  Pp.  642.  Price, 
$2.50. 

In  this  compact  but  comprehensive  book 
Professor  Winchell  has  made  a  contribution 
to  science  that  was  greatly  needed,  and  he 
has  performed  his  task  in  a  manner  that 
well  comports  with  the  grandeur  of  the  sub- 
ject. A  carefully  prepared  book,  represent- 
ing the  present  state  of  knowledge  on  "  the 
processes  of  world-formation,  world-growth, 
and  world-decadence,"  has  been  urgently 
needed  for  some  years.  There  is,  no  doubt, 
much  shallow  skepticism  in  many  minds  re- 
garding the  validity  of  inquiries  in  this  field, 
which  has  been  relegated  to  the  sphere  of 
scientific  romance  and  fanciful  speculation. 
But  sober  and  well-instructed  minds  have 
VOL.  XXIV. — 36 


not  shared  in  this  feeling.  Our  knowledge 
concerning  the  genesis  of  worlds  is,  of 
course,  yet  very  incomplete,  and  there  is 
necessarily  much  of  that  divergence  of  opin- 
ion in  relation  to  it  which  always  belongs  to 
the  stage  of  active  advancing  inquiry.  But 
there  is  already  a  great  body  of  assured  and 
formulated  knowledge  bearing  upon  the 
problem  of  the  genesis  of  worlds  which  is 
not  to  be  gainsaid,  and  there  has  been  the 
steadily  increasing  necessity  that  this  knowl- 
edge should  be  collated,  and  organized  into 
definite  scientific  form.  But  a  somewhat 
special  preparation  was  required  to  do  any- 
thing  like  tolerable  justice  to  this  work. 
The  factors  of  the  discussion  are  of  the 
largest  import.  Celestial  mechanics  has 
long  been  the  fundamental  element  of  the 
research,  and  within  recent  years  celestial 
chemistry  has  come  forward  as  of  equal  im- 
portance. Nebular  cosmogony  and  nebular 
evolution  are  now  established  conceptions 
of  science,  and,  in  working  them  out,  the 
sciences  of  geology  and  astronomy  are  of 
equal  significance  and  application.  Profess- 
;  or  Winchell  refers  to  his  task  as  an  attempt 
at  "  laying  the  foundations  of  a  science 
which,  from  one  point  of  view,  may  be 
styled  the  geology  of  the  stars,  and,  from 
another,  the  astronomy  of  the  earth.  It  is 
the  science  of  comparative  geology.  It  is 
astrogeology."  In  regard  to  the  present 
position  of  the  nebular  view,  the  author  i*e- 
raarks  :  "  Nor  can  it  be  correctly  said  that 
the  general  theory  remains  still  in  the  status 
of  an  hypothesis.  In  certain  points  of  de- 
tail opinion  may  still  remain  divided  ;  but, 
when  an  hypothesis  has  stood  the  scrutiny  of 
three  generations,  and  has  become  all  but 
unanimously  accepted,  by  those  prepared  to 
form  original  opinions,  as  the  real  expres- 
sion of  a  method  in  nature,  surely,  then,  the 
time  has  passed  when  any  person  can  ad- 
vantageously illustrate  his  learning  and  sa- 
gacity by  continuing  to  reproach  the  con- 
ception as  *  a  mere  hypothesis.'  If  any 
'  mere  hypothesis '  ever  strengthened  into 
the  condition  of  a  scientific  doctrine,  as- 
suredly we  find  in  the  scientific  world  to- 
day the  general  features  of  a  sound  nebular 
doctrine." 

Professor  Winchell's  geological  studies, 
long  carried  on  in  connection  with  the  cos- 
mical  problems  which  they  involve,  have  well 


562 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


prepared  him  for  the  broad  investigation 
which  has  led  to  the  writing  of  the  present  j 
volume ;  but  the  problems  of  the  nebular 
hypothesis  have  long  occupied  a  large 
amount  of  attention  with  him,  and  been 
made  a  subject  of  his  college  lectures,  so 
that  he  has  made  it  a  point  to  master  the 
various  special  questions  that  have  recently 
come  forward  in  connection  with  this  sub- 
ject. We  know  of  no  other  work  in  which 
the  reader  can  find  a  full,  connected,  and 
systematic  presentation  of  the  results  of 
cosmical  research  that  will  compare  with 
this,  and  we  are  especially  glad  to  see  that 
the  publishers  have  put  it  at  a  reasonable 
and  popular  price. 

No  sufficient  account  of  the  contents  of 
the  book  can  be  offered  in  the  space  at  our 
command,  but  we  give  an  imperfect  outline 
of  the  main  features  of  the  exposition. 

The  book  is  divided  into  four  parts,  of 
which  Part  I,  entitled  "  World-Stuff,"  treats 
of  the  process  by  which  the  constituent 
particles  of  worlds  become  aggregated  into 
spheroidal  masses.  The  meteoric  matter 
which  is  constantly  falling  upon  the  earth 
in  masses  var3dng  from  dust-particles  to 
meteorites  of  several  tons  weight,  the  zo- 
diacal light,  which  polariscopic  study  shows 
to  be  reflected  sunlight,  comets,  which  are 
now  known  to  be  simply  conglomerations  of 
cosmical  dust,  the  rings  of  Saturn,  and  the 
irresolvable  nebulae,  all  go  to  show  that  a 
vast  amount  of  matter  such  as  our  earth  is 
made  of,  must  exist  diffused  in  space.  "All 
the  moving  bodies  of  our  system  must  be 
continually  pelted  by  these  cosmical  atoms, 
and  the  aggregate  result  of  these  collisions 
must,  in  thousands  or  millions  of  years, 
affect  their  motions.  Supposing  the  mo- 
tions of  the  cosmical  atoms  to  have  no  pre- 
vailing direction,  it  is  evident  that  the  mo- 
tions of  the  planets,  satellites,  and  comets 
of  our  system  would  cause  them  to  meet 
more  of  these  atoms  than  the  total  number 
which  would  overtake  them.  The  result 
would,  therefore,  be  a  resistance  to  the 
movement  of  these  bodies,  and  the  effect  of 
this  would  be  an  acceleration  of  their  mo- 
tions and  a  shortening  of  their  periods.  I 
venture  the  opinion  that  this  cause  is  a 
more  efficient  resistance  than  the  supposed 
ethereal  medium."  These  material  particles 
are  drawn  by  mutual  attraction  into  groups, 


and  any  central  attractive  force,  as  of  a  sun 
or  planet,  would  also  cause  them  to  aggre- 
gate, by  deflecting  their  motions  into  con- 
verging lines.  But,  in  the  presence  of  two 
or  more  attractive  centers,  as  in  the  present 
constitution  of  the  cosmos,  it  is  impossible 
that  any  mass  shall  fall  directly  upon  its 
center  of  attraction ;  hence  every  body 
would  tend  to  circulate  about  every  other 
body.  But  the  resulting  movements  would 
be  so  infinitely  complex  as  to  precipitate 
countless  collisions  of  particles  and  masses. 
Each  group  or  swarm  which  gradually  forms 
will  have  a  progressive  motion  along  a  path 
having  the  essential  character  of  an  orbit 
around  some  dominant  center  of  attraction. 
If  any  condition  of  interplanetary  matter 
exists  in  space,  its  resistance  would  cause 
the  smaller  particles  to  fall  behind,  and  the 
whole  swarm  to  assume  an  elongated  fan- 
shape.  The  atti-actions  that  control  these 
motions  would  be  feeble;  sometimes  the 
controlling  one  would  be  only  that  of  an- 
other cosmical  swarm.  Most  of  these  swarms 
of  cosmical  dust  would  simply  float  poised 
in  space,  growing  by  accession  of  particles, 
and  occasionally  coalescing  with  other  clouds, 
until  an  aggregation  is  formed  large  enough 
to  be  called  a  nebula.  From  these  various 
attractions  and  collisions  the  nebula  would 
have  acquired  a  rotary  motion.  It  would 
assume  the  form  of  an  oblate  spheroid,  and, 
as  the  cloud-like  mass  cooled,  the  conse- 
quent contraction  would  increase  the  speed 
of  rotation,  until  an  equatorial  ringlet  of 
particles  gained  a  centrifugal  tendency  equal 
to  the  centripetal.  Further  contraction 
would  cause  the  main  body  of  the  spheroid 
to  shrink  away  from  this  ring,  which  would 
then  rotate  independently.  We  might  sup- 
pose that  successive  slender  ringlets  would 
become  detached  until  the  whole  mass  was 
converted  into  an  essentially  continuous  disk, 
for  the  attraction  of  the  ring  first  separated 
would  be  added  to  the  centrifugal  force  of 
the  circlet  of  particles  nearest  it,  and  so  on. 
But  every  successive  addition  to  the  annular 
mass  increases  its  distance  from  the  next 
ringlet  of  particles,  and  upon  this  its  influ- 
ence, though  increasing  with  the  growth  of 
the  ring,  diminishes  as  the  square  of  the 
distance  increases.  As  a  result,  *'  an  annu- 
lar mass  of  relatively  considerable  amount 
would  separate,  and  a  secular  interval  would 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


563 


intervene  before  the  separation  of  another 
annular  mass."  None  of  these  rings  could 
long  remain  of  uniform  thickness.  Each 
would  attenuate  in  some  part,  and  finally 
rupture,  resolving  itself  into  a  mass  that 
would  possess  a  rotary  motion,  the  direction 
of  which  would  be  determined  by  the  rela- 
tion  of  the  velocities  of  the  outer  and  inner 
zones  of  the  ring. 

Part  II,  "  Planetology,"  occupies  about 
half  the  volume.  In  the  first  chapter  of  it, 
certain  observed  phenomena  of  the  solar  sys- 
tem are  enumerated  which  accord  with  the 
requirements  of  the  nebular  theory,  and  ob- 
jections to  the  theory  are  answered.  For 
the  retrograde  motions  of  the  satellites  of 
Uranus  and  Neptune  our  author  advances 
several  explanations :  1.  It  is  entirely  con- 
ceivable that  both  the  Uranian  and  Neptu- 
nian systems  should  have  suffered  a  tilting 
through  more  than  a  right  angle  by  the  in- 
fluence of  some  powerfully  attracting  body 
passing  in  the  neighborhood.  2.  The  coa- 
lescence of  two  or  mor^  spheroids  may  have 
tilted  the  axis  of  the  resultant  planet,  and 
its  whole  system  of  satellites  would  be  cor- 
respondingly tilted.  3.  Certain  relations 
of  density,  distance  from  the  center  of  the 
nebulous  mass,  breadth  of  ring,  and  ve- 
locity  might  cause  retrograde  motion  in  the 
earlier  stages  of  the  evolution  of  a  nebula 
of  a  certain  magnitude.  The  next  chapter 
describes  the  passage  of  a  gaseous  planet 
to  the  molten  phase,  the  solidification  of  its 
core  from  pressure  of  the  superincumbent 
portions,  the  incrustation  of  its  surface,  and 
the  transformations  of  this  crust.  A  large 
influence  on  planetary  history  is  ascribed  to 
tidal  action,  a  tide  being  defined  as  "the 
prolateness  of  a  body  resulting  from  the 
attraction  of  another  body."  Coming  to 
some  special  considerations  of  the  planetary 
bodies  in  the  solar  system.  Professor  Win- 
chell  mentions  three  independent  conceiva- 
ble causes  for  the  molten  condition  in  which 
a  part  of  the  earth's  substance  evidently  is  : 
"  There  may  be  a  zone  too  deep  for  solidifi- 
cation by  cooling,  and  too  shallow  for  solidi- 
fication by  pressure.  ...  In  the  next  place, 
we  may  suppose  that  at  all  depths  beneath 
the  surface  the  pressure  is  such  that  the 
fusing-point  is  higher  than  the  actual  tem- 
perature, so  that  a  state  of  solidity  exists. 
.   ,   .  We  may  conceive  that  heat  and  fu- 


f  sion  result  from  some  mechanical  crushing 
pressure,"  In  regard  to  this  last  theory  he 
says,  further:  "But  a  cause  of  crushing  press- 
ure which  seems  to  me  more  adequate  than 
secular  cooling  is  suggested  by  Sir  William 
Thomson's  and  Archdeacon  Pratt's,  and, 
we  may  add,  Professor  G.  H.  Darwin's,  dem- 
onstrations of  tidal  effects  in  a  globe  as 
rigid  as  steel  or  glass.  May  not  the  tidal 
deformations  of  the  earth's  crust  be  the 
source  of  the  internal  heat  which  manifests 
itself  in  fluidity  ?  The  whole  value  of  the 
lunar  tidal  oscillation  in  a  yielding  globe 
should  be  about  fifty-eight  inches.  In  a 
globe  as  rigid  as  glass  it  should,  therefore, 
be  about  34-8  inches,  and,  in  one  as  rigid  as 
steel,  19*33  inches.  The  whole  tidal  oscil- 
lation under  the  joint  maximum  influence 
of  the  sun  and  moon  in  a  perfectly  yielding 
globe  would  be  about  81*2  inches.  The 
I  amount  in  a  globe  of  glass  would,  therefore, 
I  be,  when  at  a  maximum,  48''72  inches,  and, 
I  in  a  globe  of  steel,  2'7"06  inches.  Should 
the  terrestrial  globe  yield  to  the  extent  of 
j  any  one  of  these  amounts,  the  crushing 
[  effect  experienced  by  the  superior  zones 
j  of  the  crust  would  not  be  uniformly  distrib- 
I  uted,  since  variations  in  structure  and  hard- 
I  ness  and  surface  configuration  would  pre- 
serve certain  portions  from  any  change,  and 
the  whole  amount  of  the  interstitial  dis- 
placements would  be  accumulated  in  the  re- 
maining portions.  It  does  not  seem  at  all 
improbable  that  the  transformation  of  such 
{  enormous  mechanical  force  into  heat  should 
suffice  to  bring  to  a  state  of  fusion  volumes 
considerable  enough  to  answer  all  the  re- 
quirements of  the  thermal  manifestations 
of  modern  times,  as  well  as  the  terrestrial 
movements  of  modern  earthquakes."  From 
an  examination  of  the  planetology  of  the 
moon  he  concludes  that  "  lunar  history  must 
have  presented  characteristics  widely  di- 
vergent from  those  of  terrestrial  history; 
and  in  this  divergence  the  tenuity  of  the 
moon's  atmosphere  has  performed  a  part 
quite  comparable  with  the  energetic  work  of 
the  tides.  .  .  . 

"  The  question  of  the  habitability  of  other 
worlds  has  generally  been  discussed  from 
the  assumption  that  all  other  corporeal  be- 
ings must  be  clothed  in  flesh  and  bones 
similar  to  those  of  terrestrial  animals,  and 
must  be  adapted  to  a  similar  physical  envi- 


564 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


ronment.  But  it  is  manifest,  on  a  moment's 
consideration,  that  corporeality  may  exist 
under  very  divergent  conditions.  It  is  not  at 
all  improbable  that  substances  of  a  refrac- 
tory nature  might  be  so  mixed  with  other 
substances,  known  or  unknown  to  us,  as  to 
be  capable  of  enduring  vastly  greater  vicis- 
situdes of  heat  and  cold  than  is  possible 
with  terrestrial  organisms.  .  .  .  There  may 
be  intelligences  corporealized  after  some 
concept  not  involving  the  processes  of  inges- 
tion, assimilation,  and  reproduction.  Such 
bodies  would  not  require  daily  food  and 
warmth.  They  might  be  lost  in  the  abysses 
of  the  ocean,  or  laid  up  on  a  stormy  cliff 
thx'ough  the  tempests  of  an  Arctic  winter,  or 
plunged  in  a  volcano  for  a  hundred  years, 
and  yet  retain  consciousness  and  thought. 
It  is  conceivable.  Why  might  not  psychic 
natures  be  enshrined  in  indestructible  flint 
and  platinum?  These  substances  are  no 
further  from  the  nature  of  intelligence  than 
carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen,  and  lime." 

"  General  Cosmogony "  is  the  title  of 
Part  III,  which  consists  of  a  short  chapter 
on  the  condition  of  the  fixed  stars  and  neb- 
ulse,  with  some  general  considerations  on  the 
whole  system.  "  Evolution  of  Cosmogonic 
Doctrine  "  occupies  the  rest  of  the  volume. 
In  these  concluding  chapters  the  growth  of 
man's  view  of  the  universe  is  traced  from 
the  partial  conceptions  of  the  Greek  phi- 
losophers to  the  comprehensive  system  of 
modem  astronomers.  The  theories  of  Kep- 
ler, Descartes,  Leibnitz,  Swedenborg,  and 
Thomas  Wright,  are  described  briefly,  and 
that  of  Kant  is  given  with  some  detail. 
Then  follow  the  views  of  Lambert,  Sir  Will- 
iam Herschel,  and  Laplace,  and  a  brief 
"  Systematic  Resume  of  Opinions." 


Man  a  Creative  Fipst  Cause:  Two  Dis- 
courses delivei'cd  at  Concord,  Mass., 
July,  1882.  By  Rowland  G.  Hazard, 
LL.  D.  Boston:  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 
Co.     Pp.  112. 

In  this  instructive  little  volume  we  have 
a  compact  and  very  lucid  restatement  of  the 
leading  philosophical  views  of  its  veteran 
author,  which  were  several  years  ago  de- 
veloped in  an  extended  form  in  his  more 
elaborate  works.  Mr.  Hazard  is  well  known 
as  a  man  of  original  and  versatile  thought, 
and  has  dealt  with  a  considerable  variety  of 


subjects,  practical  as  well  as  theoretical,  in 
his  various  publications ;  but  he  will  prob- 
ably be  best  known  in  the  future  by  his 
comprehensive  metaphysical  treatise  en- 
titled "On  the  Freedom  of  the  Mind  in 
Willing."  The  origin  of  this  work  is,  on 
various  accounts,  so  interesting  and  signifi- 
cant, that  it  should  not  be  forgotten. 

The  celebrated  Dr.  William  EUery  Chan- 
ning,  whose  reputation  is  world-wide  as  a 
gifted    preacher,   a    discriminating    philan- 
thropist,  and  as  the  father  of  American 
liberal  theology,  is  understood  to  have  been 
in  a  somewhat  xmsettled  state  of  mind  upon 
what  may  be  regarded  as  the  logic  of  the 
old  free-will  controversy.     He  is   said  to 
have  "confessed  to  an  incapacity  to  form 
any  satisfactory  philosophical  theory  and 
defense  of  that  moral  freedom  in  which  he 
devoutly  and  earnestly  believed."    Dissatis- 
fied with  all  that  had  been  written  upon  the 
problem,  and  confessedly  unable  himself  to 
{  cope  with  its  difficulties,  and  at  the  same 
\  time  holding  inflexibly  by  the  doctrine  of 
!  mental  liberty  in  volition,  he  was  very  natu-  • 
,  rally  solicitous  to  see  the  question  handled 
I  by  some  powerful  intellect,  qualified  for  the 
I  research,  and  who  could  put  the  proofs  of 
I  man's  moral  liberty  on  a  firmer  basis  than 
,  they  had  hitherto  occupied.     But  who  was 
\  to  be  found  competent  to  enter  upon  this 
formidable  task?     Learned   scholars  were 
!  sufficiently  abundant.     The  colleges  turned 
j  out  their  annual  multitude  of  men  who  had 
been  long  steeped    in  recondite    studies ; 
whose  intellects  had  been  disciplined  and 
sharpened   by  those  marvelous  instrumen- 
talities  destined  from   the   foundations  of 
the  world  "for   the  perpetual   training  of 
the  minds  of  the  later  generations,"   the 
dead  languages,  but  Dr.  Channing  did  not 
find  his  man  in  this  class.    In  his  celebrated 
essay  on  "Self-Culture,"  there  occurs  the 
following  passage :    "  I  have  known  a  man 
of  vigorous  intellect  who  had  enjoyed  few 
advantages  of  early  education,  whose  mind 
was  almost  engrossed  by  the  details  of  an 
extensive  business,  who  composed  a  book 
of  much  originality  of  thought  in   steam- 
boats, on  horseback,  while  visiting  distant 
customers." 

The  book  here  referred  to  was  entitled 
"  Language :  an  Essay,"  and  was  written 
forty-seven  years  ago  by  Mr.  Hazard.     Dr. 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


565 


Channing  was  so  impressed  by  the  work, 
that  he  sought  the  author  out,  made  his 
acquaintance,  and  found  that,  notwithstand- 
ing his  "few  advantages  of  early  educa- 
tion," he  gave  better  promise  of  ability  to 
grapple  with  a  profound  metaphysical  prob- 
lem, and  make  more  progress  in  its  analy- 
sis, than  any  of  the  regulation  scholars  with 
whom  he  was  acquainted.  An  authoritative 
critic  speaks  as  follows  of  Mr.  Hazard's 
first  work,  the  essay  on  language : 

The  essay  was  not  more  worthy  of  attention 
fVom  the  circumstances  under  which  it  was  written 
than  from  the  interest  and  freshness,  if  not  the  ab- 
solute originality,  of  some  of  its  thinking.  The  tone 
of  the  first  essay  is  that  of  a  refined  and  elevated 
idealism  in  its  underlying  philosophy  and  in  the 
moral  earnestness  of  its  practical  spirit.  The  essay 
was  highly  esteemed  in  those  days  of  transcendent- 
al aspiration,  and  excited  a  very  general  curiosity 
among  the  eager  seekers  after  new  truths  and  new 
prophets.  Unlike  many  of  the  eff'usions  of  the 
taught  and  imtaught  seers  of  those  efl'ervescing 
years,  this  essay  was  in  every  line  clear,  analytic, 
and  severely  reasoned.  It  was,  however,  as  char- 
acteristically idealistic  in  its  philosophical  spirit  as 
it  was  imaginative  in  its  poetical  and  ethical  por- 
traitures. The  essay  put  Dr.  Channing  upon  the 
quest  to  discover  its  author,  and  this  discovery  led 
to  a  friendly  intimacy  between  the  two  till  the 
death  of  the  philosophic  divine,  which  was  com- 
memorated by  an  affectionate  yet  discriminating 
essay  from  his  philosophic  protege  and  friend. 

Yielding  to  the  earnest  injunction  of  Dr. 
Clianning,  Mr.  Hazard  early  in  life  took  up 
the  question  of  free-will,  and  published  the 
results  of  his  studies  in  two  solid  volumes, 
"Freedom  of  the  Mind  in  Willing,  etc." 
(1864) ;  and  two  letters  on  "  Causation,"  and 
"  Freedom  in  Willing,"  addressed  to  John 
Stuart  Mill  (1869).  Those  who  desire  to 
become  familiar  with  Mr.  Hazard's  reason- 
ing in  its  full  elaboration  must  consult 
these  works ;  in  the  volume  before  us  the 
results  are  necessarily  much  epitomized. 

Into  the  merits  of  the  great  question  of 
free-will  we  can  not,  of  course,  here  enter. 
It  is  alleged  that  modern  science,  by  its  vast 
extension  of  the  idea  of  natural  law,  has 
strengthened  the  conceptions  of  necessity 
and  fatalism  at  the  expense  of  moral  free- 
dom. But  determinism  never  had  a  more 
powerful  champion  than  Jonathan  Edwards, 
and  he  certainly  did  not  draw  his  inspira- 
tion from  modern  science.  Mr.  Hazard 
takes  broad  issue  with  Edwards.  Professor 
Huxley,  a  leading  "  automatist,"  and  rep- 
resenting the   latest   science,   admits    that 


"volition  counts  for  something" — but  the 
philosophical  question  is.  For  how  much? 
Nobody  claims  that  the  will  is  unlimited. 
The  title  of  Mr.  Hazard's  book,  "Man  a 
Creative  First  Cause,"  seems  rather  start- 
ling at  first,  but  it  is  because  of  our  theo- 
logical connotations  of  the  term  "  creative." 
His  obvious  implication  is  of  the  mind  will- 
ing and  working  in  its  own  sphere,  where 
we  properly  speak  of  creative  genius  and 
originating  capacity.  Indeed,  Mr.  Hazard 
explicitly  says :  "  Exterior  to  itself,  it  (the 
human  mind)  may  not  have  the  power  to 
execute  what  it  wills ;  it  may  be  frustrated 
by  other  external  forces,  since  in  the  exter- 
nal the  ideal  incipient  creation  may  not  be 
consummated  by  finite  effort.  But,  as  in 
our  moral  nature  the  willing,  the  persever- 
ing effort,  is  itself  the  consummation,  there 
can  be  no  such  failure ;  and  the  mind  in  it 
is  therefore  not  only  a  creative  but  a  su- 
preme creative  first  cause. 

Mr.  Hazard's  book  is  tersely  and  vigor- 
ously written,  and  takes  a  somewhat  wide 
range  both  of  philosophical  and  practical 
suggestion.  The  author  has  a  sturdy  faith 
in  the  value  of  metaphysical  studies  for 
practical  utility  as  a  mental  training,  and 
also  in  their  disciplinary  power  for  the  for- 
mation of  human  character.  This  view  is 
incidentally  presented,  and  we  only  regret 
that  he  has  not  more  fully  and  formally 
developed  it.  Such  a  discussion  would  be 
valuable  to  education,  and  we  are  not  with- 
out hope  that  Mr.  Hazard  may  yet  find  it 
practicable  to  give  fuller  expression  to  his 
views  and  reasonings  upon  the  subject. 

INTERNATIONAL  SCIENTIFIC  SERIES. 
VOL.  XL VI. 

The  Organs  op  Speech,  and  their  Appli- 
CA.T10N  IN  THE  Formation  of  Articulate 
Sounds.  By  G.  H.  von  Meyer,  Profess- 
or in  the  University  of  Ziirich.  New 
York:  D.  Appleton  &  Co.  Pp.  349. 
Price,  $1.75. 

There  has  long  been  wanted  a  first-class 
work  on  this  interesting  subject,  treated 
with  reference  to  the  requirements  of  ordi- 
nary intelligent  readers.  It  has,  of  course, 
been  familiar  in  a  certain  way  to  the  ana- 
tomists who  have  dissected  the  vocal  struc- 
tures with  reference  to  pathology  and  sur- 
gery, and  given  the  representations  of  the 
parts  in  their  text-books.     But  the  com- 


566 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


bination  of  physiology  with  anatomy,  and 
the  study  of  function  in  connection  with 
structure,  and  especially  the  later  progress 
in  acoustical  science,  have  given  a  new  in- 
terest to  the  vocal  apparatus  quite  beyond 
that  of  the  bare  anatomist.  The  subject 
of  the  vocal  organs,  considered  in  relation 
to  their  marvelous  capacities,  or  the  most 
wonderful  results  obtained  from  the  sim- 
plest means,  is  one  of  quite  extraordinary 
interest.  We  hear  much  of  the  subtilties, 
refinements,  and  complexities  of  vocal  lan- 
guage, with  its  hundreds  of  forms  among 
different  peoples,  its  millions  of  words,  its 
capacity  of  expressing  numberless  shades 
of  feeling,  and  conveying  the  highest  spir- 
itual influence.  But,  besides  the  common 
uses  of  speech  in  conversation,  reading,  and 
oratory,  we  are  all  familiar  with  vocal  mu- 
sic as  an  art,  inexhaustible  in  its  variety  of 
styles,  and  the  ranges  of  its  development. 
But  what  is  the  foundation  of  all  this  ? 
Nothing  but  mechanism,  bellows,  and  me- 
chanical arrangements  for  acting  upon  cur- 
rents of  air  for  the  production  and  control 
of  sound.  This  side  of  the  subject,  being 
merely  mechanical  and  material,  has  had  but 
little  interest  for  those  who  care  only  about 
the  effects.  When  people  lose  their  voices, 
they  are  reminded  that  there  is  a  mechanism 
involved,  and  consult  the  doctor  to  find  out 
what  ails  their  vocal  organs  ;  but  there  has 
been  so  little  other  concern  about  them, 
that  any  thorough -going  scientific  investiga- 
tion of  their  wonderful  capacities  and  work- 
ing has  been  long  neglected. 

Dr.  Meyer's  work  is  a  contribution  to  the 
physiological  science  of  the  vocal  organs 
from  this  point  of  view.  It  is  an  original 
treatise,  with  strong  philological  bearings, 
and  contains  various  new  interpretations, 
the  result  of  the  author's  special  and  ex- 
tensive researches.  The  object  and  plan 
of  the  work  can  not  be  better  presented 
than  in  the  language  of  the  author  in  his 
preface : 

The  more  we  become  convinced  that  a  trne 
knovvledfre  of  the  laws  which  {govern  the  transforma- 
tion of  the  elements  of  speech,  in  the  formation  of 
dialects  or  derivative  laniruages,  can  only  be  ob- 
tained from  a  study  of  the  physiological  laws  of  the 
fonnation  of  articulate  sounds,  the  more  necessary 
does  it  become  for  the  philologist  to  be  thorouphly 
acquainted  with  the  structure  and  functions  of  the 
organs  of  speech.  The  ordinary  anatomical  hand- 
books are  little  adapted  to  this  purpose,  for  much 


is  there  discussed  at  length  which  Is  of  no  use  to  the 
philologist ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  points  which 
to  him  are  of  considerable  importance  are  only 
briefly  alluded  to.  In  physiological  hand-books,  also, 
only  a  short  space  is  in  most  cases  devoted  to  this 
subject. 

It  is,  therefore,  my  object,  in  the  present  work, 
to  discuss,  with  special  reference  to  this  require- 
ment of  the  philologist,  the  structure  and  functions 
of  the  organs  of  speech. 

In  explaining  the  origin  of  articulate  sounds,  I 
have  so  far  departed  from  the  usual  method  that  I 
have  not  attempted  to  arrange  physiologically  the 
entire  series  of  sounds  employed  in  the  most  diflFer- 
ing  languages ;  but  rather,  starting  from  the  struct- 
ure of  the  organs  of  speech,  to  give  a  sketch  of  all 
possible  articulate  sounds.  I  believe  I  have  thus 
constructed  a  system  in  which  all  known  articulate 
sounds,  and  all  those  with  which  we  may  hereafter 
become  acquainted,  will  find  a  place.  Such  a  sketch 
could  not,  of  course,  be  given  without  reference  to 
existing  languages.  The  object  has  not  been,  how- 
ever, to  enter  into  the  field  of  discussion  upon  the 
various  modifications  of  sounds,  but  merely  to  bring 
forward  a  sufficient  number  of  examples  in  con- 
firmation of  the  laws  explained,  for  which  purpose 
the  more  nearly  related  European  languages  are 
sufficient. 


Ocean  Grove  Camp-Meeting  Association. 
Fourteenth  Annual  Report.  Ocean  Grove, 
N.  J.  Published  by  order  of  the  Asso- 
ciation.    Pp.  TS. 

The  friends  of  the  Association  were  dis- 
turbed much  more  than  they  had  reason  to 
be  last  year  by  some  dozen  lines  concerning 
unhealthy  conditions  that  had  been  noticed 
at  Ocean  Grove,  which  we  published  in  the 
course  of  an  article  of  considerable  length, 
dealing  with  the  sanitary  condition  of  seaside 
resorts  generally.  Without  further  noticing 
the  unkind  words — the  more  unkind  because 
they  are  undeserved — which  the  president 
of  the  Association  still  applies  to  us,  we  call 
attention  to  the  confessions  contained  in  the 
present  report  that  there  were  things  at  the 
Grove  that  needed  remedying,  and  to  the 
gratifying  fact  that  the  Association  has  ap- 
plied the  remedies.  Owing  to  what  the  re- 
port calls  continuous  and  studied  misrep- 
resentations, a  prejudice  existed,  "  to  remove 
which  required  our  most  energetic  toil.  To 
meet  the  expenses  of  sucli  labor  demanded 
funds  largely  in  advance  of  current  re- 
ceipts." If  only  a  prejudice,  and  that  false, 
why  so  much  labor  and  expense  in  building 
sewers  and  sinking  an  artesian  well  to  re- 
move what  was  only  ideal  and  unfounded  ? 
A  system  of  sewerage  was  begun  about  three 
years  ago.    "  The  plan  of  running  the  sewage 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


567 


into  tanks,  and  letting  it  out  periodically 
into  the  sea,  had  many  objections,  and  was 
only  partially  successful.  Another  must  be 
devised.  .  .  .  The  result  is  so  triumphantly 
satisfactory  that  Dr.  E.  M.  Hunt,  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  New  Jersey  State  Board  of 
Health,  after  a  very  careful  examination  of 
its  work,  pronounced  it  not  only  satisfactory 
but  the  most  complete  that  could  be  made." 
It  embraces  15,050  feet  of  twelve- inch 
mains,  and  8,500  feet  of  connecting  lines, 
or  in  all  23,550  feet,  or  four  and  one  half 
miles  of  sewer,  connecting  with  all  the  large 
and  with  many  of  the  smaller  houses.  Of 
the  work  of  the  year,  the  president  is  glad 
to  state  that  "an  offensive  condition  of 
things  which  has  for  several  years  caused 
much  complaint,  in  the  rear  of  the  tents 
near  the  Trenton  House,  has  been  efFectu- 
ally  removed,  and  the  water-closet  arrange- 
ments have  been  so  adjusted  as  to  give 
perfect  satisfaction  to  those  immediately 
concerned,  greatly  to  the  relief  of  the  man- 
agement  of  the  Grove."  An  artesian  well 
was  opened  in  August,  having  a  depth  of 
420  feet,  and  delivering  about  a  barrel  of 
water  a  minute.  There  are  also  at  least 
800  tube-wells  which  draw  water  from  a 
depth  of  from  twenty  to  thirty  feet.  Dr. 
Hunt  says,  in  his  report  of  the  State  Board 
of  Health,  that  the  sanitary  prospects  of  the 
Grove  have  been  greatly  improved  "  the  last 
year."  The  township  Board  of  Health  ex- 
amined the  sewer  arrangements  and  report 
them  satisfactory  in  every  respect.  Physi- 
cians at  Ocean  Grove  and  Asbury  Park  de- 
clare that  the  sanitary  conditions  of  Ocean 
Grove  were  never  so  good ;  and  some  of 
them  that  the  sanitary  conditions  there  are 
superior  to  those  of  any  other  of  the  watering 
places  of  New  Jersey.  "  The  Popular  Sci- 
ence Monthly  "  is  as  glad  as  the  officers  of 
the  Association  or  its  best  friends  can  be  that 
it  has  been  so  successful  in  improving  the 
condition  of  things,  present  and  prospective, 
and  is  able  to  make  so  good  a  showing. 

The  Evolutionary  Significanck  of  Human 
Character.     By  Professor  E.  D.  Cope, 
Philadelphia.     Pp.  12. 
In  this  paper  Professor  Cope  essays  a 
sketch  of  the  order  of  development  of  the 
different  faculties  of  the  mind,  and  summa- 
rizes his  conclusions  by  saying  that  the  or- 
der of  the  appearance  of  the  intelligence  is 


nearly  dependent  on  the  development  of  the 
powers  of  observation.  The  character  of 
most  civilizations  tends  to  diminish  the 
power  of  perception,  while  the  higher  de- 
partments of  reason  and  imagination  are 
enlarged.  The  imagination  reached  a  high 
development  before  reason  had  attained 
much  strength.  With  the  exception  of  a 
few  families,  the  intelligence  of  mankind 
has,  up  to  within  two  or  three  centuries, 
expressed  itself  in  works  of  imagination. 
"  With  the  modern  cultivation  of  the  natural 
and  physical  sciences,  the  perceptive  facul- 
ties will  be  restored,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  to 
their  true  place,  and  thus  many  avenues 
opened  up  for  the  higher  thought-power  of 
a  developed  race.  Thus  it  is  that  in  the 
order  of  human  development  there  is  to  be 
a  return  to  the  primitive  powers  of  obser- 
vation, without  loss  of  the  later- acquired 
and  more  noble  capacities  of  the  intellect." 

Horses  :  Their  Feed  and  their  Feet.  By 
C.E.Page,  M.  D.  New  York:  Fowler 
&  Wells.     Pp.  149.     75  cts. 

A  BOOK  of  plain,  practical  maxims  on 
the  proper  keeping  of  horses,  involving  some 
views  that  are  novel,  but  the  value  of  which 
has  been  tested  in  the  author's  experience.  A 
leading  object  is  to  recommend  a  reformed 
system  of  feeding,  that  we  might  charac- 
terize as  the  "  two-meal  "  system,  which  is 
fully  expounded  and  earnestly  maintained. 
Accounts  are  given  of  the  way  Mr.  Bonner 
and  other  famous  fanciers  treat  their  horses. 
The  causes  of  various  diseases  are  pointed 
out,  and  suggestions  are  given  respecting 
their  treatment.  The  question  of  shoeing 
is  fully  considered,  and  it  is  shown  how, 
under  many  conditions,  horses  will  do  better 
service  without  shoes ;  and  Colonel  C.  M. 
Weld  contributes  an  account  of  his  expe- 
rience with  barefoot  horses. 

Photo-Micrographs,  and  how  to  make 
THEM.  By  George  M.  Sternberg,  M.  D., 
United  States  Army.  Boston :  James 
R.  Osgood  &  Co.  Pp.  204,  with  Twenty 
Colored  Heliotype  Plates.     $3. 

This  work,  which  is  really  an  elegant, 
although  the  author  modestly  styles  it  a 
"  little  "  volume,  is  practical,  and  is  intended 
for  beginners  in  the  art  to  which  it  relates. 
That  art,  photo-micrography,  is  the  art  of 
taking  sun-pictures  of  microscopic  objects 


568 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


more  or  less  magnified,  and  is  to  be  distin- 
guished from  micro  •  photography,  which 
merely  takes  microscopic  photographs  of 
objects  that  can  be  seen  by  the  naked  eye. 
The  former  art  is  scientifically  instructive, 
the  latter  merely  produces  curiosities.  The 
author's  object  in  preparing  the  volume  has 
been  to  give  such  an  account  of  the  tech- 
nique of  the  art  as  will  enable  persons  famil- 
iar with  the  use  of  the  microscope  to  make 
photo-micrographs  of  suitable  objects  with 
a  minimum  expenditure  of  time  and  money. 
The  illustrations  have  been  selected  with  a 
view  of  showing  the  kinds  of  microscopic 
objects  best  suited  for  photographing,  and 
the  results  which  may  be  expected  by  one 
who  is  willing  to  devote  a  little  time  to  the 
mastering  of  technical  difficulties.  They 
represent  forty-nine  different  objects. 

Sevter-Gas  and  its  Alleged  Causation  of 
Typhoid  Fever,  By  George  Hamilton, 
M.  D.  Pp.  12.  The  Status  of  Pro 
FESSiONAL  Opinion  and  Popular  Senti- 
ment REGARDING  SeWER-GaS  AND  CON- 
TAMINATED WaTER  AS  CAUSES  OF  TrPHOID 

Fever.  By  George  Hamilton,  M.  D. 
Philadelphia.  Pp.  10.  Etiology  and 
Non-Infection  of  Sewer-Gases.  By 
Washington  Ayer,  M.  D.,  of  San  Fran- 
cisco.    Pp.  25. 

Dr.  Hamilton  undertakes  to  controvert 
the  sewer-gas  theory  of  the  origin  of  ty- 
phoid fever,  by  showing  that  the  disease 
is  not  dependent  upon  the  presence  or  ab- 
sence of  sewers,  or  upon  any  conditions  of 
filth  in  large  cities  ;  and  that  it  prevails  in 
the  country,  where  there  are  no  sewers,  and 
everything  is  favorable  to  purity  of  the  at- 
mosphere, more  extensively  and  more  fatal- 
ly than  anywhere  else.  Dr.  Ayer  maintains 
substantially  the  same  points,  but  rather 
on  philosophical  grounds  than  by  the  cita- 
tion of  examples,  and  disputes  the  compe- 
tency of  the  experiments  which  have  been 
relied  upon  to  determine  that  bacteria  are 
the  cause  of  the  diseases  with  which  they 
have  been  found  associated. 

The  Influence  of  Athletic  Games  upon 
Greek  Art.  By  Charles  Waldstein, 
Esq.,  University  of  Cambridge,  England. 
Pp.  24. 

This  paper  is  an  inquiry  into  the  cause 
of  the  persistency  of  the  influence  of  Greek 
art  upon  us.  The  answer  is  found  in  the 
fact  that  Greek  art  is  true  to  nature,  yet 


not  so  servile  as  to  be  sensual  and  sensa- 
tional, but  is  also  ideal.  "  The  ideal  in  art 
is  the  highest  generalization  of  form.  In 
Greek  art  it  was  the  highest  generalization 
of  the  forms  of  nature.  The  works  of 
Greek  art  are,  therefore,  not  dependent  for 
appreciation  upon  one  individual  spectator, 
or  one  special  mood  of  the  individual,  but 
are  valid  for  all  sane  men,  for  all  men  of  a 
certain  physiological  constitution  of  their 
senses,  surrounded  by  man  and  nature  rela- 
tively the  same."  The  inquiry  is  pursued 
!  how  Greek  art  effected  this  combination  of 
the  natural  and  the  ideal.  The  natural  was 
developed  in  the  portraiture  of  athletes, 
the  ideal  in  the  effort  to  represent  and  char- 
acterize the  gods. 

An  Index  to  Articles  relating  to  His- 
tory, Biography,  Literature,  Society, 
AND  Travel,  contained  in  Collections 
of  Essays,  etc.     By  W.  M.  Griswold, 
Bangor,  Me.     Q.  P.  Index.     Pp.  56. 
This  is  No.  13  of  the  "  Q.  P.  Index,"  a 
series  of  works  for  the  projection  and  exe- 
cution  of   which   Mr.    Griswold,    who   has 
made  it  his  special  business,  deserves  the 
thanks  of  every  student  and  reader.     The 
character  of  the  present  number  of  the 
series  is  fairly  well  represented  by  its  title. 
There  are  hosts  of  articles  of  great  value 
on  particular  subjects  inclosed  in  volumes 
of  essays  and  miscellaneous  writings,  which 
are  practically  inaccessible  because  the  gen- 
eral title  of  the  volume  gives  no  clew  to 
what  is  in  it.     The  present  index  gives  the 
key  to  the  subjects  within  its  scope  as  rep- 
resented  in   799  volumes  by  different  au- 
thors.    The  publisher  hopes  in  time  to  im- 
prove  upon  it  and  enlarge  it — that  is,  to 
bring  other  books  into  view. 

A   Physician's    Sermon   to   Young    Men. 
Bv  William  Pratt.     New  York  :  M.  L. 
Holbrook  &  Co.     Pp.  48.     25  cts, 
A  LECTURE  to  young  men  on  the  impor- 
tance of  personal  purity  and  of  the  restraint 
of  all  tendencies  to  vicious  indulgence,  the 
destructive  physical  and  moral  consequences 
of  which  are  pointed  out  in  language  that 
does  not  err  by  lack  of  plainness  or  vigor. 
As   counteractives  to  vicious  propensities, 
are  recommended  cold  bathing,  hard  beds, 
and  sleeping  alone,   abundant  work,  plain 
food,  careful  reading,  right  choice  of  com- 
panions, and  religion. 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


569 


Hydraulic  Tables  for  the  Calculation 
OF  THE  Discharge  through  Sewer- 
Pipes  AND  Conduits.  By  P.  J.  Flynn, 
C.  E.  New  York :  D.  Van  Nostraud. 
Pp.  135.     50  cts. 

The  usefulness  of  such  tables  as  arc 
presented  in  this  volume,  to  all  persons  en- 
gaged in  works  demanding  the  calculations, 
needs  no  demonstration.  The  tables  are 
based  on  Kulter's  formula. 

The  Oyster  Epicure.  New  York :  White, 
Stokes  &  Allen.  Pp.  61.  30  cts. 
This  is  a  collation  of  authorities  on  the 
gastronomy  and  dietetics  of  the  oyster,  the 
reading  of  which  is  appetizing,  and  calcu- 
lated to  make  the  reader  wish  he  could  find 
some  oysters  as  good  in  the  actuality  as  he 
can  imagine  them  to  be. 


PUBLICATIONS  RECEIVED. 

Malaria  as  an  Etiological  Factor  in  New  York 
City.  By  Simon  Barucli,  M.  D.  New  York  :  Trow's 
Printing  and  Bookbinding  Co.    Pp.  2'2. 

Continuity  and  Catastroplies  in  Geology.  By 
the  Duke  of  Argyll.  Edinburgli:  David  Douglas. 
Pp.  32.    One  shilling. 

A  Plea  for  the  Cure'of  Rupture.  By  Joseph  H. 
"Warren,  M.D.    Pp.  IIT,  with  a  Plate.     $1. 

Proceedings  of  the  Indiana  Pharmaceutical  As- 
sociation, May,  1SS3.  Indianapolis:  Joseph  E. 
Perry,  Secretary.    Pp.  1  Gi. 

Bulletin  of  the  United  States  Geological  Survey, 
No.  1.  Two  Special  Papers.  By  Whitman  Cross 
and  8.  F.  Emmons.  Washingion  :  Government 
Printing-office.     Pp.  42. 

Pilot  Chart  of  the  North  Atlantic,  for  December, 
with  "  Supplement,"  giving  details  of  storms  and 
nautical  information.  Washington :  U.  S.  Hydro- 
graphic  Office.    (Supplement)  pp.  11. 

Reports  of  Observations  and  Experiments  in  the 
Division  of  Entomology,  Department  of  Agricul- 
ture. Washington :  Government  Printing-Offico. 
Pp.  75,  with  Three  Plates. 

Transactions  of  the  American  Dermatological 
Association,  August,  18S3.  Dr.  Arthur  Van  Har- 
lingen.  Secretary.    Philadelphia.     Pp.  49, 

Scientific  Papers  of  the  Vassar  Brothers  Insti- 
tute, Poughkeepsie,  N.  Y.,  1881-'S3.  Leroy  C. 
Cooley,  Ph.  D.,  Chairman,    Pp.  118. 

Cuentos  de  Hoy  y  Maftana,  Cuadros  Politicos 
y  Sociales.  (Stones  oJ  To-day  and  To-morrow; 
Political  and  Social  Sketches.)  By  Rafael  de  C. 
Palomino,  Jr.  No.  1.  New  York :  N.  Ponce  de 
Leon.    Pp.  53. 

Recherches  sur  le  Structure  de  quelques  Dia- 
toraces  contenues  dans  le  Cementstein  du  Jutland. 
(Researches  on  the  Structure  of  Certain  Diatoms 
contained  in  the  Cement-Stone  of  Jutland.)  By 
MM,  W.  Prinz  and  E.  Van  Ermengen.  Brussels: 
A.  Manceaux.    Pp.  74,  with  Four  Plates. 

One  Thousand  and  One  Riddles.  By  Nellie 
Greenway.  New  York :  J.  S.  Ogilvie  &  Co.  Pp. 
124.    15  cents. 

Cassell's  "  Family  Magazine,"  January,  1884. 
New  York :  Cassell  &  Co.  (Limited),  Pp.  64.  15 
cents  monthly.     %\M  a  year. 

Developments  in  the  Kinetic  Theory  of  Solids, 
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cinnati.   Pp.  16. 


Local  Government  and  Free  Schools  in  South 
Carolina.  By  B.  James  Raraage,  A.  B.  Baltimore  : 
Johns  Hopkins  University.  New  York  :  G,  P.  Put- 
nam's Sons.    Pp.  40.    40  cents. 

Suggestions  on  Library  Architecture.  American 
and  Foreign.  By  J.  L.  Smithmeyer.  Washington  : 
Gibson  Brothers.    Pp.  81. 

Notes  on  the  Literature  of  Explosives.  By 
Professor  Charles  E.  Munroe,  U.  S.  N,  A,,  Annapo- 
hs,  Md,    Pp.  '20, 

The  Evidence  for  Evolution  in  the  History  of  the 
Extinct  M:immalia.  By  E.  D.  Cojie,  Philadelphia. 
Salem,  Mass.:  Salem  Press.    Pp.  19. 

The  "Winter  Resorts  of  Floi-ida.  South  Georgia, 
Louisiana,  Texas,  Califcrnia,  Mexico,  and  Cuba,  and 
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hshed  by  the  Passenger  Department,  Savannah, 
Florida,  and  Western  Railway  Company.    Pp.  103, 

Injurious  and  other  Insects  of  the  State  of  New 
York.  First  Annual  Report,  By  J.  A,  Lintner. 
Albany  :  Weed,  Parsons  &  Co,    Pp,  883. 

Geology  of  the  Comstock  Lode.  By  George  F. 
Becker,  San  Francisco,  Cal.     Pp.  3. 

Proportional  Representation :  What  it  is  and 
what  it  will  do.  By  Simeon  Stetson,  San  Fran- 
cisco,    Pp,  8. 

Edison  Electric  Light  Company.  Twenty-first 
Bulletm,    Pp.  62, 

The  "Medico-Legal  Journal,"  December,  1SS3. 
New  York.     Pp,  96,     $3  a  year. 

Geology  of  the  Eureka  District,  Nevada.  Ab- 
stract of  Report.  By  Arnold  Hague.  Washing- 
ton: Government  Printing-Office,    Pp.50. 

United  States  Geological  Survey.  Second  An- 
nual Report,  ISSO-'Sl.  J,  W.  Powell.  Director, 
Washington :  Government  Printing-Office,  Pp. 
588,  with  Sixty-two  Plates. 

United  States  Geological  Survey,  Third  Annual 
Report.  By  J,  W.  Powell,  Director,  Washington  : 
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On  the  Contents  of  a  Bone-Cave  in  the  Island 
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Archivos  do  Museu  Nacional  do  Rio  de  Janeiro. 
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V,  ISSO.  Pp.  470.  Rio  de  Janeiro :  De  Machado 
&  Co. 

Where  did  Life  begin  ?  By  G.  Hilton  Scribner. 
New  York  :  Charles  Scribner's  Sons.    Pp.  64. 

The  Giieguence :  A  Comedy  Ballet  in  the  Na- 
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Pp.  63.     $1. 

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E.  A.     New  York:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.     Pp.  3o7. 

Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist.  By  John  Fisko, 
Boston  :  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.    Pp.  379.    $2. 

Martin  Luther  the  Reformer.  By  Julius  Koest- 
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Voice,  Song,  and  Speech.  By  Lennox  Browne 
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Sons.     Pp.  322, 

A  Guide  to  the  Microscopical  Examination  of 
Drinking- Water.  By  J.  I).  MacDonakl,  F.  R.  8. 
Philadelphia  :  P.  Blakiston,  Son  &  Co.  Pp.  83,  with 
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William  M.  Lacy.  Philadelphia:  Beiyamin  F. 
Lacy.    Pp.  236. 


570 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


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American,  and  Continental.  By  J.  A.  Berly.  Nevy 
York :  George  Cumming.    Pp.  664.    $2.51). 

Tertiary  History  of  the  Grand  Cafion  District. 
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Twenty  large  Plates  and  Panoramas. 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 

The  Ice  Age. — At  a  meeting  of  the 
Academy  of  Natural  Sciences  of  Philadel- 
phia, Professor  Heilprin  advanced  the  opin- 
ion that  the  enormous  sheet  of  ice  which 
extended  over  a  large  portion  of  North 
America  and  Europe  during  the  Glacial 
period  could  not  have  originated  from  a  po- 
lar "ice  cap."  He  deemed  it  doubtful  that 
there  could  have  accumulated  in  the  Arctic 
regions  sufficient  snow  and  ice  to  propel  a 
glacier  probably  several  thousand  feet  thick 
over  hundreds  of  miles,  and  up  slopes  to 
heights  of  five  or  six  thousand  feet.  Pre- 
cipitation in  polar  regions  takes  place  mainly 
in  a  low  atmospheric  zone ;  hence  it  would 
be  impossible  for  so  great  a  mass  of  snow 
to  accumulate  at  so  great  an  elevation  as 
would  be  necessary  to  propel  southward  a 
glacier  of  the  extent  required  by  geologists. 
Professor  Lewis  called  attention  to  a  point 
observed  some  time  ago  by  Dr.  Hayes,  but 
not  yet  sufficiently  appreciated,  namely,  that 
the  rate  of  increase  in  the  thickness  of  the 
glacier  diminished  northward.  Recent  ob- 
servations of  his  own  showed  the  glacier  to 
have  been  800  feet  thick  five  miles  from 
its  southern  limit,  and  2,030  feet  thick  at  a 
point  eight  miles  from  its  edge,  while  it  was 
only  about  3,100  feet  in  thickness  at  a  dis- 
tance of  100  miles,  and  5,000  feet  at  300 
miles  from  its  termination.  Rejecting  sev- 
eral hypotheses,  Professor  Lewis  suggested 
that  the  ice-cap  flowed  south  simply  because 
it  flowed  toward  a  source  of  heat.  Such  a 
motion  not  being  caused  by  gravity,  w^ould 
take  place  in  a  nearly  flat  field  of  ice,  and 
upon  his  supposition  the  ice  need  not  have 
been  more  than  a  few  times  its  present 
thickness  in  Greenland.  Professor  Heilprin 
replied  that  no  laws  of  glacial  action  were 
known  which  would  account  for  the  indis- 
criminate progression  of  an  ice-sheet  toward 
a  source  of  heat,  and  that  the  molecular 
expansion  theory,  as  applied  to  the  Alpine 
glaciers,  took  no  cognizance  of  the  direction 
of  the  heat-power,  but  merely  of  that  of 


least  resistance  (the  trend  of  the  slope).  At 
a  subsequent  meeting  he  supported  his 
views  previously  communicated  by  statistics 
of  precipitation  at  different  elevations  on 
the  Alps,  and  presented  some  curious  calcu- 
lations in  regard  to  the  rate  of  progression 
of  the  great  ice-sheet.  Allowing  for  it  the 
average  rate  of  the  Alpine  glaciers,  one  foot 
a  day,  it  would  have  required  a  period  of  no 
less  than  25,000  years  to  move  from  the 
sixty-fifth  parallel  of  latitude  to  the  line  of 
its  terminal  moraine.  But  it  may  well  be 
questioned  if  the  conditions  allowed  progres- 
sion at  more  than  one  fifth  of  this  rate. 
Professor  Lewis  remarked  that  arguments, 
drawn  from  meteorological  conditions  as 
they  now  exist,  will  not  in  all  cases  apply  in 
considering  the  Glacial  epoch.  He  further 
suggested  a  probable  analogy  between  the 
Antarctic  ice-cap,  some  25,000  miles  in  di- 
ameter, and  the  polar  ice-cap  of  glacial 
times,  and  mentioned  Croll's  estimate  that 
the  former  is  twelve  miles  thick  at  its  cen- 
ter. In  speaking  of  a  polar  ice-cap,  he  did 
not  mean  to  imply,  however,  that  the  ice 
was  necessarily  thickest  on  the  pole,  but  ■ 
that  in  Greenland,  Labrador,  the  Hudson 
Bay  region,  or  elsewhere,  there  may  have 
been  centers  from  which  glaciers  grew  final- 
ly to  coalesce  into  one  mass  of  ice,  the  top 
strata  of  which  flowed  southward  to  the  great 
terminal  moraine. 

Effect  of  Watering  Plants  with  Acids.— 

Mr.  L.  P.  Gratacap,  of  New  York  city,  has 
published  a  report  of  experiments  he  has 
made  to  determine  the  effect  of  watering 
with  solutions  of  acids  upon  plants.  He  ex- 
perimented upon  the  silver-leaved  geranium 
with  hydrochloric,  nitric,  carbolic,  formic, 
salicylic,  sulphuric,  tartaric,  and  citric  acids, 
and  water.  The  plants  watered  with  the 
first  six  acids  except  salicylic  were  unfavor- 
ably affected  from  the  first  day  of  the  ex- 
periment. From  June  22d  to  September 
6th  none  of  the  plants  died  except  the  car- 
bolic-acid plant,  although  the  nitric-acid 
plant  succumbed  shortly  after  the  experi- 
ment  terminated.  Of  the  rest  the  sulphuric- 
acid  plant  was  most  thriving,  then  the  hy- 
drochloric-acid plant,  and  last,  and  just 
alive,  the  plant  treated  with  formic  acid. 
Analyses  of  the  ashes  of  the  plants  showed 
that  the  acid  waters  tended  to  introduce  in- 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


571 


organic  ingredients  into  their  tissues.  Of 
hyacinth-bulbs  treated  in  a  similar  way,  only 
the  one  treated  with  tannic  acid  developed 
roots.  The  hydrochloric-acid  bulb  died,  and 
the  sulphuric-acid  bulb  a  month  later.  After 
the  tannic-acid  one,  a  bulb  treated  with  ox- 
alic  acid  did  best.  Tannic  acid  seemed  to 
increase  the  intensity  of  the  color  of  the 
flower.  The  plants  were  dwarfed  by  the 
treatment. 

Temperature  of  the  Glacial  Period.— 

Mr.  G.  F.  Becker  closes  a  carefully  consid- 
ered review,  in  the  "  American  Journal  of 
Science,"  of  the  phenomena  of  glaciation 
with  the  conclusion  that,  if  the  generally 
received  view  (the  substantiation  of  which 
would  not  be  superfluous)  that  the  sun  is  a 
gradually  cooling  body  is  correct,  "it  ap- 
pears nearly  certain  that  the  absolute  maxi- 
mum in  the  development  of  glaciers  is  past, 
and  that  the  glacial  period  was  not  one  of 
general  cold,  but  one  of  higher  mean  tem- 
perature at  sea -level  than  the  present." 
This  is  advanced  without  denying  that  a 
variety  of  other  causes  than  those  immedi- 
ately considered  by  him  may  have  had  an 
influence,  and,  perhaps,  a  great  influence, 
upon  glaciation.  "Indeed,  it  seems  more 
probable  that  the  formation  of  glaciers  was 
affected  by  all  contemporaneous  changes, 
such  as  extraordinary  upheavals  and  sub- 
sidences or  periodic  fluctuations  in  the  ec- 
centricity of  the  earth's  orbit ;  but,  if  the 
reasoning  offered  is  correct,  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  resort  to  such  events  to  account  for 
the  occurrence  of  a  glacial  epoch."  He  be- 
lieves that  the  production  of  glaciers  is 
chiefly  a  question  of  differences  between  the 
temperatures  at  the  sea-level  and  at  the 
level  at  which  the  glacier  is  formed. 

Pathology  of  the  Pear. — At  a  meeting 
of  the  New  Jersey  State  Microscopical  So- 
ciety, a  paper  was  read  by  the  secretary,  Dr. 
Samuel  Lockwood,  on  "  Fecal  Sclerogen,"  the 
last  word  meaning  the  indurated  particles 
of  lignine  in  the  pear.  He  showed  a  quan- 
tity of  material  like  sand,  which  had  been 
passed  by  a  person  to  whom  it  had  caused 
great  distress.  In  the  microscope  it  looked 
unlike  any  mineral  sand,  and  each  particle 
was  composed  of  a  cluster  of  sharp-pointed 
crystals,  like  dog-toothed  spar.     It  even  re- 


sisted the  action  of  nitric  acid,  but  was  dis- 
solved readily  by  ammoniuret  of  copper. 
Suspecting  its  nature,  he  took  the  rind  and 
core  of  a  ripe  Bartlett,  and  gave  them  to  his 
bees,  which  were  suffering  from  a  dearth  of 
flowers.  The  insects  cleaned  away  the  glu- 
cose and  all  the  juices,  leaving  the  pear-grit 
clean ;  which,  by  comparison  in  the  micro- 
scope, was  identical  with  the  fecal  grit. 
The  truth  was,  the  person  had  been  feasting 
inordinately  on  ripe  Bartletts.  The  doctor 
remarked  that  it  had  never  been  cleared  up 
why  the  pear  should  cause  to  many  such 
suffering  in  the  alimentary  canal,  as  its 
juices  were  really  far  less  acrid  than  those 
of  the  apple.  He  showed  that  it  was  due  to 
the  sclerogen,  or  pear-grit.  Each  particle 
literally  bristles  with  sharp  angular  points, 
and  the  cathartic  energy  is  due  to  the  me- 
chanical action  irritating  the  walls  of  the 
alimentary  canal. 

Growth  of  Boys  and  Girls,— The  in- 
vestigations of  the  Anthropometric  Com- 
mittee of  the  British  Association  have  made 
more  or  less  clear  several  interesting  facts 
respecting  the  rate  of  growth  of  the  two 
sexes  in  the  British  Isles.  The  period  of 
most  rapid  growth  is  from  birth  to  five 
years  of  age,  and  then  both  sexes  grow 
alike,  the  girls  being  a  little  shorter  and 
lighter  than  the  boys.  From  five  to  ten 
the  boys  grow  a  little  faster  than  the  girls, 
but  from  ten  to  fifteen  the  girls  grow  the 
faster,  and  at  between  eleven  and  a  half 
and  fourteen  and  a  half  years  old  are  actu- 
ally taller,  and  from  twelve  and  a  half  to 
fifteen  and  a  half  are  heavier  than  the  boys. 
The  boys,  however,  take  the  lead  between 
fifteen  and  twenty  years,  and  grow  at  first 
rapidly,  but  afterward  slower,  and  complete 
their  growth  at  about  twenty-three  years, 
while  girls  grow  very  slowly  after  fifteen 
years  of  age,  and  attain  their  full  stature 
at  about  the  twentieth  year.  The  tracings 
and  tables  show  a  slow  but  steady  increase 
in  stature  up  to  the  fiftieth  year,  and  a  more 
rapid  increase  in  weight  up  to  the  sixtieth 
year  in  men,  but  the  statistics  of  women  are 
too  few  after  the  age  of  twenty-three  to  de- 
termine the  stature  and  weight  of  their  sex 
at  the  more  advanced  periods  of  life.  The 
curve  of  the  chest-girth  in  men  shows  an 
increase  at  a  rate  similar  to  that  of  the 


572 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


weight  up  to  the  age  of  fifty  years,  but  it 
appears  to  have  no  definite  relation  to  the 
curve  of  stature.  The  strength  of  males 
increases  rapidly  from  twelve  to  nineteen 
years,  and  at  a  rate  similar  to  that  of  the 
weight;  more  slowly  and  regularly  up  to 
thirty  years,  after  which  it  declines  at  an 
increasing  rate  to  the  age  of  sixty  years. 
The  strength  of  females  increases  at  a  more 
uniform  rate  from  nine  to  nineteen  years, 
and  more  slowly  to  thirty,  after  which  it 
falls  off  in  a  manner  similar  to  that  of 
males.  The  curves  of  strength  for  the  two 
sexes  are  not  parallel :  at  eleven  years  fe- 
males are  weaker  than  males  by  twenty-two 
pounds,  at  twenty  years  of  age  by  thirty-six 
pounds.  The  fact  that  man  continues  to 
grow  in  stature  up  to  his  fiftieth  year  con- 
tradicts the  popular  notions  on  the  subject, 
according  to  which  he  ceases  to  grow  before 
he  reaches  half  that  age. 

The  Extinct  Volcanoes  of  the  Pacific 
SlopCi — According  to  the  "  Notes  "  fur- 
nished by  Messrs.  A.  Hague  and  J.  P.  Id- 
dings,  of  the  United  States  Geological  Sur- 
vey, to  the  "  American  Journal  of  Science,'' 
the  series  of  extinct  volcanoes  on  our  Pacific 
coast  extends  northward  from  Lassen's  Peak, 
near  the  fortieth  parallel,  at  intervals,  for 
nearly  five  hundi-ed  miles,  and  follows  in 
general  the  axial  lines  of  the  Sierra  and 
Cascade  Ranges.  The  more  prominent 
peaks  of  the  chain  are  Lassen's  Peak 
and  Mount  Shasta,  in  California ;  Mount 
Pitt,  Three  Sisters,  Mount  Jefferson,  and 
Mount  Hood,  in  Oregon;  and  Mounts  St. 
Helen's,  Adams,  Rainier,  and  Baker,  in 
Washington  Territory.  Mount  Rainier  is 
the  grandest  one  of  the  number,  and  forms 
the  most  prominent  topographical  object  in 
Washington  Territory.  The  surface  feat- 
ures of  the  western  part  of  the  Territory 
have  been  greatly  modified  by  the  lava-flows 
of  the  volcano,  and  four  of  the  important 
rivers  of  the  region  rise  among  its  glaciers. 
Snow  and  ice  cover  its  top,  reaching  down- 
ward for  five  or  six  thousand  feet,  while 
with  the  most  marked  contrast  the  broad 
base  of  the  mountain  supports  a  dark,  dense, 
grand  forest  vegetation.  The  summit  is 
formed  by  three  peaks,  the  chief  of  which, 
a  circular  cone,  with  a  crater  about  a  quar- 
ter of  a  mile  in  diameter,  rises  to  14,444 


feet  above  the  sea.  Mount  Hood  is  situ- 
ated directly  on  the  crest  of  the  Cascade 
Range,  about  twenty-five  miles  south  of  the 
Colimabia  River,  and  is  11,225  feet  high. 
Its  summit  is  a  single  peak — a  portion  of 
a  rim  of  an  ancient  crater.  The  crater  is 
about  half  a  mile  wide  from  east  to  west, 
and  its  encircling  wall,  for  three  fifths  of 
the  circumference,  rises  450  feet  above  the 
snow  and  ice  that  fill  the  basin.  Mount 
Adams  and  Mount  St.  Helen's,  on  the  north 
side  of  the  Columbia  River,  form,  with 
Mount  Hood,  a  triangle,  the  area  of  which 
has  been  the  center  of  great  volcanic  activity. 
None  of  the  volcanoes  along  the  belt  oc. 
cupy  so  comparatively  isolated  a  position  as 
Mount  Shasta,  which  stands  upon  an  open 
plain  with  the  neighboring  hills  and  ridges 
many  thousand  feet  lower.  Its  altitude  is 
given  as  14,440  feet,  and,  as  the  neighboring 
ridges  rarely  attain  an  altitude  of  over  3,000 
feet,  the  volcano  presents  an  imposing  spec- 
tacle surpassed  by  few  mountains  in  the 
world.  As  seen  from  the  "west,  it  presents 
a  double  cone,  the  smaller  built  upon  the 

j  flanks  of  the  larger  one,  and  about  2,000' 
feet  lower.  Around  the  broad  base  of  the 
mountain  numerous  lesser  cones  have  bro- 
ken out,  one  of  which,  Little  Shasta,  rises  to 

!  more  than  3,000  feet  above  the  neighbor- 
ing valley.  Seventy  miles  southeast  of 
Mount  Shasta,  near  the  boundary  between 
Nevada  and  California,  is  Lassen's  Peak, 
which,  though  it  is  about  10,500  feet  high, 
is  by  no  means  so  conspicuous  an  object  as 
many  of  the  volcanoes,  because  it  is  sur- 
rounded by  other  peaks  of  considerable  ele- 
vation. It  is  a  broad,  irregularly  shaped 
mountain,  with  four  prominent  summits,  and 
bears  on  its  slopes  abundant  evidence  of 
comparatively  recent  extrusions  of  lava. 

Science  and  Jack-Pnddings. — Mr.  R.  A. 

Proctor,  in  "  Knowledge,"  notices  the  single 
abusive  utterance  that  was  made  against 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  wiiile  he  was  in  this 
country,  and  which  came,  not  from  a  corner 
saloon,  but  from  a  pulpit,  and  remarks  of  it 
that  it  is  diflficult  to  say  whether  the  terms 
used  by  the  preacher  "  are  moi-e  strikingly 
contrasted  with  the  teaching  and  method  of 
the  writer  he  attacks  or  with  those  of  the 
intelligent,  well-trained,  and  well-educated 
clergymen  who  have,  indeed,  dissented  f:on 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY, 


S7Z 


some  of  the  inferences  which  appear  to  them 
to  follow  from  modern  scientific  theories, 
but  who  know  well  that  they  would  but  de- 
grade their  cause  and  themselves  (to  say 
nothing  of  their  calling)  were  they  to  sub- 
stitute reviling  for  rhetoric  and  railing  for 
reasoning."  Then  Mr.  Proctor  quotes  such 
passages  from  the  attack  as  are  fit  for  pub- 
lication, and  adds :  "  Nearly  three  centuries 
ago  there  was  at  least  earnestness  in  the 
arguments  used  by  priests,  and  monks,  and 
friars,  against  the  fearful  doctrine  that  the 
earth  goes  round  the  sun.  Unwise  though 
their  conduct,  and  unjudging  their  intoler- 
ance, they  believed  what  they  taught,  and 
in  their  day  their  belief  was  natural  enough. 
It  is  encouraging  to  find  that  in  our  day  the 
advance  of  science  is  only  opposed  by  the 
untaught  and  the  foolish ;  only  abused  by 
the  ranter  and  the  Jack-Pudding.  AVhen 
we  consider  how  necessary  are  certain  doc- 
trines for  the  world's  welfare — even  though 
hereafter  they  may  have  to  give  place  to 
higher  and  broader  and  deeper  truths — it  is 
well  to  see  that  those  who  do  their  best  to 
discredit  those  doctrines  are  not  now  men 
whose  words  have  any  weight,  are  not  even 
fanatics  or  bigots,  but  simply — clowns  and 
charlatans." 

The  Recent  Eclipse  of  the  Snn.— The 

formal  reports  of  the  observations  of  the 
solar  eclipse  of  the  6th  of  May  last  have  not 
yet  been  published ;  but  a  few  preliminary 
statements  respecting  them  have  appeared 
in  the  journals.  The  American,  French, 
and  English  parties  arrived  safely  and  in 
good  time  at  Caroline  Island,  and  set  up 
their  apparatus  under  generally  satisfactory 
conditions.  The  day  of  the  eclipse  opened 
rather  unfavorably,  but  the  sky  cleared  be- 
fore the  first  contact.  The  clouds  continued, 
however,  to  float  around,  so  that  the  corona 
was  partly  hidden  during  twenty  seconds  of 
the  first  minute  of  totality,  and  the  phenom- 
enon was  wholly  obscured  after  the  cessation 
of  totality.  As  totality,  however,  lasted  for 
nearly  five  minutes  and  a  half,  good  obser- 
vations of  that  stage  were  obtained.  The 
supposed  intra- Mercurial  planets  were  sought 
but  not  found.  Photography  docs  not  seem 
to  have  given  the  results  that  were  expected 
from  it ;  but  it  is  said  that  proofs  were  got 
the  combination  of  which  will  permit  the 


reconstruction  of  the  entire  corona  as  it  was 
shown  at  the  time.     Mr.  Hastings,  of  Balti- 
mox'e,  made  some  observations  on  the  spec- 
tra of  the  opposite  sides  of  the  corona,  from 
which  he  has  drawn  the  conclusion  that  the 
outer  portions  of  it  are  not  real,  but  are  ef- 
fects of  diffraction.  This  conclusion,  "  Ciel  et 
Terre,"  of  Brussels,  observes,  would  account 
for  the  differences  of  form  which  the  corona 
exhibits  to  different  observers,  but  fails  to 
account  for  the   predominance  of  coronal 
light  toward  the  solar  equator.     M.  Jansscn 
observed  anew  that,  besides  the  spectrum  of 
bright  lines,  the  corona  gives  a  weak  con- 
tinuous spectrum  showing  some  of  the  prin- 
cipal dark  rays  of  the  solar  spectrum.    This 
i  would  favor  the  theoi-y  that  the  light  really 
proceeds  from  the  coronal  appendage,  and 
that  its  exterior  is  made  up  of  a  mass  of 
:  meteors  reflecting  the  light  of  the  sun — a 
;  theory  that  is  already  supported  by  the  re- 
!  suits  of   polariscopic  analysis.     It   is   aLso 
j  stated  that  M.  Tacchini  has  observed  near 
,  the  limit  of  the  coronal  atmosphere  the  spec- 
trum of  a  hydrocarbon  similar  to  that  which 
comets  give  when  they  are  far  from  the  sun. 

Function  and  Strncture.— The  French 
Academy  of  Medicine  recently  discussed  the 
question  whether  an  identity  of  action  ex- 
ists between  the  living  tissues  of  animals 
and  of  men.  M.  Bechamp  denied  any  simi- 
larity, and  alleged  differences  in  the  prop- 
erties of  the  salivas  of  man  and  animals, 
and  between  the  milks  of  man,  the  cow,  and 
the  goat,  in  support  of  his  view.  The  an- 
swer to  this,  as  suggested  by  the  "  Lancet," 
is  that,  in  the  process  of  evolution,  function 
precedes  structure ;  hence  the  legitimate 
corollary  is  deduced  that  the  properties  of 
a  tissue  are  more  delicate  tests  of  its  nature 
than  the  structure.  It  is  more  than  prob- 
able, however,  that  in  drawing  this  conclu- 
sion we  are  swerved  by  the  imperfections  of 
our  senses,  and  that  molecular  structure 
goes  hand-in-hand  with  function,  and  that 
a  change  in  property  is  accompanied  by  a 
corresponding  variation  in  the  arrangement 
of  the  constituent  atoms  of  a  molecule. 
Every  cell  and  every  molecule  has  its  indi- 
vidual characteristics,  and  these  idiosyncra- 
sies may  extend  to  different  individuals  of 
the  same  species,  to  different  species,  and 
to  different  genera. 


574 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


A  Home-made  Microphone. — Some  of 
the  readers  of  this  journal  may  be  pleased 
to  have  a  description  of  a  little  microphone 
that  has  given  good  results,  and  which  can 
be  made,  in  a  few  minutes,  from  material 
at  hand.  It  is  represented  in  the  figure  of 
the  natural  size.  It  is  made  from  a  visiting- 
card  of  the  ordinary  thickness  cut  square. 
A  round  card  might  look  better,  but  it  will 
give  less  satisfaction.  On  the  card  should 
be  fastened  with  sealing-wax  three  thin, 
light  disks  of  carbon,  BBB',  of  the  qual- 
ity used  in  the  electric  light.     The  disks 


ters,  for  example,  by  the  terminal  D',  follows 
the  rod  C,  then  the  disk  B',  whence  by  the 
wire  b  it  passes  by  the  two  disks  B  to  return 
to  the  terminal  D  through  the  two  rods  C  C. 
The  little  instrument  may  be  made  very 
sensitive  to  the  voice  and  to  all  sounds,  pro- 
vided the  card  A  is  given  the  proper  weight, 
and  is  neither  too  heavy  nor  too  light.  The 
voice,  with  its  timbre,  of  a  person  speaking 
in  his  usual  tone  at  the  other  side  of  the 
room,  can  be  heard  very  distinctly  in  it. 
The  sounds  of  the  piano  are  particularly  well 
reflected.     The  apparatus  should  be  placed 


should  be  placed  symmetrically  at  the  an- 
gles of  an  equilateral  triangle,  and  should 
be  put  in  communication  with  each  other  by 
the  copper  wires  hhh\  which  are  either  sol- 
dered or  stuck  tightly  into  holes  made  in 
each  disk  to  receive  them.  Platinum  may 
be  advantageously  substituted  for  copper. 
The  rest  of  the  apparatus  consists  of  a 
square  wooden  foot,  M,  supporting  three 
prismatic  rods  of  carbon,  C  C  C ',  arranged 
so  as  to  correspond  exactly  with  the  three 
disks  BBB'.  Two  of  the  rods,  C  C,  com- 
municate by  the  copper  or  platinum  wires 
dd  with  the  common  terminal  D,  while  the 
third  rod,  C,  communicates  alone  with  a 
second  terminal,  D'.  The  upper  ends  of  the 
charcoal  rods  should  be  cut  into  a  bevel- 
shape— not  into  a  point,  for  that  does  not 
give  sufficient  contacts.  The  rods  are  sealed 
to  the  wooden  base  M.  The  theory  of  this 
microphone  is  very  simple.    The  current  en- 


upon  a  table  two  or  three  metres  away  from 
the  sound.  For  a  battery  to  put  the  micro- 
phone in  action,  I  have  generally  used  a  small 
Bunsen  element.  Two  or  three  Leclanch6 
elements  would  do  as  well.  I  have  used  a 
modification  of  the  Leclanch6  elements,  in 
the  shape  of  a  pile  made  of  a  plate  of  zinc 
and  a  carbon  plate,  moistened  with  a  satu- 
rated solution  of  bichromate  of  potash  and 
hydrochlorate  or  sulphate  of  ammonia.  It 
is  in  fact  the  bichromate  pile  without  the 
costly  mechanism  which  is  used  for  reliev- 
ing the  zinc  from  the  action  of  the  acid 
when  the  apparatus  is  at  rest.  This  ele- 
ment docs  not  waste  when  the  current  is 
interrupted,  as  in  the  Leclanch6  pile.  A 
difficulty  which  arises  in  the  use  of  the  pile, 
from  the  penetration  of  the  carbons  by  the 
ammoniacal  solutions  till  they  attack  the 
wires,  has  been  obviated  by  M.  Pr6aubert's 
device  of  exposing  the  carbons  to  a  bath  of 


NOTES. 


575 


boiling  paraffine,  which  destroys  their  capil- 
larity, while  it  does  not  affect  their  conduct- 
ing power.  The  superficial  paraffine  may 
be  scraped  off  after  the  bath.  Piles  may  be 
obtained  by  this  means  that  will  endure  in- 
definitely, and  have,  apparently,  an  electro- 
motive force  superior  to  that  of  a  Leclanche 
pile  of  the  same  dimensions. — M.  A,  Bleu- 
NARD  {translated  for  the  Popular  Science 
Monthly  from  La  Nature). 

Ligbtning  without  Andible  Thnnder,— 

A  correspondent  of  "  Nature  "  reports  a  vio- 
lent rain  and  lightning  storm  which  took 
place  near  the  crest  of  the  Apennines,  and 
during  which  no  sound  of  thunder  was 
heard.  The  writer  also  describes  two  other 
such  storms  that  he  witnessed  on  the  edge 
of  the  Montenegrin  highlands.  "  On  these 
nights,"  he  states,  "  the  lightning  was  so  in- 
cessant  and  vivid  that  we  were  able  to  walk 
about,  choosing  our  way  among  the  stones 
and  shrubs  as  readily  as  by  daylight,  the 
intervals  between  the  flashes  being,  I  should 
judge,  never  more  than  a  minute,  while  much 
of  the  time  they  seemed  absolutely  continu- 
ous, the  landscape  being  visible  in  all  de- 
tails under  a  diffused  violet  light.  Looking 
overhead,  the  movements  of  the  lightning 
were  easily  discernible,  the  locality  of  the 
discharges  varying  from  one  part  of  the 
vault  to  another  in  a  manner  which  it  was 
impossible  to  confound  with  the  reflection 
of  lightning  from  a  distance.  Like  the 
storm  of  last  night,  those  were  followed  by 
copious  rain,  but  not  a  single  peal  of  thun- 
der was  heard  during  the  whole  night." 

Combustion  -  Products  from  Different 
Lights. —  The  following  figures  show  the 
amount  per  hour  of  combustion-products 
from  several  varieties  of  artificial  light.  Un- 
less the  electric  light  has  some  peculiar  in- 
jurious influence,  it  has  a  great  superiority 
on  sanitary  grounds : 


UGHT  OF  100  CANDLES. 


Electric  lamp,  arc 

Electric  lamp,  incandescent 

Gas,  argand-burner j   0  *  86 

Lamp,  petroleum,  flat  flame 

Lamp,  colza-oil 

Candle,  paraffine 

Candle,  tallow 


ll 

fl 

i| 

§3 

^j 

6  ,s 

0 

0 

0 

0 

'   0-86 

0-46 

0-80 

0-95 

0-85 

1-00 

0-99 

1-22 

1-05 

1-45 

r 


57-15R 
290-f)86 
4S60 
7200 
6^00 
9200 
9700 


NOTES. 

Mr.  Robert  E.  C.  Stearns,  in  a  paper 
read  before  the  California  Academy  of  Sci- 
ences, announces  his  conclusion,  from  his 
studies  of  the  shells  of  the  Colorado  Desert 
and  the  region  farther  east  (particularly 
from  studies  of  Physa  and  Anodonta)^  that 
every  item  bearing  upon  the  geographical 
distribution  of  the  species  indicates  the 
mountain-lakes  as  the  sources  whence  they 
are  derived;  points  to  their  descent  from 
northerly  regions  as  well  a*  from  higher 
altitudes ;  and  contributes  additional  testi- 
mony as  to  the  antiquity  of  these  widely 
spread  though  inferior  forms  of  life. 

General  Richard  D.  Cutis,  of  the 
United  States  Coast  Survey,  died  in  Wash- 
ington, December  13th,  in  the  seventy- 
seventh  year  of  his  age.  He  had  been  con- 
nected with  the  Coast  Survey  during  the 
greater  part  of  his  life,  and  was  at  the  time 
of  his  death  first  assistant  superintendent 
of  the  service. 

In  a  paper  before  the  American  Asso- 
ciation on  the  ''Serpentine  of  Staten  Island, 
N.  Y.,"  Dr.  T.  Sterry  Hunt  expressed  him- 
self in  favor  of  the  opinion  of  Dr.  Britton, 
of  the  School  of  Mines,  Columbia  College, 
that  the  belt  containing  the  mineral  is  a 
protruding  portion  of  the  Eozoic  series. 
The  appearance  of  isolated  hills  and  regions 
of  serpentine  is  common  in  other  regions, 
and  is  by  Dr.  Hunt  explained  by  the  consid- 
eration that  this  very  insoluble  magnesian 
silicate  resists  the  atmospheric  agencies 
which  dissolve  limestones  and  convert 
gneisses  to  clay  —  the  removal  of  which 
rocks  leaves  exposed  the  included  beds  and 
lenticular  masses  of  serpentine.  Similar 
appearances  are  seen  in  many  parts  of  Italy, 
where  ridges  and  bosses  of  serpentine  are 
found  protruding  in  the  midst  of  Eocene 
strata,  and  have  hitherto,  by  most  European 
geologists,  been  regarded  as  eruptive  masses 
of  Eocene  age.  Mather,  who  described  the 
Staten  Island  locality  more  than  forty  years 
ago,  also  looked  upon  the  serpentine  as  an 
eruptive  rock. 

A  CURIOUS  instance  of  the  kindling  of 
a  fire  by  means  of  the  concentration  of  the 
sun's  rays  by  a  globular  water-bottle  through 
which  they  passed  is  related  by  a  corre- 
spondent of  "La  Nature."  The  day  was 
cold,  but  the  sun  shone  brightly ;  the  bottle, 
an  "  onion-shaped  "  flask,  tilled  with  water 
so  as  to  form  a  perfect  lens,  sat  upon  the 
table.  The  starting  of  the  fire,  which  would 
have  caused  great  "damage  if  the  relater  of 
the  incident  had  not  been  present  to  extin- 
guish it,  was  revealed  by  the  smoke.  A  de- 
liberate experiment  was  made  on  the  next 
day,  with  complete  success,  in  kindling  a  fire 
by  this  means. 


576 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


The  "Pall  Mall  Gazette"  cites  some 
more  cases  illustrating  the  quality  of  the 
learning  furnished  by  the  English  board- 
schools.  The  study  was  geography.  The 
children  were  able  to  give  an  accurate  list 
of  the  exports  of  Norway,  but  could  not 
recall  the  picture  of  a  fiord.  They  knew 
that  the  latitude  of  Paris  was  49°,  but  when 
asked,  *'  What  is  latitude  ?  "  they  were 
either  dumb,  or  gave  such  answers  as — 
*'  Latitude  means  lines  running  straight 
up  " ;  "  Latitude  means  zones  or  climate  "  ; 
"Latitude  is  measured  by  multiplying  the 
length  by  the  breadth."  Correct  lists  of 
imports  were  given,  but  customs  duties  were 
defined,  by  a  girl,  "  Customs  are  ways, 
duties  are  things  that  we  have  to  do,  and 
we  ought  to  do  them " ;  by  a  boy,  "  Cus- 
tomers' duties  are  to  go  to  the  places  and 
buy  what  they  want,  not  stopping  about, 
but  go  out  when  they  are  done." 

According  to  tables  prepared  by  Dr. 
Daniel  Draper,  of  the  New  York  Meteoro- 
logical Observatory,  Greenwich  Observatory 
had  1,245  hours  of  sunshine  in  1878,  in  a 
possibility  of  4,447,  while  New  York  had 
2,936  hours,  in  a  possibility  of  4,449 ;  and 
in  1879,  Greenwich  had  977  hours,  and  New 
York  3,101  hours. 

Professor  Sven  Nilsson,  of  the  Lund 
University,  Sweden,  a  distinguished  zoolo- 
gist, died"  November  30th,  at  the  age  of 
nmety-seven  years. 

It  is  proposed  to  hold  next  year,  in  the 
building  of  the  International  Fisheries  Ex- 
hibition at  South  Kensington,  an  exhibition 
illustrating  the  relations  of  food,  dress,  the 
dwelling,  the  school,  and  the  workshop, 
with  health.  The  exhibition  will  be  divided 
into  sections  of  education  and  health,  and 
further  into  six  principal  groups:  1.  Food- 
matters  and  their  preparation;  2.  Dress, 
with  specimens  of  different  styles  and  ma- 
terials ;  3,  4,  and  5.  What  pertains  to  the 
healthful  construction  and  fitting  of  the 
dwelling,  the  school,  and  the  workshop ; 
and,  6.  All  that  relates  to  primary,  technical, 
and  art  education. 

Popular  lore  teaches  several  signs  by 
which  it  pretends  to  determine  from  the 
weather  on  a  particular  day  what  the  weath- 
er will  be  for  a  longer  or  shorter  time  in  the 
future.  M.  A.  Lancaster  reports,  in  "  Ciel  et 
Tierre"  of  Brussels,  concerning  a  test  he 
has  made  of  one  of  these  signs.  It  is  that 
of  St.  Medard's  day,  or  the  8th  of  June,  con- 
cerning which  a  proverb  is  rife  in  the  Conti- 
nental countries  that,  if  it  rains  then,  it  will 
rain  for  forty  days  afterward.  M.  Lancas- 
ter examined  the  record  for  fifty  years,  fiom 
1833  to  1882,  and  found  from  it  that,  as  a 
rule,  it  rained  about  as  much  and  as  often 
during  the  forty  days  following  the  8th  of 
June  when  it  did  not  rain  on  that  day  as 


when  it  did.  Taking  the  averages  of  all  the 
years,  there  was  a  ditference  of  2"3  days, 
or  less  than  one  seventeenth,  and  of  twelve 
millimetres  (88-l-77*6)  of  rain  in  favor  of 
the  rainy  St.  Medard :  not  enovgh,  certainly, 
on  which  to  found  a  rule. 

Mr.  John  Eliot  Howard,  F.  R.  S.,  a  well- 
known  chemist  and  quinologist  of  London, 
died  in  November  last,  at  the  age  of  seven- 
ty-six years.  His  father,  Mr.  Luke  Howard, 
F.  R.  S.,  was  in  his  own  day  distinguished 
as  a  meteorologist. 

TuRGENiEFT,  the  great  Russian  novelist, 
recently  deceased,  had  the  heaviest  brain 
that  has  yet  been  weighed — 2,012  grammes. 
The  average  weight  of  the  human  brain  is 
1,390  grammes.  The  statistics  of  brain- 
weights  so  far  gathered  do  not  show  that 
great  intellects  are  marked  by  heavy  brains. 
Cuvier's  brain,  1,800  grammes,  was  consid- 
erably larger  than  the  average,  while  Gam- 
betta's  was  remarkably  small.  The  brains 
of  Raphael,  Cardinal  Mezzofanti,  Charles 
Dickens,  Lord  Byron,  and  Charles  Lamb, 
did  not  exceed  the  average,  and  only  Mez- 
zofanti's  reached  it. 

Lieutenant  Wissmann,  a  German  ex- 
plorer, is  about  to  make  another  journey- 
into  Africa,  the  cost  of  which  is  defrayed 
by  private  contributions.  His  object  will 
be  to  explore  the  Kaissai  from  Mukenge  to 
its  mouth  into  the  Congo.  The  success  of 
the  expedition  is  likely  to  have  an  impor- 
tant bearing  on  the  extension  and  develop- 
ment of  trade  on  the  Congo,  and  to  contrib- 
ute much  to  geographical  knowledge;  for 
the  contemplated  route  will  intersect  the 
southern  and  unexplored  part  of  the  bend 
of  the  great  river,  probably  in  the  middle. 

The  remains  of  Commandant  Langle  and 
other  companions  of  the  explorer  La  Pe- 
rouse,  who  were  massacred  by  savages  in 
the  last  century,  have  been  discovered  by 
the  Roman  Catholic  missionaries  on  the  Isl- 
and of  Tutuila,  where  the  massacre  occurred. 
A  memorial  chapel  is  to  be  built  at  the  spot 
where  they  are  buried. 

The  Italian  traveler  Sacconi,  who  was 
exploring  the  country  of  the  Somaulis  under 
the  auspices  of  the  Geograi)hical  Society  of 
Milan,  was  murdered  by  the  natives  on  the 
12th  of  August.  His  death  puts  an  end  to 
one  of  the  most  important  explorations  of 
the  day  into  a  country  concerning  which 
many  questions  still  remain  to  be  settled. 

Among  the  20,000  articles  of  bronze  be- 
longing to  the  lake-dwellers  so  far  found  in 
Switzerland,  about  30  per  cent  are  rings,  17 
per  cent  bracelets,  4  per  cent  knives,  3  per 
cent  needles,  0'4  per  cent  hammers,  and  0*2 
per  cent  fibulae. 


ORMSBY  MACKNIGHT  MITCHEL. 


THE 

POPULAR    SCIENCE 
MONTHLY. 


MARCH,  1884. 


FKOM  MOJSTEE   TO  MAI^. 

Bt  FRANCES  EMILY  WHITE,  M.  D., 

PEOFESSOB   OF   PHYSIOLOGY   IN   THE   WOMAN' 3   MEDICAL   COLLEGE   OF   PENNSYLVANIA.* 

MAN  has  long  been  regarded  not  only  as  a  compendium  of  the 
entire  animal  kingdom,  but  as  an  epitome  of  the  universe — as 
Nature's  short-hand  expression  of  a  long-continued  history  begun  with 
the  beginning  condensation  of  the  nebulae,  and  still  going  on  to  the 
development  of  higher  types  of  humanity.  Nature's  language  is  hiero- 
glyphic, and  for  the  correct  interpretation  of  her  occult  characters  a 
key  is  necessary.  It  is  one  of  the  many  triumphs  of  modern  science 
that  she  has  found  at  least  a  partial  key  to  this  mysterious  book,  and 
it  is  to  the  unlocking  of  some  of  its  secrets  that  your  attention  is  in- 
vited on  this  occasion. 

My  subject — the  development  of  the  human  body  from  a  micro- 
scopic speck  of  living  matter — is  a  vast  one,  and  the  attempt  to  con- 
dense its  consideration  into  the  space  of  a  single  hour  can  result,  at 
best,  in  a  little  more  than  a  bare  outline  ;  but  even  such  an  exposition, 
however  imperfect,  may  perhaps  be  deemed  justifiable  as  a  means  of 
inciting  to  further  study,  and  it  is  in  this  hope  that  the  task  is  under- 
taken. 

In  the  earliest  perceptible  stage  of  its  existence,  the  human  being 
consists  of  a  minute  apparently  homogeneous  mass  of  living  matter 
of  the  kind  known,  since  the  days  of  Yon  Mohl  and  Remak,  as  pro- 
toplasm. The  word  means  simply  the  first  formative  material,  or  the 
material  in  which  all  plants  and  animals  have  their  origin.  That  it 
is  a  fact  of  natural  history,  and  not  a  mere  figment  of  the  scientific 
imagination,  that  all  plants  and  animals  originate  in  a  common  sub- 
stance, is  no  longer  denied.     This  great  principle  was,  indeed,  recog- 

*  Address  delivered  at  the  opening  of  the  Twenty-ninth  Annual  Session. 
VOL.  XXIV. — 37 


578  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

nized  by  Harvey,  and  first  expressed  in  his  famous  aphorism,  "  Omne 
vivum  ex  ovo  " — an  egg,  whenever  it  occurs,  consisting  essentially  of 
a  minute  globule  of  protoplasm. 

What  is  the  origin  of  this  universal,  white-of -egg-like  material  ? 
As  little  is  known  of  the  history  of  the  first  production  of  protoplasm 
as  of  that  of  the  elements — hydrogen,  oxygen,  nitrogen,  carbon,  etc., 
of  which  it  is  composed.  So  far  as  yet  discovered,  all  protoplasm, 
whether  vegetable  or  animal,  is  derived  from  pre-existing  protoplasm. 
The  spontaneous  production  of  living  matter  from  non-living  mate- 
rials has  never  been  satisfactorily  proved.  The  particular  kind  of  pro- 
toplasm which  we  are  about  to  consider — viz.,  the  human  germ — is  the 
combined  derivative  of  certain  glands  which  exist  in  separate  adult 
human  beings  who  represent  the  opposite  sexual  polarities  belonging 
to  all  except  the  lowest  vegetable  and  animal  types.  At  the  earliest 
recognizable  stage  of  his  existence  man  may  therefore  be  regarded, 
physiologically,  as  a  secretion.  Zoologically,  to  what  rank  is  he,  then, 
entitled  ?  The  undeveloped  human  ovum,  immediately  after  its  fer- 
tilization, corresponds  in  structure  to  the  lowest  known  order  of  the 
most  simple  class  of  animals,  the  Protozoa,  which  stand  at  the  very 
foot  of  the  zoological  scale.  To  this  most  humble  of  all  known  living 
creatures  Professor  Haeckel  has  given  the  name  of  Moner,  a  word  of 
the  same  origin  as  monad,  and  expressive  of  ultimate  simplicity  and 
primitiveness. 

More  simple  even  than  the  moner,  however,  is  the  hathybius,  found 
on  the  deep-sea  bottom,  and  described  by  Professor  Huxley  as  consist- 
ing of  an  ill-defined  mass  of  a  slime-like  material  possessing  all  the 
properties  of  living  protoplasm.  Even  granting  with  skeptics  on  this 
point  that  the  existence  of  bathybius  is  not  satisfactorily  proved,  we 
may  nevertheless  assert  with  confidence  that,  as  the  natural  predecessor 
of  the  moner,  it  ought  to  exist,  and  will  some  time  be  discovered,  just 
as  certain  unobserved  heavenly  bodies  have  been  partially  described 
and  located  by  astronomers  long  before  the  telescope  had  penetrated 
the  obscurity  in  which  they  were  hidden. 

Through  the  processes  of  nutrition,  under  the  combined  influences 
of  growth  and  development,  this  non-nucleated  mass  of  living  proto- 
plasm (the  human  ovum)  acquires  a  nucleus  ;  in  other  words,  there 
appears  at  its  center  a  minute  speck  of  matter  slightly  more  opaque 
than  the  surrounding  matter.  Diiferentiation  has  therefore  begun  ; 
that  is,  a  difference  of  parts  has  made  its  appearance.  How  does  this 
nucleus  (to  which,  in  cell-physiology,  so  much  importance  is  attached) 
differ  from  the  surrounding  matter  which  constitutes  the  bulk  of  the 
germ  ?  Chemically,  it  is  more  active ;  it  is  believed  to  be  the  part 
where  nutrition  (the  assimilation  of  new  material)  mainly  takes  place. 
Its  greater  chemical,  and,  therefore,  nutritive  activity,  is  shown  by  its 
deeper  staining  with  coloring  -  matters,  such  as  carmine  and  haema- 
toxylin,  and  by  the  fact  that,  with  the  access  of  nutriment,  fresh  nu- 


FROM  MONER   TO  MAN.  579 

clei  make  their  appearance.  It  undoubtedly  contains  a  larger  propor- 
tion of  the  nitrogenous  matter  which  enters  into  the  composition  of  all 
protoplasm,  and,  like  the  nuclei  of  other  cells,  a  certain  percentage  of 
phosphorus.  At  this  stage  of  its  existence  the  germ  (still  microscopic) 
is  represented  in  the  zoological  scale  by  the  Amoeba,  which  it  closely 
resembles  in  structure,  having  thus  ascended  to  the  second  round  of 
the  zoological  ladder. 

The  amoeba  has  received  its  full  share  of  attention  from  biologists. 
Its  physiological  endowments  are  scarcely  greater  than  those  of  the 
non-nucleated  moner.  Both  are  capable  of  effecting  those  exchanges 
of  matter  which  constitute  nutrition  ;  both  are  capable  of  reproduction 
(a  phase  of  nutrition)  ;  both  have  the  power  of  changing  their  form 
by  thrusting  out  portions  of  their  mass  (the  so  called  "  false-feet "),  and 
of  thus  executing  slight  creeping  movements.  These  little  masses  of 
protoplasm  are  also  capable  of  responding  to  contact  of  other  matter, 
thus  exhibiting  the  rudiments  of  common  sensation.  What  is  the  evi- 
dence of  this  capacity  ?  How  does  the  amoeba  manifest  a  sense  of 
touch  ?  When  some  substance,  perhaps  a  smaller  representative  of  its 
own  species,  floats  against  the  surface  of  an  amoeba,  the  precocious  bit 
of  protoplasm  responds  to  the  salute  by  flowing  around  its  victim, 
which  is  thereby  inclosed  within  the  body  of  its  captor,  and  gradually 
appropriated  as  food.  Probably  the  term  "  victim  "  is  of  doubtful  ap- 
plication in  this  case,  since  the  difference  between  eating  and  being 
eaten  must  be  trifling.  However  that  may  be,  the  one  improvises  a 
stomach  for  the  occasion,  and  digests  the  other  with  all  the  nonchalance 
of  a  Feejee-Islander.  The  human  germ  is,  however,  preserved  from  a 
similar  indulgence  in  incipient  cannibalism  by  its  different  environ- 
ment— not  the  only  period  of  its  existence  when  it  escapes  evil-doing 
through  lack  of  opportunity — for  it  receives  its  pabulum,  ready  pre- 
pared, from  the  blood  of  the  mother,  which  is  doubtless  one  of  the 
conditions  of  its  future  higher  development. 

In  this  response  to  contact  by  movement  on  the  part  of  the  amoeba, 
it  exhibits  the  rudiments  of  both  muscular  and  nervous  action,  since, 
under  the  influence  of  an  external  force  or  stimulus,  a  reflex  move- 
ment is  produced. 

The  next  perceptible  change  in  the  evolution  of  the  ovum  is  known 
as  segmentation.  This  consists  in  an  increase  of  its  mass  by  duplica- 
tion and  reduplication  ;  the  single  cell  first  acquires  a  second  nucleus, 
and  the  surrounding  protoplasm  then  separates  into  two  masses,  each 
having  its  own  nucleus  ;  this  process  is  continued  until  the  enveloping 
membrane  contains  a  mass  of  cells,  each  like  the  original  amoeboid 
cell.  From  the  resemblance  of  the  ovum  at  this  period  to  a  mulberry, 
this  is  called  the  mulberry  or  morula  stage  of  embryonic  development. 
In  the  zoological  scale,  it  corresponds  to  the  lahyrinthula,  a  little  ani- 
mal which  consists  of  an  aggregation  of  simple  nucleated  cells.  From 
this  multiplication  of  nuclei,  which  are  regarded  as  the  active  centers 


58o  THE  POPULAR   SCIEXCE  MONTHLY, 

of  nutrition,  there  must  result  an  increased  power  of  development  and 
growth. 

By  the  absorption  of  fluid  from  the  maternal  tissues  in  which  it  is 
imbedded  and  the  accumulation  of  this  fluid  at  the  center  of  the  mass, 
the  cells  of  this  mulberiy-like  body  become  crowded  outward  to  the 
periphery,  thus  forming  a  lining  for  the  membranous  sac — ^i.  e.,  the 
outer  covering  of  the  ovum — which  incloses  them,  the  entire  globular 
mass  now  being  about  one  twenty-fourth  of  an  inch  in  diameter,  and 
consisting  of  a  structureless  outer  membrane  lined  with  a  layer  of  nu- 
cleated cells  (the  blastoderm) y  and  filled  with  clear  fluid.  These  lining 
cells  multiply  rapidly  ;  the  inner  ones  become  larger,  darker,  and 
softer  than  the  outer  ones,  and  thus  differentiation  has  again  occurred 
— the  lining  having  developed  into  two  distinct  layers.  This  is  known 
as  the  gastnila  stage  of  embryonic  development.  All  animals,  from 
sponges  to  man,  pass  through  this  phase,  becoming  first  two  and  then 
three  layered  sacs  ;  but,  from  this  point,  the  different  branches  or  sub- 
kingdoms  diverge  ;  and  the  next  recognizable  phase  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  human  embryo  is  confined  to  vertebrates,  with  a  single  ex- 
ception, the  ascidian.  The  larval  ascidian  swims  like  a  tadpole  by 
means  of  a  caudal  appendage  in  which  may  be  traced  a  rod-like  body 
thought  to  be  a  rudimentary  chorda  dorsalis,  since  it  resembles  the 
embryonic  structure  which,  in  the  perfect  vertebrate,  develops  into  the 
spinal  column  with  its  contained,  highly  endowed  spinal  cord.  This, 
however,  not  only  fails  to  develop  but  actually  disappears  in  adult 
life,  leaving  the  ascidian  a  simple  invertebrate  animal.  But,  whether 
the  ascidian  be  a  true  connecting  link  between  invertebrates  and  ver- 
tebrates, or,  as  suggested  by  Balfour,  a  reversion  from  the  higher 
form,  it  serves  equally  to  indicate  a  close  relationship  between  these 
two  great  subdivisions  of  the  animal  kingdom. 

Between  the  two  layers  of  germinal  cells  which  belong  to  the  gas- 
trula  stage,  a  third  layer  is  developed,  and  from  these  three  layers  (the 
epiblast,  the  mesoblasty  and  the  hypoblast)  all  the  tissues  and  organs  of 
the  body  are  derived.  The  inner  layer  (hypoblast)  gives  origin  to  the 
epithelial  lining  of  the  alimentary  canal  and  to  the  various  glands  de- 
rived from  it.  From  the  outer  layer  (epiblast)  are  developed  the  brain 
and  spinal  cord,  and  the  epidermis  with  its  appendages  and  derivatives, 
including  the  organs  of  the  special  senses.  From  the  middle  layer 
(mesoblast)  the  various  intermediate  structures  are  produced.  The 
remaining  history  of  development  is,  therefore,  the  history  of  the  dif- 
ferentiation of  these  three  layers  of  the  blastoderni  (which  alike  con- 
sist of  simple  nucleated  cells)  into  the  various  tissues  and  organs  of 
the  body.  Accompanying  this  process  there  is  a  corresponding  de- 
velopment of  functions.  As  absorption  and  assimilation,  so  perfectly 
performed  by  these  germinal  cells,  are,  however,  the  fundamental  facts 
in  the  nutrition  of  even  the  highest  organisms,  so  also  reaction  in  re- 
sponse to  a  stimulus,  of  which  we  have  found  even  the  moner  and  the 


FROM  MONER   TO  MAN.  581 

amoeba  to  be  capable,  is  the  fundamental  fact  in  the  functions  of  the 
fully  developed  muscle,  nerve,  and  brain  of  the  highest  organisms. 

The  embryon,  in  its  condition  of  a  three-layered  sac,  soon  begins 
to  show  a  slight  bilateral  symmetry,  and  a  chorda  dorsalis  appears. 
Its  rank,  as  a  vertebrate,  is  thus  established  in  the  dawning  of  that  im- 
portant structure,  a  backbone. 

Allusion  has  been  made  to  the  ascidian  as  introducing  the  verte- 
brate type.  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  claims  of  this  animal 
to  so  important  a  place  in  the  genealogical  tree,  there  can  be  little 
doubt  about  the  position  of  the  amphioxiis  with  its  dorsal  cord  dis- 
tinct and  persistent  throughout  life.  Though  classed,  on  this  ac- 
count, among  vertebrates,  it  is  singularly  wanting  in  vertebrate  char- 
acteristics, having  neither  heart  nor  brain  in  the  true  sense  of  these 
words.  It  is  also  destitute  of  limbs,  even  of  the  most  rudimentary 
kind,  such  as  are  found  in  the  very  lowest  fishes.  In  fact,  it  is  dis- 
tinctly neither  vertebrate  nor  invertebrate,  thus  admirably  filling  the 
position  of  a  connecting  link  between  these  two  great  subdivisions  of 
the  animal  kingdom. 

At  the  chordonian  stage  of  its  development,  the  human  embryon 
is  equally  destitute  of  a  true  heart,  brain,  and  limbs,  thus  correspond- 
ing to  a  sub-type  of  the  vertebrates  called  by  Haeckel,  Acraniaj  of 
which  the  amphioxus  is  the  best-known  representative.  There  is,  nev- 
ertheless, in  this  heartless,  brainless,  limbless,  and  almost  shapeless  mass 
of  but  slightly  differentiated  protoplasm,  that  wonderful  impulse  of 
evolution  by  which  its  destiny,  as  an  individual  of  the  highest  organic 
rank,  is  assured. 

Along  the  line  of  the  chorda  dorsalis,  rudimentary  nerve-centers 
and  spinal  vertebrae  gradually  appear,  the  embryon  thus  entering  on  a 
grade  of  development  comparable  to  that  of  the  lowest  fishes,  in  which 
the  spinal  column  is  cartilaginous  rather  than  bony. 

The  budding  limbs  resemble  budding  fins  ;  arches  similar  to  those 
which,  in  water-breathing  animals,  support  the  gills  are  seen  ;  and  the 
rudimentary  lungs  are  mere  air-bladders. 

Next  arises  the  amnion  stage,  so  named  from  an  important  though 
temporary  nutritive  organ  whose  development  begins  at  this  period  ; 
it  is  an  extension  of  the  yolk-sac,  and  contains  a  highly  nutritious 
fluid. 

The  gill-arches  gradually  disappear,  developing  into  more  ad- 
vanced structures  ;  the  heart  becomes  subdivided  into  four  chambers  ; 
the  air-bladders  give  place  to  true  lungs  ;  and,  with  the  complete 
formation  of  a  placenta,  the  mammalian  stage  of  development  is  fully 
established.  The  embryon  is  henceforth  recognizable  as  belonging 
to  the  class  mammalia,  the  highest  of  the  vertebrates. 

As  the  growing  organism  becomes  more  and  more  complex,  its 
progress  is  more  and  more  gradual.  We  have  seen  how  the  germ 
passes,  almost  at  a  single  step,  from  the  gastrula  to  the  rudimentary 


582  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

vertebrate  stage  ;  but,  after  the  mammalian  stage  is  reached,  it  moves 
with  deliberation  through  various  lower  embryonic  forms  of  the  class 
mammalia,  till  the  human  type  is  fully  developed.  At  birth  even,  dif- 
ferentiation is  far  from  being  complete  ;  not  only  do  the  several  human 
races  differ  materially  in  shape  and  size  of  skull  and  in  weight  of 
brain,  but  there  are  also  wide  possibilities  of  difference  among  indi- 
viduals of  the  same  race  and  even  between  members  of  the  same 
family.  Exceptional  characters  are  not  recognized  in  their  cradles  ; 
on  the  contrary,  growth  and  differentiation  continue  till  full  matu- 
rity is  reached,  lifting  the  inventor,  the  philosopher,  and  the  creative 
genius  as  far  above  the  average  human  being  as  the  average  human 
being  is  above  the  chimpanzee. 

In  order  to  illustrate  the  relations  to  each  other  of  the  different 
grades  of  animal  life,  Haeckel  employs  the  figure  of  a  tree,  which  is 
intended  to  exhibit  the  probable  lines  of  evolution  of  the  entire  series 
of  animal  forms  continued  through  vast  geological  periods  ;  and  it  is 
a  fact  of  the  utmost  significance  that  this  tree  serves  equally  well  as 
an  illustration  of  the  plan  and  progress  of  human  embryonic  develop- 
ment, thus  indicating  that  the  life-history  of  every  human  embryo  is 
a  recapitulation,  in  brief,  of  the  history  of  the  development  of  the 
whole  animal  kingdom.  The  base  of  the  trunk  of  this  tree  represents 
the  lowest,  i.  e.,  the  most  simple  of  animal  forms — those  which  the 
human  germ  so  closely  resembles  after  fertilization,  before  develop- 
ment has  begun. 

The  roots  of  this  tree  have  not  been  represented  by  Professor 
Haeckel  ;  but  the  supposition  that,  like  the  roots  of  other  trees,  they 
are  concealed  in  the  inorganic  crust  of  the  earth,  is  necessary  to  the 
completeness  not  only  of  the  figure,  but  of  the  theory  which  it  is  in- 
tended to  illustrate  ;  I  have  therefore  ventured  to  make  this  addition 
in  the  copy  of  Ilaeckel's  figure  which  is  before  you.* 

Ascending  by  a  single  step,  the  lowest  branches  represent  those 
organisms  in  which  the  first  developmental  change  has  occurred,  the 
amoeba,  it  will  be  remembered,  showing  its  superiority  to  the  moner  in 
the  possession  of  a  nucleus. 

From  this  point  the  trunk  is  carried  upward  through  the  various 
stages,  giving  off  large  branches  which  thereafter  pursue  separate 
paths  of  development  in  different  directions.  These  groups,  in  their 
turn,  subdivide  ;  and  while  at  each  step  the  divergence  is  a  gentle 
one,  it  nevertheless  leads  farther  and  farther  away  from  the  common 
type  with  which  the  process  of  differencing  began  ;  like  the  terminal 
twigs  of  any  widely-branching  tree  which,  though  closely  surrounded 
by  other  twigs,  are  far  removed  from  the  common  trunk,  and  still 
more  widely  separated  from  those  branches  which  have  developed  on 
the  opposite  side. 

This  tree  is  one  which  bears  all  manner  of  fruit  ;  but,  as  all  the 
*  The  lecture  was  illustrated  by  drawings. 


FROM  MONER   TO  MAN.  583 

branches  of  a  tree  receive  the  life-supporting  sap  from  a  common 
trunk,  so  all  living  forms  have  a  common  origin  in  protoplasm  with 
which  the  evolution  of  their  life  begins  ;  the  entire  growth  and  devel- 
opment of  the  body  consisting  in  the  growth  and  differentiation  of 
the  protoplasm  of  which  its  tissues  and  organs  are  composed. 

Observe  how  admirably  the  figure  of  a  tree  exhibits  the  supposed 
relationship  between  the  various  types  of  animals  both  extinct  and 
living  ;  indicating,  not  that  each  type  has  been  derived  directly  from 
one  immediately  preceding  it,  either  in  time  or  in  structural  rank, 
but  that  various  types  have  had  a  common  ancestor  from  which,  by 
development  in  different  directions,  all  have  more  or  less  diverged  ; 
so  that  the  relationship  between  man  and  the  existing  anthropoid  apes, 
for  example,  is  that  of  remote  cousinship  rather  than  of  direct  descent. 
The  common  stock  is  represented  by  the  trunk  of  the  tree  ;  from  this 
trunk,  which  rises  higher  and  higher  with  each  diverging  offshoot,  has 
sprung  an  immense  variety  of  branches  ;  and,  at  the  very  pinnacle  of 
this  magnificent  structure,  man  appears — the  crowning  efflorescence 
of  organic  evolution. 

The  permanent  types  which  represent  these  various  phases  of  em- 
bryonic development  show  a  progressively  increasing  differentiation 
from  their  environment.  The  moner  and  the  amoeba  are  almost  as 
structureless  as  the  water  in  which  they  are  found,  consisting  of  little 
more  than  water  with  a  trace  of  albumen  ;  in  specific  gravity,  in  tem- 
perature, in  color,  etc.,  the  difference  between  these  low  organisms  and 
their  environment  is  slight.  Compared  with  the  differences — chemi- 
cal, physical,  and  structural — between  man  and  the  invisible  atmos- 
phere in  which  he  is  submerged,  the  contrast  in  this  particular  is  a 
striking  one.  This  leads  us  to  other  considerations  of  still  greater  sig- 
nificance. 

The  true  environment  of  any  organism  consists  in  as  much  of  the 
external  universe  as  that  organism  is  capable  of  holding  communica- 
tion with  ;  so  that,  as  the  life  becomes  higher,  the  environment  also 
becomes  more  complex. 

At  the  deep-sea  bottom,  where  life  is  exhibited  in  its  most  simple 
grades,  the  temperature  is  unvarying  ;  no  light  penetrates  to  those 
depths  ;  a  uniformity  of  conditions  is  thus  preserved  almost  unbroken, 
and  the  adjustments  necessary  to  the  continuance  of  life  under  such 
circumstances  are  as  trifling  as  the  grade  of  life  is  simple. 

By  the  greater  complexity  of  the  human  organism  as  compared 
with  other  animals,  man  is  brought  into  communication  with  and 
under  the  influence  of  a  vastly  increased  variety  of  external  condi- 
tions, mainly  through  the  organs  of  the  special  senses  and  their  inti- 
mate relations  with  a  highly  developed  nervous  system. 

That  without  the  eye  and  its  connections  with  the  brain  we  could 
have  no  consciousness  of  light  is  the  merest  commonplace  of  physiol- 
ogy ;  yet,  could  we  realize  the  full  meaning  of  this  and  other  similar 


584  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

facts,  we  should  be  near  to  an  understanding  of  the  difference  between 
a  high  and  a  low  organism  ;  the  life  is  high  when  there  is  a  high 
degree  of  correspondence  with  a  highly  complex  environment. 

Poets  have  understood  this  principle  better,  perhaps,  than  physi- 
ologists. 

*'  "Who  has  no  inward  beauty  none  perceives, 
Though  all  around  is  beautiful " — 

says  Wordsworth  ;  and  Coleridge — 

"...  We  receive  but  what  we  give ; 
And  in  our  lives  alone  does  Nature  live! " 

Emerson  also  embodies  this  whole  philosophy  in  a  single  illustra- 
tion :  "  The  sea  drowns  both  ship  and  sailor,  like  a  grain  of  dust,  and 
we  call  it  fate  ;  but  let  him  learn  to  swim,  let  him  trim  his  bark,  and 
the  water  which  drowned  it  will  be  cloven  by  it  and  will  carry  it  like 
its  own  foam — a  plume  and  a  power." 

"When  we  remember  that  our  environment  consists,  not  only  of 
the  natural  elements  of  earth  and  sky,  reaching  to  the  most  distant 
star  which  communicates  its  vibrations  to  our  atmosphere,  but  that 
it  also  includes  other  human  beings  with  the  influences  which  such 
an  environment  involves,  we  realize  that,  while  physiology  undoubted- 
ly rests  on  chemistry  and  physics,  it  also  includes  psychology  and 
reaches  far  toward  sociology — sciences  which  involve  the  highest  prob- 
lems of  our  existence  ;  and,  though  we  find  it  impossible  to  sink  our 
plummet  to  the  depths  of  this  ocean,  or  to  send  an  arrow  to  the  stars 
which  gem  the  arching  dome  above,  we  may  at  least  hope  to  gather 
a  few  shells  on  the  shore  of  the  one,  and  to  intercept  some  gleams  of 
light  from  those  distant  suns  which  fascinate  by  their  very  distance, 
and  make  glorious  the  night  of  our  intellectual  darkness  even. 

How,  we  next  inquire,  does  the  human  embryo  differ,  at  the  pro- 
gressive stages  of  its  evolution,  from  the  embryos  of  the  various  lower 
types  which  it  successively  resembles  ?  Whence  the  impulse  of  devel- 
opment by  which  it  rises  from  these  lower  levels  to  the  human  plane  ? 
In  reply  to  these  questions  we  can  only  refer  to  the  principle  of  hered- 
ity which,  though  it  imprints  upon  the  germ  no  trace  discoverable 
by  any  known  test,  unfailingly  molds  the  plastic  protoplasm  into  cer- 
tain prescribed  and  prearranged  forms,  with  their  accompanying  ca- 
pacities and  powers.  The  inherent  forces  by  which  one  germ  develops 
into  an  oak  and  another  into  a  trailing  vine,  one  into  a  mollusk  and 
another  into  a  man,  are  handed  down  from  generation  to  generation, 
so  that  each  plant  and  animal  reproduces  its  own  kind  and  not  some 
other  kind.  This  can  not  be  regarded,  however,  as  an  exceptional 
fact ;  the  production  of  the  germ  with  all  its  hidden  possibilities,  like 
every  other  differentiation  of  matter,  depends  upon  the  general  prin- 
ciple known  as  the  persistence  of  force ;  and  to  deny  that  the  power 
of  development  of  any  grade  of  life  is  inheritable  is  to  deny  the  per- 


FROM  MONER   TO  MAN.  585 

sistence  of  force  * — a  doctrine  which  lies  at  the  very  foundation  of  the 
stately  edifice  of  modern  science. 

What  is  there  in  the  whole  stupendous  drama  of  evolution,  as  con- 
ceived by  the  most  enthusiastic  supporters  of  the  hypothesis,  more 
wonderful  or  more  difiicult  of  comprehension  and  acceptance  than  these 
facts  of  embryonic  development  at  which  we  have  briefly  glanced  ? 

By  the  simultaneous  processes  of  growth  and  differentiation,  by 
a  gradual  increase  of  complexity  and  heterogeneousness  continued 
through  a  considerable  period  of  time,  a  microscopic  speck  of  appar- 
ently structureless  protoplasm,  undistinguishable  by  any  known  test 
from  the  germ  of  any  other  animal,  develops  into  the  most  highly 
endowed  organism  of  which  we  have  any  knowledge. 

And  through  what  agencies  are  these  remarkable  results  accom- 
plished ?  Besides  the  inherited  impulse  of  growth  and  development 
already  referred  to,  there  is  furnished  to  this  germ  a  due  supply  of 
ready-prepared  food  ;  a  certain  uniform  temperature  is  also  secured 
to  it  until  the  time  of  birth.  After  that  period,  its  environment  be- 
comes gradually  more  complex  ;  but  embryonic  development  does  not 
differ  essentially  from  the  continued  development  of  infancy,  child- 
hood, and  youth,  by  which  the  adult  state  is  reached.  The  minute 
speck  of  simple  protoplasm  which  constitutes  the  human  organism  at 
the  beginning  of  its  career  is  as  truly  an  independent  individual  as 
it  ever  becomes.  At  this,  as  at  every  subsequent  stage  of  its  exist- 
ence, its  life  and  growth  and  progress  depend  on  the  activities  of  its 
own  tissues,  brought  into  play  by  the  influence  of  external  forces. 
Then,  as  always,  it  receives  food  from  its  environment  ;  while  the 
appropriation  and  assimilation  of  this  food,  as  well  as  the  elimination 
of  the  products  of  disintegration  and  waste,  are  accomplished  by 
means  of  the  same  processes  of  absorption,  chemical  combination  and 
decomposition,  which  constitute  nutrition  at  all  periods  of  existence. 
The  embryon  lives  its  own  life — a  work  which  can  not  be  delegated 
to  another. 

Our  next  inquiry  is  in  regard  to  the  forces  manifested  by  living 
bodies.  What  are  the  relations  between  the  highly  developed  varie- 
ties of  protoplasm  which  constitute  their  different  tissues  and  organs 
and  the  remarkable  functions — muscular  action,  emotion,  volition,  etc. 
— peculiar  to  animal  organisms  ? 

This  question  will  be  best  answered  by  means  of  a  familiar  illustra- 
tion. By  an  appropriate  combination  of  valves  and  pistons,  of  wheels 
and  levers,  and  numerous  other  contrivances  put  together  in  strict 
conformity  with  the  principles  of  mechanics,  in  which  the  most  deli- 
cate allowances  are  made  for  unavoidable  friction,  and  the  attraction 
of  gravitation  is  either  annihilated  by  counterbalancing  weights  or 
turned  to  account  as  a  source  of  power,  a  machine  is  constructed 
which  strikingly  illustrates  the  importance,  not  only  of  the  particular 
*  See  "Principles  of  Biology,"  Herbert  Spencer,  vol.  ii. 


586  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

character  of  the  different  parts  of  which  it  is  composed,  but  of  the 
relations  of  these  parts  to  each  other.  The  force  operating  such  a 
machine  may  be  derived  from  a  simple  fall  of  water,  or  from  the  oxida- 
tion of  burning  anthracite  ;  but,  although  this  may  be  the  sole  source  of 
the  actual  energy  expended,  it  is  far  from  being  the  only  factor  con- 
cerned in  the  production  of  the  special  kind  of  work  accomplished. 
The  results  are  due  to  the  transformations  of  this  initial  force  into 
force  of  other  kinds,  the  character  of  the  work  done  depending  on  the 
peculiar  construction  of  the  machine — in  other  words,  on  the  relations 
of  its  parts.  Thus  the  expansive  power  of  steam  may  be  expended  in 
the  idle  clapping  of  the  lid  of  a  tea-kettle,  or  in  the  driving  of  the 
piston  in  the  engine  of  an  ocean-steamer,  according  to  the  relations 
into  which  the  steam  is  brought.  Keeping  this  illustration  in  mind, 
we  may  perhaps  attain  to  some  conception  of  the  meaning  of  a  living 
organism,  and  wherein  consist  the  differences  in  different  organisms. 

The  life-processes  are  concerned  in  the  building  up  of  the  tissues — 
that  is,  in  the  construction  and  constant  repair  of  the  mechanism  out 
of  materials  supplied  by  food  ;  coincident  with  this  assimilation  of 
new  material,  there  is  a  corresponding  accumulation  of  energy  or 
force.  The  energies  liberated,  on  the  other  hand,  in  the  activities  of 
muscle,  nerve,  brain,  etc.,  come  from  the  oxidation — the  so-called 
waste — of  these  tissues  ;  and  (as  in  the  machine)  the  results  produced 
are  due  to  the  transformations  of  this  initial  force,  derived  from  oxida- 
tion of  the  tissues,  into  other  kinds  of  force,  viz.,  those  manifested  by 
living  animal  organisms,  the  character  of  the  work  done  depending  (as 
in  the  illustration)  on  the  particular  construction  of  the  mechanism 
concerned.  In  the  operations  of  living  organisms,  not  less  than  in 
those  mechanisms  whose  motive  power  is  derived  from  steam,  not  a 
known  law  of  matter  is  violated,  but  all  are  wrought  into  a  harmony 
so  complete  that  the  entire  complex  and  heterogeneous  structure  acts 
as  a  unit. 

Glancing  in  thought  over  the  vast  expanse  of  matter  of  which  the 
universe  consists,  what  has  been  the  direction  of  the  progress  witnessed 
through  the  long  ages  since  the  beginning  condensation  of  the  nebu- 
lous masses  in  which  our  solar  system  is  believed  to  have  originated  ? 
The  immense  globes  which  whirl  in  repeated  circles  through  the 
heavenly  spaces,  though  bound  together  by  the  strongest  and  most 
subtile  bonds,  roll  blindly  on,  forever  unconscious  of  themselves  and  of 
one  another.  The  lily  of  the  field  even,  clothed  in  beauty  though  it 
be,  and  surrounded  by  the  greater  glories  of  earth  and  sky — the  warm 
sunshine  and  green  fields — has  no  conscious  enjoyment  of  itself  or  of 
them  ;  but  as  elements  identical  with  those  which  compose  these 
unconscious  forms  have  combined  and  recombined  in  compounds  of 
increasing  complexity,  as  molecules  have  condensed  and  differentiated 
in  the  development  of  a  higher  kind  of  living  matter,  consciousness  has 
dawned,  and  (mainly  through  the  avenues  of  the  special  senses)  mind 


COLLEGE  ATHLETICS.  587 

has  developed.  Each  generation,  heir  to  the  endowments  of  all  pre- 
ceding ones,  has  added  its  increment  of  gain,  and  later  generations — 
those  which  belong  to  the  historic  period — have  begun  their  lives  with 
a  vast  amount  of  inherited  intelligence.  There  is  sound  philosophy  in 
the  statement  once  jocosely  made,  that  the  natives  of  a  certain  part 
of  the  country,  remarkable  for  their  intellectual  activity,  are  born  with 
a  good  common-school  education.  By  far  the  greater  part  of  our  edu- 
cation is  indeed  born  with  us. 

Increased  refinements  of  emotion,  clearer  subtilties  of  thought — 
these  are  the  directions  which  further  development  of  the  race  must 
take  ;  and  the  individual  who  experiences  a  hitherto  unrealized  emo- 
tion, or  who  grasps  a  new  thought  which  corresponds  with  some  never 
before  observed  fact  or  relation  in  the  external  world,  is  the  seat 
and  center  of  progress.  In  such  minds,  nature  is  undergoing  a  still 
higher  evolution,  and  the  colors  of  humanity  are  thus  successively 
planted  on  hitherto  unsealed  summits. 


COLLEGE    ATHLETICS. 

By  EUGENE  L.  EICHAEDS. 

ASSISTANT  PEOFESSOE  OF  MATHEMATICS  HT  TALE  COLLEGE. 

II. — EVILS   AND   THEIE   REMEDIES. 

WITH  regard  to  the  evils  of  the  present  system  of  college  athletics 
it  must  be  remembered  that  the  best  system  will  not  be  free 
from  all  evil.  No  human  system  can  be  free  from  evil.  Even  the 
divine  government  of  the  world  does  not  exclude  the  existence  of  evil. 
That  the  present  system  has  evils  is  no  valid  argument  against  it,  unless 
it  can  be  shown  either  that  these  outweigh  the  good,  or  that  some 
other  practical  system  can  be  devised  which  shall  have  all  the  good 
with  less  of  the  evil  of  the  present  system. 

1.  One  evil  alleged  against  the  present  system  is  the  excessive 
amount  of  time  required  for  exercise  under  it.  It  is  no  doubt  true  that 
some  students  do  give  too  much  time  to  athletics.  Some  students  also 
give  too  much  time  to  study;  yet  that  fact  is  not  brought  forward  as 
a  fatal  argument  against  the  college  course  of  study.  Of  the  two  ex- 
cesses— excess  of  study  and  excess  of  exercise — the  dangerous  pressure 
at  present  is  toward  excess  of  study.  But,  in  point  of  fact,  this  evil 
of  too  much  time  given  to  athletics  has  been  greatly  exaggerated.  The 
winter  term  is  not  open  to  the  charge  of  excessive  athletics.  The  ath- 
letes then  training  do  not  devote  an  average  of  more  than  an  hour  a 
day  to  exercise.  Perhaps  a  few  give  an  hour  and  a  half.  It  would 
be  safe  to  say  that,  counting  all  the  time  consumed,  including  the  time 


588  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

of  exercise,  the  time  used  in  going  to  and  from  the  gymnasium,  and 
the  time  used  in  dressing  and  undressing,  it  would  not  go  beyond  two 
hours  per  day,  and  in  most  cases  would  be  less  than  that  amount. 
So,  to  consider  the  question  of  excessive  time,  we  must  look  at  the  fall 
and  spring  terms.  In  the  fall,  during  days  when  afternoon  recitations 
are  held,  the  class  nines  do  not  spend  more  than  two  hours'  time  alto- 
gether, including  both  practice  in  the  field  and  the  time  of  going  to  and 
from  practice.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  Foot-ball  and  Lacrosse 
Teams.  On  Wednesday  and  Saturday  afternoons  the  students  give  from 
two  to  three  hours  to  practice.  On  these  afternoons  the  match-games 
occur.  They  are  prohibited  on  other  days,  except  during  examina- 
tions, at  which  time  they  are  allowed  on  any  day,  provided  no  player 
is  thereby  prevented  from  attending  his  examination.  The  crews, 
also,  in  practice  on  the  water  and  in  going  to  and  from  their  boats, 
spend  two  hours  daily.  On  Wednesdays  and  Saturdays  they  use 
more  time,  but  the  practice  is  so  arranged  as  not  to  interfere  with 
recitations. 

In  the  summer  the  same  amount  of  time,  daily,  is  given  to  practice, 
except  that,  when  recitations  cease  and  examinations  begin,  the  Uni- 
versity and  Freshman  Nines  use  more  time.  Even  then  that  time  will 
not  average  more  than  three  hours  per  day.  When  match-games  are 
played  out  of  town,  to  the  time  of  the  game  must  be  added  the  time 
used  in  travel  to  and  from  the  scene  of  the  match.  In  the  season  of 
1882,  of  the  games  played  during  the  time  when  recitations  or  exami- 
nations were  being  held,  only  five  were  played  out  of  town  by  the  Yale 
University  Nine,  though  the  men  went  out  of  town  once  or  twice  more 
but  were  prevented  from  playing  by  the  rain.  Of  these  five,  three 
were  played  in  New  York  city,  which  is  only  a  little  over  two  hours' 
ride  from  New  Haven.  Of  the  remaining  two,  neither  needed  more 
than  thirty-six  hours'  absence  from  town. 

The  University  Crew  row  only  one  race  a  year.  The  Foot-ball 
Elevens  and  the  Lacrosse  Team  play  a  few  games  out  of  New  Haven, 
but  do  not  use  in  this  way  as  much  time  as  the  Nine. 

2.  It  is  said  that  the  excitement  attendant  on  these  sports  distracts 
from  study.  It  is  true  that  the  contests  do  furnish  excitement  for 
the  students,  but  it  is  excitement  of  a  healthy  kind.  Athletic  sports 
do  not  divert  so  many  from  study  as  the  theatre  and  billiards.  Banish 
athletics,  and  you  increase  the  attendance  at  the  theatres  and  the 
saloons,  where  the  temptations  are  greater,  and  the  excitements  less 
healthy  than  those  of  the  ball-field  and  boat-race. 

3.  There  is  the  evil  of  betting.  This  is  not  an  evil  peculiar  to 
athletics.  The  men  in  college,  who  are  in  the  habit  of  betting,  would 
continue  to  bet  on  something  else,  if  not  a  game  were  played  nor  a 
race  rowed.  Gambling  would  increase  if  the  athletics  were  prohib- 
ited. Games  and  races  in  colleges  do  not  create  betting.  They  sim- 
ply divert  it  from  other  channels. 


COLLEGE  ATHLETICS,  589 

4.  Then  there  are  the  disorders  consequent  upon  victories.  These 
disorders  are  sometimes  quite  serious,  but  are  by  no  means  so  serious 
as  they  are  often  represented  to  be.  On  the  campus  such  disorders 
have  never  been  more  serious  than  some  disorders  taking  place  after 
the  conferring  of  degrees.  They  have  always  been  easily  controlled. 
They  have  been  avoided  when  the  college  authorities  have  given  no- 
tice that  a  recurrence  of  them  would  imperil  the  existence  of  the 
athletic  organizations,  or  annul  the  permission  to  play  match-games. 
These  disorders,  then,  can  not  be  a  necessary  and  inherent  evil  of 
athletics. 

It  may  be  replied  that  disorders  consequent  upon  victories  are  not 
confined  to  the  college  campus.  Indeed,  to  the  minds  of  many  candid 
men,  the  great  disorders  which  bring  dangerous  disgrace  to  the  pres- 
ent system  of  college  athletics,  and  reflect  upon  college  government 
as  well,  occur  at  the  intercollegiate  contests,  when  the  athletes  meet 
on  neutral  ground.  Such  men  admit  the  advantages  of  the  system. 
They  would  encourage  it  in  the  separate  colleges,  but  would  have 
it  go  no  further.  They  would  abolish  intercollegiate  contests  alto- 
gether. But  this  action  would  do  away  with  the  very  element  (healthy 
rivalry  between  colleges)  which  is  the  most  effective  motive  power 
and  stimulus  of  the  whole  system.  Without  this  element  the  system 
would  go  to  pieces  in  many  colleges.  In  others  it  would  be  miserably 
contracted  and  inefficient.  For  this  evil  a  more  general  interest  in 
the  subject  on  the  part  of  instructors  and  parents,  and  their  more  gen- 
eral attendance  at  the  games,  would  easily  suggest  the  remedies  of  a 
healthy  and  manifested  public  opinion  and  a  judicious  personal  influ- 
ence. 

5.  It  is  charged  against  athletics  that  they  benefit  the  few,  and 
that  these  few  are  those  least  requiring  the  exercise.  One  part  of  the 
charge  can  be  appreciated — that  few  are  benefited — these  few  being 
the  members  of  the  Crew,  Nine,  Eleven,  and  Lacrosse  Teams  of  the 
university.  These,  with  substitutes,  amount  to  about  fifty  men.  But 
it  has  been  already  shown  that  more  men  are  induced  to  exercise  than 
the  actual  membership  of  these  organizations  ;  and  that  the  present 
system  affects,  in  the  matter  of  exercise,  at  least  half  of  the  under- 
graduate department. 

The  objection,  that  the  men  under  training  in  the  university  or- 
ganizations are  the  men  least  requiring  the  training,  can  be  understood 
to  be  one  of  two  propositions,  viz.,  either  that  these  men  have  natu- 
rally so  much  power  or  skill  that  they  need  not  develop  any  more, 
or  that  they  will  cultivate  their  strength  and  nerve  without  being 
stimulated  to  do  so  by  the  workings  of  the  present  system.  This 
would  be  like  arguing  that  men  of  great  mental  gifts  either  do  not 
need  an  education,  or  would  get  an  education  without  any  opportu- 
nities being  provided  for  this  purpose  in  a  school  or  college  system — a 
proposition  which,  however  true  in  exceptional  cases,  taken  as  a  gen- 


590  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

eral  statement  no  argument  is  required  to  prove  absurd.  Men  of  mus- 
cle do  need  exercise.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  they  must  have  ex- 
ercise. The  more  systematic  such  exercise  is,  the  better  their  brains 
work,  as  observing  instructors  of  such  men  will  testify.  The  reason 
is  plain.  They  enjoy  better  health.  The  men  who  suffer  most  from 
the  confinement  of  student-life  are  the  men  of  vigorous  bodies.  Their 
vital  force  is  like  a  flame.  It  must  be  fed  with  oxygen.  Many  of 
them,  without  the  capacity  of  self-control,  and  without  the  health 
which  they  gain  by  exercise  under  the  present  system  of  athletics, 
would  never  be  able  to  graduate.  Many  others  would  graduate  with 
impaired  bodily  powers,  and  others  still  as  slaves  to  habits  of  dissi- 
pation. 

6.  It  is  said,  again,  that  the  system  may  develop  men,  but  it  only 
makes  fine  brutes  of  them,  and  sets  before  the  college  a  false  standard 
of  excellence,  viz.,  one  entirely  physical.  It  can  not  be  said  with  truth 
that  the  standard  is  false.  The  standard  of  good  scholarship  remains, 
and  many  of  the  athletes  take  high  rank  in  scholarship.  The  stand- 
ard of  good  conduct  remains.  The  students  still  respect  their  fellows 
who  approach  these  standards,  yet  they  think  no  worse  of  a  man,  but 
rather  better  of  him,  and  rightly,  too,  if  he  be  a  thorough  man,  and 
have  a  manly  body  as  well  as  a  good  mind  and  upright  character. 
Other  things  being  equal,  the  bright  mind  and  good  heart  in  a  strong 
body  are  better  than  the  same  things  in  a  weak  body,  because  they 
can  accomplish  more  in  life. 

It  is  further  said  that  the  applause  bestowed  upon  some  feat  in  any 
of  the  athletic  contests  helps  to  establish  some  boy  in  the  conceit  that 
he  is  a  great  man,  because  he  can  do  such  things,  and  that,  therefore, 
study  is  of  no  further  use  to  him.  There  may  be  such  youths,  but, 
whatever  be  their  fate  at  other  colleges,  they  seldom  appear  at  the 
college  with  which  the  writer  is  connected,  and  when  they  do  appear 
do  not  stay. 

7.  The  evil  of  a  general  nature  last  to  be  considered  is  that  of 
expense. 

The  expenses  of  the  organizations  which  have  special  university 
representatives  are  only  taken  into  account,  since  these  are  the  organi- 
zations of  which  the  evils  have  been  so  loudly  proclaimed  to  the  pub- 
lic. In  the  table  given  below  (for  Yale  College),  the  "  expenses  "  and 
"  income  "  are  the  totals  for  both  university  and  class  clubs  combined. 
For  base-ball,  foot-ball,  and  Lacrosse,  the  amounts  in  the  column 
headed  "  Earned  "  are  made  up  for  the  most  part  of  gate-money  taken 
at  exhibition-games.  For  the  boat  clubs,  of  the  amount  put  in  the 
same  column,  $1,045.36  was  the  net  result  of  a  dramatic  entertainment 
given  by  the  students  for  the  benefit  of  the  university  club.  The 
balance  was  obtained  from  entrance  and  carriage  fees  at  regattas, 
renting  of  lockers,  and  sale  of  boat. 


COLLEGE  ATHLETICS, 


591 


Expenses. 

INOOMB. 

CLUBS. 

Total. 

Balance  from  1881. 

Earned. 

Subscribed. 

Boat 

Base-ball . . . 
Foot-ball  . . . 
T<a,crosse 

$7,348.86 

6,863.38 

2,689.80 

574.00 

.$7,426.52 

7,254.15 

2,792.36 

675.00 

$177.54 
$1,080.71 

$1,322.11 

5,457.15 

1,329.65 

225.05 

$5,926.87 

1,797.00 

382.00 

349.95 

Total 

$17,476.04 

$18,048.03 

$1,258.25 

$8,333.96 

$8,455.82 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  total  amount  subscribed  is  less  than  half 
the  expenses.  Two  hundred  and  ninety  dollars  of  this  sum  was  given 
by  graduates.  Deducting  this,  and  considering  that,  according  to  the 
catalogue  of  1881-82,  there  were,  in  the  undergraduate  academical  and 
scientific  departments,  seven  hundred  and  eighty-six  students,  the  cost 
(above  earnings)  of  the  present  system  averages  only  a  little  over  ten 
dollars  per  man.  As  all  departments  are  benefited  by  the  system,  the 
average  ought  to  be  taken  for  the  whole  university.  There  being  in 
the  university  over  one  thousand  men,  the  average  cost  per  man  would 
be  considerably  less  than  ten  dollars.  It  will  be  said  that  part  of  the 
earnings  come  from  the  students,  since  they  are  the  chief  attendants  at 
the  game.  This  is  true.  Assuming  that  half  the  earnings  come  from 
the  students  (an  amount  probably  in  excess  of  the  real  amount),  the 
average  cost  per  man  for  the  university  will  not  be  far  from  twelve 
dollars.  Fifteen  dollars  per  man  ^o^l^  undoubtedly  cover  the  whole 
cost  of  athletics  throughout  the  year,  counting  not  only  the  athletics 
represented  in  the  table,  but  all  other  kinds  as  well.  Certainly  this 
does  not  seem  an  extravagant  sum  to  pay  for  the  benefits  derived 
from  the  system.  The  writer  believes  that  the  expenses  can  be  very 
much  diminished.  The  tendency  to  unnecessary  increase  of  expenses 
can  certainly  be  diminished  by  measures  hereafter  noticed. 

By  the  table,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  subscriptions  for  base-ball 
and  foot-ball  were  small  in  amount  as  compared  with  their  earnings. 
It  is  generally  believed,  among  students,  that  the  university  organiza- 
tions of  both  these  sports  can  be  made  self-supporting. 

The  evils  already  commented  on  are  general.  There  are  other  so- 
called  evils  which  are  special — some  peculiar  to  one  kind  of  athletics, 
but  not  belonging  to  the  others.  One  of  these,  charged  against  base- 
ball, is  that  the  game  brings  the  students  into  contact  with  "  profes- 
sionals." Whatever  may  be  the  extent  of  the  evil  in  other  colleges,  at 
Yale  it  has  not  proved  to  be  so  great  as  to  call  for  Faculty  interfer- 
ence, or  even  to  excite  apprehension.  All  the  evils,  real  or  imagi- 
nary, connected  with  ball-playing,  are  reduced  to  a  minimum  when 
the  students  meet  "  professionals."  They  meet  them  simply  for  prac- 
tice. Betting  is,  as  a  rule,  precluded  by  the  fact  that  the  result  is 
generally  a  foregone  conclusion,  and  men  bet  on  only  doubtful  is- 
sues. Off  the  field  there  is  no  more  intercourse  between  the  students 
and  the  "  professionals  "  than  is  necessary  to  transact  the  business  at- 


592  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

tending  the  match.  The  profesBional  nine  are  then  generally  repre- 
sented by  their  business  manager,  and  the  students  by  the  president  or 
treasurer  of  their  club.  In  the  game  one  nine  is  in  the  field,  while 
the  members  of  the  other  are  at  the  bases,  or  waiting  for  their  turn  at 
the  bat.  The  "  professionals  "  are  under  the  strictest  discipline,  so  that 
their  presence  does  not  invite  or  occasion  dissipation  in  any  form.  Vic- 
tories of  college  nines  over  "  professionals  "  are  not  frequent,  and  are 
not  attended  by  disorders  on  the  campus. 

But  to  some  objectors  the  evil  of  "professionalism"  in  athletics 
includes  more  than  playing  with  professional  nines.  The  employment 
of  professional  '* trainers"  in  preparing  students  for  contests  is,  for 
some,  the  chief  evil.  Such  trainers  are  looked  upon  as  bad  companions 
for  our  young  men.  It  is  contended  that  they  undermine  the  morals 
of  our  students  by  their  profanity  and  generally  low  talk.  They  are 
also  supposed  to  give  too  high  a  standard  of  excellence  for  our  ama- 
teur athletes,  and  thus  to  draw  on  too  much  of  their  time  and  strength, 
in  the  effort  to  make  them  conform  to  this  standard.  All  these  things 
may  happen  in  some  cases,  but  they  do  not  happen  frequently.  Ad- 
mitting, for  the  sake  of  argument,  what  is  generally  denied  by  the 
students,  that  for  the  past  two  years  the  crew  has  been  coached  by  the 
professional  oarsman  who  rigged  their  boats,  his  coaching  would  have 
brought  him  into  personal  contact  with  not  more  than  a  dozen  men  at 
the  most,  and  for  a  time  of  only  three  or  four  weeks  in  the  spring 
and  summer.  For  a  short  time  in  the  winter  some  of  the  candidates 
for  the  university  nine  have  exercises  in  boxing  with  a  trainer,  in 
order  to  bring  them  into  "  condition "  for  the  spring  and  summer 
work.     There  can  hardly  be  more  than  fifteen  such  men. 

The  only  other  really  professional  training  done  has  been  done  for 
those  who  go  into  track  athletics.  This  training  lasts  for  about  six 
weeks,  and  is  given  to  some  fifteen  or  twenty  men.  A  "  professional " 
has  sometimes  accompanied  the  foot-ball  team  when  they  have  i)layed 
their  great  matches,  but  his  office  has  not  been  to  train  the  men,  but 
to  apply  his  skill  to  limbering  stiffened  joints  and  healing  bruised  mus- 
cles. 

It  is  quite  natural  that  students,  when  taking  lessons  of  any  kind, 
should  prefer  the  best  masters.  Unfortunately,  the  best  masters  are  not 
always  the  best  men.  That  the  pupils  are,  therefore,  always  led  into 
bad  courses  by  the  example  of  their  instructors  docs  not  follow.  There 
is  enough  good  sense  in  college  students  generally  to  dissociate  good 
instruction  from  faults  of  character.  The  trainer  seldom  influences 
the  student  beyond  the  purpose  of  his  training.  The  young  man 
does  not  make  a  companion  of  his  trainer,  nor  trust  his  morals  to  his 
direction.  An  easy  cure  for  possible  evils  in  this  direction  would  be 
for  the  faculty  of  each  college,  troubled  by  vicious  trainers,  to  forbid 
their  students  employing  such  men.  An  investigation,  however,  into 
the  relations  between  such  trainers  and  their  pupils  would  show  that 


COLLEGE  ATHLETICS,  593 

the  pupils  despise  the  lowness  of  the  men  quite  as  much  as  do  the 
faculty  themselves.  Another  and  better  remedy  would  be  to  select  an 
amateur  athlete  from  the  graduates,  educated  as  a  physician,  and  give 
him  a  salaried  office,  with  duties  as  general  adviser  and  guardian  of  the 
athletic  interests.  Such  a  man,  if  properly  qualified,  would  help  the 
students  to  a  safer  and  better  physical  development  than  they  now 
get,  and  would,  besides,  soon  drive  away  all  trainers  exercising  im- 
proper influences  among  them. 

In  foot-ball  there  is  no  professional  element.  But  it  is  charged 
against  the  game  that  there  is  danger  in  it  to  life  and  limb.  Undoubt- 
edly it  is  a  rough  sport,  but  year  by  year  it  is  becoming  less  dangerous 
in  consequence  of  the  increasing  strictness  of  the  rules  and  the  severity 
of  the  penalties  against  foul  play.  In  the  match-games  these  rules  are 
generally  so  well  observed  that  few  accidents  occur.  In  the  games 
between  Yale  and  Princeton,  which  have  always  been  the  most  hotly 
contested,  no  man  has  been  seriously  hurt.  It  is  a  game  which  par- 
ticularly requires  courage,  and  is  therefore  a  most  manly  game.  It  is 
like  a  battle  with  the  danger  not  all  left  out,  but  a  battle  in  which 
courage  and  self-possession  not  only  secure  victory  but  safety.  With 
all  its  dangers  it  is  less  dangerous  to  the  players  than  the  confinement 
accompanying  excess  of  study. 

One  great  evil  connected  with  athletics,  and  not  generally  receiv- 
ing public  notice  or  animadversion,  is  the  excess  of  feeling  between 
students  of  different  colleges,  occasioned  by  the  intercollegiate  con- 
tests. This  excess  of  feeling  seems  akin  to  excessive  class-feeling 
already  noticed.  It  is  partly  due,  no  doubt,  to  the  youthf  ulness  of  the 
parties.  It  is  seldom  entertained  by  the  contestants.  It  is  a  strange 
fact  that  such  feeling  does  not  appear  to  exist  between  professional 
clubs,  nor  between  professional  and  amateur  clubs.  In  this  matter, 
therefore,  it  would  seem  that  the  students  might  learn  a  good  lesson 
from  "professionals." 

What  the  condition  of  the  college  would  be  without  a  system  of 
athletics  is  a  question  already  partly  answered  by  what  has  been  said  in 
meeting  the  charges  against  the  system.  We  can  understand,  also,  the 
effect  of  abolishing  the  present  system  by  calling  to  mind  the  disorders 
reported  in  colleges  in  which  no  such  system  is  allowed  to  exist.  The 
revolts  against  authority  and  the  great  disorders  between  classes  now 
occur  with  the  most  frequency  not  at  colleges  which  have  the  great- 
est number  of  students  and  the  most  extensive  athletic  organizations, 
but  at  the  colleges  in  which  the  students  either  are  not  able  or  are  not 
allowed  to  establish  such  organizations.  The  disorders  which  used  to 
occur  in  New  Haven  thirty  or  even  twenty-five  years  ago  ought  to 
convince  any  candid  man  that,  however  great  the  present  evils  of  col- 
lege-life are  icith  athletics,  the  past  evils  icithout  athletics  were  worse. 
On  one  occasion  in  those  "  good  old  times,"  in  consequence  of  a  con- 
flict between  students  and  town  boys,  a  cannon  was  brought  before  the 
VOL.  XXIV. — 38 


594 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


college  buildings  to  demolish  them.  The  writer  remembers  another 
occasion  when  there  was  a  collision  between  students  and  firemen,  and 
one  of  the  firemen  was  mortally  wounded  by  a  pistol-shot.  That 
night  the  dormitories  were  bolted  and  barred  and  the  students  acted 
like  a  besieged  party,  and  were  making  preparations  for  a  possible 
fight  the  next  day.  In  those  same  good  old  times  there  were  more 
frequent  disturbances  between  classes.  There  were  snow-ball  fights, 
too,  on  the  campus,  to  the  great  destruction  of  window-glass.  Accord- 
ing to  the  testimony  of  men  in  the  college  in  those  days,  drunkenness 
was  more  common.  Certainly  within  the  last  twenty  years  the  college 
sentiment  with  regard  to  intoxication  has  undergone  a  change  for  the 
better.     Before  that  period  a  student  given  to  this  vice  did  not  neces- 


COLLEGE  ATHLETICS.  595 

sarily  lose  caste  among  his  fellows  as  he  does  at  this  day.  The  pressure 
of  college  opinion  is  against  dissipation.  It  is  absolutely  necessary  for 
the  athletes  to  abstain  from  it.  Being  taught  the  evil  effects  of  ex- 
cesses upon  their  strong  men,  the  university  is  not  slow  to  see  that 
intemperance  is  a  wrong  and  an  evil  for  all  men. 

As  a  contribution  to  this  part  of  the  discussion,  the  accompanying 
diagrams  are  offered,  as  bearing  on  the  subject  of  disorders.  The  first 
diagram  gives,  for  each  year  of  the  twenty  college  years  from  1862-'63 
to  1881-'82,  the  percentage  of  the  number  of  men  expelled  and  sus- 
pended from  the  Academical  department  of  Yale  College  to  the  mem- 
bership of  that  department.  The  numbers  were  taken  from  the  Faculty 
records,  and  include  expulsions  for  all  cases  of  disorder  ;  all  dismis- 
sals and  suspensions  for  disorders  by  day  or  by  night ;  for  drunk- 
enness and  for  marks  and  irregularity.  Each  case  counts  as  a  unit 
without  regard  to  the  severity  of  the  penalty.  Had  more  weight  been 
allowed  to  one  case  than  another,  it  is  not  likely  that  the  results  would 
have  been  materially  changed,  as  the  severe  punishments  of  expulsion 
and  dismissal  are  infrequent.  No  account  is  taken  of  dismissals  for 
scholarship,  the  writer  for  the  present  confining  his  investigations  to 
the  effects  of  athletics  on  college  order.  The  percentages  are  arranged 
in  vertical  columns,  one  for  each  college  year,  the  year  being  written 
under  the  column.  Each  square  represents  one  fifth  of  one  per  cent 
(0*002).  Thus,  in  1862-'63,  the  cases  of  discipline  were  four  and  one 
tenth  per  cent  of  the  total  membership  for  that  year.  In  the  next 
year  the  cases  of  discipline  were  one  and  seven  tenths  per  cent,  etc. 
The  average  for  the  twenty  years  will  be  found  to  be  about  three  per 
cent.  For  the  first  decade  the  average  was  a  little  more  than  three 
and  six  tenths  per  cent,  and  for  the  last  decade  a  little  less  than  two 
and  four  tenths  per  cent.  Though  a  race  between  crews  of  Harvard 
and  Yale  was  rowed  as  early  as  1852,  yet  it  was  not  until  the  summer 
of  1864  that  the  Harvard- Yale  boat-race  began  to  be  the  regular  event 
which  it  has  since  continued  to  be.  The  first  permission  to  play  ball  out 
of  town  was  granted  to  the  Yale  Club  in  June,  1869,  and  the  first  per- 
mission to  the  Foot-ball  Team  was  given  in  November,  1878.  These 
permissions  are  indicated  on  the  diagrams. 

In  the  second  diagram  the  expulsions,  dismissals  and  suspensions 
for  hazing,  rushes,  and  attempted  interference  by  members  of  one  class 
with  the  liberty  or  property  of  members  of  another,  are  given  by  nu7n- 
hers.  Each  square  represents  one  case  of  discipline.  These  cases, 
though  already  counted  in  forming  Diagram  No.  1,  are  represented  in 
No.  2  by  themselves,  in  order  to  make  evident  the  fact  that  this  par- 
ticularly troublesome  class  of  disorders  is  diminishing.  The  writer 
has  already  stated  the  reasons  of  his  belief  that  the  diminution  of 
them  is  due  in  great  measure  to  the  influence  of  athletics. 

In  the  opinion  of  the  writer,  the  diagrams  show  that,  whatever  may 
be  the  public  impression,  the  real  facts,  as  evidenced  by  the  Faculty 


596  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

records,  are,  first,  that  the  college  disorders,  as  a  whole,  have  not  in- 
creased since  the  introduction  of  athletics  ;  and,  second,  that  one  class 
of  disorders  has  sensibly  diminished.  Of  course,  other  influences  have 
contributed  to  bring  about  these  results.  Still,  even  if  the  claim  in 
behalf  of  athletics  of  a  special  influence  for  good  in  this  respect  be 
not  allowed,  it  can  not  be  fairly  said  that  the  evil  effects  of  the  system 
are  such  as  to  overpower  all  the  other  good  influences. 

As  to  those  evils  which  are  capable  of  remedy,  and  of  which  the 
remedy  has  not  been  before  expressed  or  implied,  we  will  take  up  that 
of  unnecessary  expense.  It  has  been  before  shown  that  the  expense 
of  the  system  is  not  enormous,  considering  the  good  done.  But  un- 
doubtedly it  is  greater  than  it  need  be.  Moreover,  it  will  naturally 
tend  to  increase.  Still,  it  is  well  to  remember  that,  as  the  number  of 
athletic  organizations  increases,  the  increased  subscriptions  demanded 
of  the  students  begin  to  waken  some  of  the  thoughtful  among  them 
to  wiser  discrimination  in  their  giving,  and  to  a  sharper  watchfulness 
of  the  management  of  the  associations  to  which  they  do  give.  Conse- 
quently, new  care  in  the  spending  of  money  is  required  of  each  univer- 
sity organization,  and  a  healthy  suspicion  on  the  part  of  the  students 
is  developing  itself.  In  other  words,  each  athletic  interest  begins  to 
act  as  a  check  on  the  extravagance  of  the  others.  Still,  money  is  inevi- 
tably wasted,  in  consequence  of  the  inexperience  of  the  young  men. 
Each  ofiicer,  as  a  rule,  serves  but  a  year,  when  he  makes  room  for  a 
new  officer,  who  is  as  inexperienced  as  his  predecessor.  The  expe- 
rience gained  each  year  might  be  made  serviceable  by  associating  with 
the  incoming  treasurer  a  permanent  graduate  treasurer.  The  vice- 
president  might  be  elected  to  become  president  as  soon  as  the  year's 
service  of  the  president  expired,  so  that  he  would  serve  as  vice-presi- 
dent one  year  and  one  year  as  president,  his  service  thus  extending 
over  two  years.  It  has  also  been  proposed  to  consolidate  the  athletic 
interests  under  one  salaried  superintendent,  who  should  be  a  gradu- 
ate. The  objection  to  this  plan  is  that,  though  it  might  secure  a 
more  consistent  and  economic  management,  it  would  destroy  the  pres- 
ent healthy  rivalry  of  the  athletic  interests,  and  relieve  the  students 
themselves  of  the  responsibility  of  success  or  failure.  Besides  the 
changes  suggested,  a  general  auditing  committee  for  all  the  interests 
should  be  formed  consisting  of  graduates  and  undergraduates.  At  pres- 
sent,  though  the  accounts  of  all  the  interests  are  published,  yet  nobody 
feels  it  his  particular  business  to  object  to  any  one  item.  If  a  graduate 
finds  fault,  his  complaint  is  not  worth  much,  as  only  undergraduates  are 
supposed  to  know  the  needs  of  to-day.  A  committee  of  both  graduates 
and  undergraduates  could  audit  the  accounts,  and  would  be  able  to  make 
suggestions  which  would  be  sure  of  a  hearing.  By  such*  changes  in 
the  system  and  the  economies  which  ought  to  result  from  them,  field- 
sports,  such  as  base-ball,  foot-ball,  and  lacrosse,  should  be  self-support- 
ing.    The  income  derived  from  gate-money  should  meet  the  expenses. 


COLLEGE  ATHLETICS.  597 

Since  some  very  worthy  people  who  believe  in  manly  sports  object 
to  young  men  playing  for  money  taken  at  the  exhibition-games,  it  is 
necessary  to  say  a  word  of  explanation  with  regard  to  this  feature  of 
all  ball-games.  If  field  athletics  are  to  continue,  the  expense  of  them 
must  be  met  in  one  of  two  ways,  either  by  gate-money  or  by  subscrip- 
tion. Most  young  men  prefer  to  give  their  money  at  the  gate,  and 
thus  to  pay  for  what  they  see.  If  a  club  knows  that  it  is  to  spend 
only  what  it  earns,  it  will  be  stimulated,  first,  to  play  as  good  a  game 
as  possible  ;  and,  secondly,  to  spend  its  earnings  with  prudence.  It 
seems  only  just,  too,  that,  if  the  public  desire  to  see  a  good  game,  they 
should  pay  for  the  exhibition.  The  men  work  hard  in  practice,  and 
are  entitled  to  have  their  expenses  paid.  More  than  that  they  do  not 
ask.  They  do  not  play  for  gain,  but  for  honor.  By  their  rules,  they 
do  not  allow  any  man  to  be  a  member  of  their  organizations  who  has 
earned  money  as  a  professional. 

The  evil  of  liability  to  strains  and  injuries  in  athletics  can  not  be 
entirely  obviated.  It  is  well  to  bear  in  mind,  at  this  point,  the  fact 
that  even  those  who  are  not  athletes  do  not,  therefore,  enjoy  immu 
nity  from  accidents.  Yet,  so  far,  according  to  the  recollection  of  the 
writer,  no  regular  member  of  a  Yale  Crew,  Team,  or  Nine,  has  been 
permanently  injured  by  participating  in  a  race  or  match.  Still,  it  is 
possible  that  a  slight  injury,  to  a  person  having  organic  weakness, 
might  result  in  a  fatal  difficulty.  Such  an  issue  might  be  avoided  by 
the  requirement  that  every  candidate  for  trial  should  be  examined  by 
a  competent  physician,  and,  in  default  of  procuring  a  certificate  of  physi- 
cal soundness,  should  be  excluded  from  participation  in  athletic  con- 
tests. Besides  this,  every  candidate  for  a  place  in  a  crew  should  be 
debarred  from  entering  a  race  unless  he  had  mastered  the  art  of  swim- 
ming. 

If,  moreover,  the  Faculty  of  every  college  having  a  system  of  ath- 
letics would  exert  a  sympathetic  as  well  as  a  judicious  oversight  of  the 
students  interested  in  the  system,  they  would  find  the  young  men  quite 
willing  to  listen  to  friendly  suggestions.  If,  also,  the  times  of  recita- 
tion were  so  arranged  that  a  proper  amount  of  time  could  be  devoted 
to  exercise  without  interference  with  study,  more  brain-work,  and  of 
better  quality,  would  be  secured  than  by  the  policy  prevailing  in  some 
colleges,  according  to  which,  not  only  no  encouragement  is  given  to 
athletic  sports,  but,  on  the  contrary,  every  obstacle  is  thrown  in  their 
way. 

The  college  which  neglects  or  ignores  physical  culture  may  send 
out  scholars,  but  it  will  not  educate  forceful  men.  It  will  not  be  the 
living  power  which  it  might  be.  Truth  is  not  to  prevail  by  the  dry 
light  of  intellect  alone,  but  through  the  agency  of  good,  wise,  and 
strong  men. 


598  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

GEEEN  SUNS  AND  EED' SUNSETS. 

By  W.  H.  LAEEABEE. 

rr\HE  whole  world  enjoyed,  during  the  closing  months  of  1883  and 
J-  through  January,  1884,  the  spectacle  of  a  succession  of  sunsets 
and  sunrises  marked  by  a  brilliant,  gorgeous  red  coloration.  The  phe- 
nomenon, if  it  had  been  only  for  a  day  or  two,  might  not  have  excited 
any  particular  remark,  for  in  the  United  States  the  sight  of  a  brilliant- 
ly-colored sunset  is  not  at  all  unusual ;  but  when  it  was  found  to  be 
continuous  for  months,  and  to  extend  to  every  part  of  the  earth,  the 
impression  became  nearly  universal  that  something  uncommon  was 
going  on  in  our  atmosphere  or  in  space.  The  phenomenon  apparently 
reached  its  culmination  about  the  27th  of  November,  when  the  western 
sky  was  illuminated  for  more  than  an  hour  after  sunset  by  a  lurid 
glow,  as  of  some  great  conflagration  ;  and  in  many  places  the  public 
thought  it  actually  was  the  mark  of  a  fire,  while  in  some  towns  fire- 
alarms  were  sounded.  The  phenomenon  first  began  to  excite  attention 
in  the  Eastern  States  at  about  the  time  of  its  brightest  manifestation, 
in  the  last  days  of  November.  It  was,  however,  remarked  on  the 
Pacific  coast  about  a  week  earlier  ;  in  Europe  early  in  the  month  ;  and 
at  points  in  the  Indian  and  Pacific  Oceans  as  early  as  September. 
Among  the  earliest  published  mentions  of  it  were  those  from  the  isl- 
ands of  Rodrigues,  Mauritius,  and  Seychelles,  August  28th,  Brazil, 
August  30th,  New  Ireland,  September  1st,  the  Gold  Coast,  Africa, 
September  1st  and  2d,  and  one  that  was  made  in  connection  with  the 
observation  of  a  "  blue  sun "  at  Trinidad,  September  2d,  when,  after 
dark,  says  the  report,  "we  thought  there  was  a  fire  in  the  town, 
from  the  bright  redness  of  the  heavens."  At  Ongole,  India,  after  the 
sun  had  set,  green,  "  light  yellow  and  orange  appeared  in  the  west, 
a  very  deep  red  remaining  for  more  than  an  hour  after  sunset " ; 
whereas  under  ordinary  conditions  all  traces  of  color  leave  the  sky 
in  that  latitude  within  half  an  hour  after  the  sun  disappears.  Cap- 
tain Holland,  of  the  French  3fe8sageries  steamer  Saghelien,  passing 
from  near  King  George's  Sound,  Australia,  to  the  Island  of  Reunion, 
observed,  from  the  25th  of  September  to  the  12th  of  October,  a  red 
light  around  the  sun,  which  became  more  pronounced  at  sunset,  and 
persisted  for  a  length  of  time  after  that  hour  in  proportion  as  the 
ship  was  in  a  higher  latitude.  "  The  colored  part  of  the  sky,  which 
was  at  times  extremely  lively,  had,  about  a  half -hour  before  sunset, 
a  very  considerable  surface,  extending  to  a  distance  of  forty-five 
degrees  from  the  sun."  The  same  coloring  was  seen  in  the  morn- 
ing. A  correspondent  writing  from  Wailuku,  Sandwich  Islands,  to 
the  "  Hawaiian  Gazette  "  of  October  3d,  speaks  of  the  "  most  extraor- 
dinary "  sunsets  they  had  been  having  for  some  time  past,  "  fiery  red. 


GREEN  SUJSrS  AND    RED    SUNSETS, 


599 


spreading  a  lurid  glare  over  all  the  heavens,  and  producing  a  most 
weird  effect."  The  Attorney-General  of  West  Australia  wrote  to  Dr. 
J.  W.  Judd,  October  27th,  describing  the  same  glow  ;  and  a  letter  from 
Umballah,  India,  October  30th,  says  :  "  There  has  been  for  some  time  a 
remarkable  appearance  in  the  sky  every  night.  The  sun  goes  down  as 
usual  and  it  gets  nearly  dark,  and  then  a  bright  red  and  yellow  and 
green  and  purple  blaze  comes  in  the  sky  and  makes  it  lighter  again. 
It  is  most  uncanny,  and  makes  one  feel  as  if  something  out  of  the  com- 
mon was  going  to  happen."  The  writer  of  this  article  has  noticed 
from  his  own  windows  the  interval  of  darkness  betw^een  the  setting  of 
the  sun  and  the  appearance  of  the  glow  remarked  in  the  letter. 

The  earliest  observations  of  the  glow  in  Europe  appear  to  have 
been  made  about  the  9th  of  November,  after  which  time  references  to 
it  and  descriptions  of  it  abound  in  the  scientific  and  other  journals. 
These  descriptions  agree  with  each  other  as  to  all  essential  features, 
and  might  be  as  well  applied  to  the  phenomenon  as  seen  anywhere  in 
the  United  States.  The  sky  is  generally  spoken  of  as  cloudless  where 
the  glow  has  appeared,  although  a  few  observers  speak  of  light  cirrus 
clouds  floating  in  the  air  or  passing  over  the  sun  or  near  it  ;  and  one 
observer  at  Ootacamund,  India,  mentions  a  green  cloud  that  passed  over 
the  sun's  disk,  followed  by  a  red  one. 

The  red  light  is  regarded  by  those  who  have  paid  most  attention 
to  the  subject  as  associated  with  the  blue  or  green  sun  which  was  ob- 
served in  many  parts  of  the  East  Indies  early  in  September.  It  was 
noticed  at  Manila,  in  the  Philippine  Islands,  on  the  9th,  when,  during 
a  "light  dry  mist,"  "the  sun  appeared  colored  green  and  diffusing 
over  all  the  bodies  it  illuminated  a  strange  and  curious  greenish 
hue,  to  the  great  terror  of  the  islanders  "  ;  at  Colombo,  Ceylon,  on  the 
same  day,  when  the  sun,  about  forty  minutes  before  setting,  emerged 
from  behind  a  cloud  of  a  bright-green  color.  The  whole  disk  was 
distinctly  seen,  and  the  light  was  so  subdued  that  one  could  look 
steadily  at  it.  The  moon  was  also,  to  some  extent,  affected  in  the 
same  way.  A  correspondent  of  the  "  Ceylon  Observer,"  writing  on 
September  12th  from  Puleadierakam,  states  that  no  light  came  from 
the  sun,  although  it  was  visible,  until  nearly  seven  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  and  adds  :  "  For  the  last  four  days,  the  sun  rises  in  splendid 
green  when  visible — that  is,  about  10°  from  the  horizon.  As  he  ad- 
vances he  assumes  a  beautiful  blue,  resembling  burning  sulphur. 
When  about  45°  high,  it  is  not  possible  to  look  at  the  sun  with  the 
naked  eye  ;  but,  even  when  at  the  very  zenith,  the  light  is  blue,  vary- 
ing from  a  pale  blue  early  to  a  bright  blue  later  on,  almost  similar  to 
moonlight  even  at  midday.  Then,  as  he  declines,  the  sun  assumes  the 
same  changes,  but  vice  versa.  The  heat  is  greatly  modified,  and  there 
is  nothing  like  the  usual  hot  days  of  September.  The  moon,  now 
visible  in  the  afternoon,  looks  also  tinged  with  blue  after  sunset,  and 
as  she  declines,  assumes  a  most  fiery  color  at  30°  from  the  zenith." 


6oo  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

At  Madras,  India,  Professor  C.  Micliie  Smith,  of  the  Christian 
College,  remarked  the  "perfectly  rayless"  and  bright  silvery-white 
color  of  the  sun  on  the  9th  of  September.  The  same  was  noticed 
on  the  next  day,  but  was  succeeded,  after  the  reappearance  of  the 
sun  from  behind  a  cloud,  by  a  bright  pea-green  color.  This  pecul- 
iar color  was  again  observed  the  next  morning,  and  in  the  evening  it 
"  was  a  magnificent  spectacle,  and  attracted  the  notice  of  every  one. 
The  silvery  sheen  was  visible  early  in  the  afternoon,  and  the  bright- 
ness of  the  sun  rapidly  faded,  till  by  about  five  o'clock  one  could  look 
at  it  directly  without  any  difficulty.  At  this  time  there  was  a  distinct 
tinge  of  green  in  the  light  when  received  on  a  sheet  of  white  paper, 
while  shadows  were  very  prettily  tinted  with  the  complementary  pink. 
As  the  sun  sank  toward  the  horizon  the  green  became  more  and  more 
strongly  marked,  and  by  5.30  it  appeared  as  a  bright -green  disk, 
wdth  a  sharp  outline.  In  fact  the  definition  was  so  good  that  a  large 
spot  (about  1'  long)  was  a  conspicuous  object  to  the  naked  eye." 
The  green  suns  were  also  seen  for  several  days  about  the  22d.  The 
spectrum,  w^hich  Dr.  Smith  carefully  examined,  "  showed  clearly  that 
aqueous  vapor  played  a  large  part  in  the  phenomena,  for  all  the  atmos- 
pheric lines  usually  ascribed  to  that  substance  were  very  strongly  de- 
veloped. But  in  addition  to  this  there  was  a  very  marked  general 
absorption  in  the  red.*'  Abnormal  electrical  conditions  of  the  atmos- 
phere were  noticed  at  this  place  in  connection  with  the  phenomenon. 
Of  an  earlier  date  than  any  of  these  observations  is  a  notice  of  a 
"  green  sun,"  remarked  at  Panama  on  the  2d  and  3d  of  September,  the 
same  day  on  which  a  blue  sun  and  lurid  sky  were  observed  at  Trinidad. 

The  appearance  of  the  green  color  in  the  sun  and  in  parts  of  the 
sky  outside  of  the  sphere  of  the  red  glow  was  also  remarked  in  numer- 
ous observations  made  in  Europe.  In  one  of  the  earliest  notices  of 
the  spectacle  published  in  England,  the  writer  says  that  at  sunset  "  a 
very  peculiar  greenish  and  white  opalescent  haze  appeared  about  the 
point  of  the  sun's  departure,  and  shone  as  if  with  a  light  of  its  own, 
near  the  horizon.  The  upper  part  of  this  pearly  mist  soon  assumed  a 
pink  color,  while  the  lower  part  was  white,  green,  and  greenish-yel- 
low." Another  observer,  at  Worcester,  describes  the  blue  of  the  sky 
as  having  been  changed  to  green  and  the  green  as  being  speedily 
replaced  by  the  ruddy  tint ;  and  again,  in  the  morning,  "  the  color  of 
the  sun  changed  to  an  exquisite  emerald  hue,  staining  the  landscape, 
and  investing  houses,  buildings,  glazed  windows,  and  greenhouses 
w^ith  a  remarkably  weird  aspect."  At  sunset  of  the  same  day,  "  the 
crescent  of  the  moon,  being  just  above  the  fringe  of  red  light,  assumed 
a  lively  green  hue,  and  continued  to  exhibit  the  novelty  of  an  emerald 
crescent"  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour.  At  other  places,  w^e  read  of  the 
contrast  of  the  glow  with  "  the  pale  greenish  hue  of  the  clear  sky 
around "  ;  of  a  crimson  arch  stretching  from  southeast  to  northeast, 
"  with  a  very  clear  greenish-blue  sky  beneath  it  in  the  east,"  and  be- 


GREEN  SUNS  AND  BED   SUNSETS.  601 

tween  the  arch  and  the  western  horizon  "  a  sky  of  a  bright  silver- white 
color,  which  was  so  brilliant  that  it  gave  us  quite  a  second  daylight "  ; 
at  another,  of  the  sky  nearer  the  zenith  appearing  "of  a  sea-green 
tint."  The  sea-green  tint  in  the  east  was  observed  at  Rome  ;  and  at 
Berlin,  according  to  Herr  Robert  von  Helmholtz,  there  was  "  a  green- 
ish sunset  at  3.50,  an  unusually  bright-red  sky  with  flashes  of  light 
starting  from  southwest.  An  interesting  physiological  phenomenon 
which  recalls  *  Contrast-Farben '  was  there  beautifully  illustrated  by 
some  clouds,  no  longer  reached  by  direct  sunlight ;  they  looked  in- 
tensely green  on  the  red  sky."  The  whole  phenomenon  was  exhibited, 
according  to  Mr.  J.  Addington  Symonds,  with  remarkable  intensity  at 
Davos-Platz  in  the  High  Alps  ;  and  on  one  occasion  "  the  whole  north- 
eastern region  of  the  heavens  was  at  the  same  time  of  the  most  vivid 
golden-green  —  the  peculiar  green  of  chrysoprase  and  some  highly- 
tinted  beryls.  Each  tone  of  light,  rose  and  green,  was  reflected  on 
the  long,  broad  basin  of  valley  snow,  the  blending  of  both  colors  being 
of  a  strange,  bewildering  brilliancy."  The  sun,  at  this  place,  appeared 
through  the  day  "  surrounded  by  a  luminous,  slightly  opalescent  haze 
— not  at  all  resembling  halo  or  iridescence  of  vapor." 

The  red  glow  and  the  green  sun  are  most  likely  due  to  a  common 
cause.  The  same  medium  which  will  give  by  transmitted  light  a 
green  color  to  objects  viewed  through  it,  v/ill,  by  the  universal  law  of 
the  absorption  and  reflection  of  light,  reflect  the  red  rays.  The  close 
connection  of  the  two  phenomena  may  be  regarded  as  real. 

The  spectacle  must  be  due  to  some  peculiar  condition  of  our  atmos- 
phere, for,  if  it  was  produced  by  any  cause  outside  of  the  atmosphere, 
it  would  have  been  visible  in  some  form  through  the  night*  whereas 
its  duration  corresponded  tolerably  closely  with  that  of  ordinary  twi- 
light ;  the  cause  must  have  been  co-extensive  with  the  atmosphere,  for 
the  glow  lasted  as  long  as  the  twilight,  if  not  longer.  The  manifes- 
tation was  not  auroral  or  electrical,  for  no  auroras  have  been  seen 
which  could  reasonably  be  associated  with  it,  and  no  electrical  dis- 
turbances have  been  mentioned  in  connection  with  it,  except  at  Ma- 
dras. Professor  Michie  Smith,  of  Madras,  and  Professor  C.  Piazzi 
Smyth,  believe  that  it  is  the  result  of  peculiar  conditions  of  vapor  in 
the  air  ;  but,  while  this  might  easily  account  for  colors  lasting  a  few 
days,  it  is  difficult  to  suppose  a  peculiar  accumulation  and  distribution 
of  ordinary  vapors  enduring  for  so  long  a  period.  Nevertheless,  Mr. 
Lockyer  has  seen  the  sun  green  through  the  steam  of  a  steamboat ; 
it  has  been  seen  green  through  the  mist  of  the  Siraplon  ;  and  Mr. 
Henry  Bedford,  describing  the  summer  sunset  and  sunrise  just  within 
the  Arctic  Circle  in  July,  1878,  in  an  English  magazine  of  that  year, 
said  :  "  The  color  brightens,  and  some  small  streaks  of  clouds  grow 
brighter  and  brighter,  until  the  sun — the  green  sun — appears.  A 
distant  low  range  of  rocks  comes  between  us  and  its  point  of  rising, 
and,  as  we  glide  on,  an  opening  between  them  shows  us  the  sun,  a 


6o2  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

bright  emerald,  as  pure  and  brilliant  as  ever  gem  that  glistened  ;  again 
we  lose  it,  and  again  an  opening  shows  it  to  us  in  its  own  golden  light ; 
and  then  once  more  it  is  the  bright  green  ;  and  now  it  rises  higher, 
clears  the  ridge,  and  is  once  more  the  golden  orb."  The  Rev.  G.  H. 
Hopkins,  of  Cornwall,  England,  has  observed  that  in  a  clear  sky,  as 
the  disk  of  the  sun  sinks  down  beneath  the  horizontal  line  of  the 
ocean,  the  parting  ray  is  of  a  deep  emerald  green.  The  effect  is  not 
produced  if  there  are  clouds  around  the  sun.  Dr.  F.  A.  Forel,  of 
Morges,  Switzerland,  mentions  as  a  fact  confirmatory  of  the  opinion 
that  meteorological  factors  alone  can  not  furnish  a  sufficient  explana- 
tion of  the  phenomenon,  that  in  Switzerland  the  glow,  after  having 
decreased  subsequently  to  the  3d  of  December,  attained  a  second 
maximum  on  the  24th  and  25th  of  the  month,  when  the  atmospheric 
conditions  were  quite  different  from  those  which  prevailed  in  the  coun- 
try at  the  time  of  the  first  maximum. 

The  hypothesis  that  the  spectacle  was  caused  by  the  presence  in 
the  atmosphere  of  a  cloud  of  "  cosmic  dust,"  which  the  earth  has  en- 
countered in  its  travels,  has  been  advanced  by  several  observers,  and 
is  supported  by  Mr.  Proctor.  Mr.  Nordenskiold  and  other  men  emi- 
nent in  science  have  taught  us  to  believe  that  a  meteoric  dust  falling 
upon  the  earth  from  space  plays  a  much  more  important  part  in  ter- 
restrial economy  than  we  have  been  accustomed  to  suppose  ;  and  they 
have  collected,  in  uninhabited  countries  and  far  away  from  any  vol- 
cano, quantities  of  dust — little  rounded  particles  of  metallic  com- 
pounds— unlike  anything  the  earth  is  known  to  produce,  and  strik- 
ingly like  what  meteors  of  that  size  would  be.  Investigating  whether 
an  unusifal  quantity  of  such  dust  is  now  falling  upon  us,  Mr.  W. 
Mattieu  Williams  has  found  it  in  carefully  selected  snow  from  his 
garden.  M.  fimile  Yung,  of  Geneva,  has  also  found  an  extraordinary 
quantity  of  a  similar  dust  in  fresh  snow  that  fell  in  the  latter  part  of 
November  and  early  in  December  on  the  steeple  of  the  cathedral  of 
Saint-Pierre,  at  "  les  Treize-Arbres,"  Mont  Sal^ve. 

Numerous  suggestions  have  been  made  that  the  phenomena  are  the 
result  of  the  diffusion  through  the  whole  atmosphere  of  the  entire 
earth  of  ashes  and  cinders  from  the  eruption  of  the  volcano  of  Kraka- 
toa,  in  the  Straits  of  Sunda,  which  took  place  on  the  26th  of  August 
last.  This  theory  has  the  support  of  Professor  Lockyer  and  other  emi- 
nent men  of  science,  and  there  is  much  to  be  said  in  favor  of  it.  The 
principal  objections  to  it  are  summarized  in  a  remark  by  Mr.  Proctor, 
"that  we  should  have  to  explain  two  incongruous  circumstances  :  first, 
how  the  exceedingly  fine  matter  ejected  from  Krakatoa  could  have  so 
quickly  reached  the  enormous  height  at  which  the  matter  producing 
the  after-glow  certainly  was  ;  and,  secondly,  how,  having  been  able  to 
traverse  still  air  so  readily  one  way,  that  matter  failed  to  return  as 
readily  earthward  under  the  attraction  of  gravity."  It  will  not  do  to 
limit  our  ideas  of  the  effect  that  may  have  followed  the  eruption  of 


GREEN  SUNS  AND  RED   SUNSETS,  603 

Krakatoa  by  our  knowledge  of  what  has  followed  any  other  volcanic 
eruption  ;  for  the  outburst  at  Krakatoa  far  exceeded  in  violence  any 
event  of  the  kind  that  is  remembered  in  the  history  of  man.  Mr.  W. 
J.  Stillman,  formerly  United  States  consul  in  Crete,  who  has  wit- 
nessed the  explosions  of  two  eruptions  of  the  submarine  volcano  of 
Santorin,  and  has  seen  masses  of  rock  weighing  many  tons  thrown 
from  a  half  a  mile  to  a  mile,  and  escaping  gases  expanding,  after  two 
seconds,  into  huge  masses  of  cloud,  at  an  elevation  of  from  six  to  ten 
thousand  feet,  and  then  drifting  away  with  the  wind  and  dropping  vol- 
canic dust  in  its  course,  believes  that  on  the  enormously  greater  scale 
of  the  Krakatoa  explosions  the  dust  could  have  been  thrown  to  the 
top  of  the  atmosphere,  there  to  drift  over  the  whole  earth  ;  and  he 
suggests  that  at  such  a  height  the  distribution  might  be  effected  in 
twenty-four  hours  by  a  single  revolution  of  the  earth.  Mr.  Proctor's 
second  difficulty  is  met  by  Messrs.  Preece  and  William  Crookes,  who 
suggest  that  very  finely  divided  particles  of  dust  having  an  electrical 
charge  of  the  same  sign  as  that  of  the  earth,  may  be  kept  suspended  in 
the  upper  air  for  an  indefinite  period,  by  electrical  repulsion  ;  and  Dr. 
Crookes  adduces  experiments  showing  how  similar  things  have  been 
done  with  electrified  gold-leaf.  Professor  S.  P.  Langley  contributes 
some  interesting  te^imony  on  this  point,  which  is  based  upon  his 
observations  on  Mount  Whitney,  in  1881.  On  this  mountain,  from  a 
height  of  twelve  thousand  feet,  "  we  looked  down,"  he  says,  **  on 
what  seemed  a  kind  of  level  dust-ocean,  invisible  from  below,  but 
whose  depth  was  six  or  seven  thousand  feet.  .  .  .  The  color  of  the 
light  reflected  to  us  from  this  dust-ocean  was  clearly  red,  and  it 
stretched  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach  in  every  direction,  although 
there  was  no  special  wind  or  local  cause  for  it.  It  was  evidently  like 
the  dust  seen  in  mid-ocean  from  the  Peak  of  Teneriffe — something 
present  all  the  time,  and  a  permanent  ingredient  in  the  earth's  atmos- 
phere. At  our  own  great  elevation  the  sky  was  of  a  remarkably  deep 
violet,  and  it  seemed  at  first  as  if  no  dust  was  present  in  this  upper 
air,  but  in  getting,  just  at  noon,  in  the  edge  of  the  shadow  of  a  range 
of  cliffs  which  rose  twelve  hundred  feet  above  us,  the  sky  immediately 
took  on  a  whitish  hue.  On  scrutinizing  this  through  the  telescope,  it 
was  found  to  be  due  to  myriads  of  the  minutest  dust-particles.  .  .  . 
It  is  especially  worth  notice  that,  as  far  as  such  observations  go,  we 
have  no  doubt  that  the  finer  dust  from  the  earth's  surface  is  carried 
up  to  a  surprising  altitude.  I  speak  here,  not  of  the  grosser  dust-par- 
ticles, but  of  those  which  are  so  fine  as  to  be  individually  invisible, 
except  under  favorable  circumstances,  and  which  are  so  minute  that 
they  might  be  almost  an  unlimited  time  in  settling  to  the  ground,  even 
if  the  atmosphere  were  to  become  perfectly  quiet."  Professor  Lang- 
ley  thinks  that  the  explosion  of  Krakatoa  may  have  added  millions  of 
tons  to  the  dust-envelope  of  the  globe,  and  that  the  new  contribution 
is  not  likely  at  once  to  fall  to  the  surface  again. 


6o4  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

In  illustration  of  this  theory,  we  have  the  testimony  of  Captain  Sir 
C.  Fleming  Stenhouse,  who  named  the  island,  that  after  "  Graham's 
Island  "  appeared  in  the  Mediterranean  in  1831,  similar  red  sunsets  to 
those  the  world  has  just  been  admiring  were  seen  at  Malta.  A  more 
striking  record  of  a  similar  phenomenon  is  given  in  White's  "Natural 
History  of  Selborne,"  Bohn's  edition,  page  300,  where  we  read  :  "  The 
summer  of  the  year  1783  was  an  amazing  and  portentous  one,  and 
full  of  horrible  phenomena  ;  for  besides  the  alarming  meteors  and  tre- 
mendous thunder-storms  that  affrighted  and  distressed  the  different 
counties  of  this  kingdom,  the  peculiar  haze,  or  smoky  fog,  that  pre- 
vailed for  many  weeks  in  this  island,  and  in  every  part  of  Europe,  and 
even  beyond  its  limits,  was  a  most  extraordinary  appearance,  unlike 
anything  known  within  the  memory  of  man.  By  my  journal  I  find 
that  I  had  noticed  this  strange  occurrence  from  June  23d  to  July  20th, 
inclusive,  during  which  period  the  wind  varied  to  every  quarter,  with- 
out making  any  alteration  in  the  air.  The  sun,  at  noon,  looked  as 
black  as  a  clouded  moon,  and  shed  a  rust-colored  ferruginous  light  on 
the  ground  and  floors  of  rooms,  but  was  particularly  lurid  and  blood- 
colored  at  rising  and  setting.  .  .  .  The  country  people  began  to  look 
with  a  superstitious  awe  at  the  red,  lowering  aspect  of  the  sun  ;  and, 
indeed,  there  was  reason  for  the  most  enlightened  person  to  be  appre- 
hensive, for  all  the  while  Calabria,  and  part  of  the  Isle  of  Sicily,  were 
torn  and  convulsed  with  earthquakes  ;  and,  about  that  juncture,  a  vol- 
cano sprang  out  of  the  sea  on  the  coast  of  Norway."  Cowper  men- 
tions the  same  phenomena  in  his  "  Task  "  ;  and  Mrs.  Somerville,  in  her 
"  Physical  Geography,"  traces  their  origin  to  the  eruption  of  the  vol- 
cano Skaptar,  in  Iceland,  *'  which  broke  out  May  8th,  and  continued 
to  August,  sending  forth  clouds  of  mingled  dust  and  vapor,  which 
spread  over  the  whole  of  Northern  Europe."  It  is  stated  in  the  "  An- 
nals of  Philosophy,"  vol.  ii,  that  the  sun  appeared  of  a  blue  color  in 
England,  in  April,  1821  ;  and  it  appears  from  other  sources  that  a 
violent  volcanic  eruption  had  taken  place  in  the  Island  of  Bourbon  in 
February  of  that  year,  and  a  destructive  outbreak  in  Gunung  Api  in 
June  of  the  previous  year. 

A  curious  counterpart  to  White's  relation  is  given  by  Professor 
James  Main  Dixon  of  what  he  witnessed  in  Japan  at  the  time  of  the 
eruption  of  Krakatoa.  "  During  the  two  or  three  days  at  the  end  of 
August,"  he  says,  "  we  enjoyed  fine,  dry  weather,  but  the  sun  was  cop- 
per-colored and  had  no  brightness.  It  was  capital  weather  for  travel- 
ing, but  rather  inexplicable.  When  we  got  to  Nikko,  the  people  came 
to  us  to  inquire  if  some  catastrophe  were  impending,  for  the  appearance 
of  the  sun  foreboded  evil.  We  laughed  at  their  fears,  and  assured 
them  all  was  right.  However,  it  seems  that  if  the  appearance  of  the 
sun  foreboded  no  evil,  it  was  a  wonderful  sign  of  the  greatest  earth- 
quake and  volcanic  catastrophe  on  record.  Tbe  fearful  explosion  of 
Krakatoa,  in  the  Straits  of  Sunda,  took  place  on  August  26th;  and 


GREEN  SUNS  AND  RED   SUNSETS.  605 

there  seems  little  reason  to  doubt  that  the  monsoon  had  carried  the 
volcanic  dust  along  with  it,  the  dust  obscuring  the  sun.  The  dis- 
tance is  nearly  three  thousand  miles." 

Dr.  Budde,  of  Constantinople,  was  assured,  when  traveling  in 
Southern  Algeria  in  1880,  that  the  sun  has  a  decidedly  blue  color  when 
seen  through  the  fine  dust  of  a  Sahara  wind.  Mr.  Edward  Whymper, 
remarking  upon  a  metallic-green  coloration  of  the  moon,  observed  on 
some  evenings  in  December,  says  that  the  peculiar  hue  recalled  to  him 
a  similar  appearance  which  he  had  witnessed  in  South  America  when 
the  atmosphere  was  charged  with  volcanic  dust ;  and  he  has  described 
the  colorings  seen  by  his  party  under  a  cloud  of  ashes  from  Cotopaxi 
in  language  which  would  almost  precisely  apply  to  the  diversified  ap- 
pearances that  are  the  immediate  subject  of  our  discussion.  Extremely 
brilliant  colorations  of  the  sky  have  been  mentioned  by  several  travel- 
ers as  common  spectacles  in  a  particular  tropical  belt.  Colonel  Stuart 
Wortley,  who  spent  the  year  1862  in  Southern  Italy,  in  the  study,  by 
the  aid  of  photography,  of  the  formation  of  clouds,  was  struck  with  the 
unusual  colors  of  the  sunsets  during  and  after  the  eruptions  of  Vesu- 
vius with  which  that  year  was  distinguished.  Four  years  ago,  while 
sailing  in  the  Pacific,  he  was  much  impressed  with  the  fact  that  "  very 
frequently  the  whole  vault  of  heaven  was  overspread  with  magnificent 
and  glorious  coloring,  and  that  in  the  higher  regions  of  the  air  colors 
were  found  that  were  never  seen  in  the  horizon  or  below  a  certain 
height."  Inasmuch  as  this  exceptional  magnificence  and  peculiarity 
of  coloring  only  occurs  in  certain  latitudes  and  in  well-defined  belts, 
he  suggests  that,  seen  in  the  new  light  that  is  now  cast  on  the  sub- 
ject, "  the  constant  stream  of  volcanic  matter  thrown  out  by  the  great 
volcanoes  in  the  mountain-ranges  of  South  America,  and  possibly  from 
elsewhere,  form  an  almost  permanent  stratum  of  floating  matter,  car- 
ried in  certain  directions  and  kept  in  certain  positions  by  alternating 
currents  in  the  higher  regions  of  the  air,  and  that  to  this  stratum  of 
volcanic  matter  much  of  the  exceptional  coloring,  found  to  be  asso- 
ciated with  sunrises  and  sunsets  in  portions  of  the  Southern  Pacific 
Ocean,  is  due."  As  an  interesting  coincidence  in  connection  with  this 
view  may  be  noticed  the  extraordinary  fact,  to  which  Mr.  Lockyer  has 
called  attention,  that  "before  even  the  lower  currents  had  time  to 
carry  the  volcanic  products  to  a  region  so  near  as  India,  an  upper  cur- 
rent from  the  east  had  taken  them  in  a  straight  line  via  the  Sey- 
chelles, Cape  Coast  Castle,  Trinidad,  and  Panama,  to  Honolulu,  in 
fact  very  nearly  back  again  to  the  Straits  of  Sunda." 

Very  strong  evidence  in  favor  of  the  theory  of  the  agency  of  vol- 
canic dust  has  been  derived  from  the  examination  of  the  sediment  in 
freshly  fallen  snow  at  Madrid,  Spain,  on  the  7th  of  December,  and  of 
the  mineral  matter  deposited  by  a  rain  that  fell  at  Wageningen,  Hol- 
land, on  the  13th  of  December.  The  sediment  at  Madrid,  besides  the 
ordinary  atmospheric  dust  of  the  city,  contained  particles  of  what  ap- 


6o6  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

peared  to  be  volcanic  hypersthene,  pyroxene,  magnetic  iron,  and  vol- 
canic glass.  At  Wageningen,  every  drop  of  the  rain  that  fell  upon 
the  windows  left,  when  it  dried  up,  a  slight  sediment  of  grayish- 
colored  matter  which  was  compared  with  original  volcanic  ash  from 
Krakatoa  that  had  been  sent  to  the  Agricultural  Laboratory  for  analy- 
sis. Both  the  sediment  and  the  volcanic  ash  were  found  to  contain  in 
common — 1.  Small,  transparent,  glassy  particles  ;  2.  Brownish,  half- 
transparent,  somewhat  filamentous  little  staves  ;  and,  3.  Jet-black, 
sharp-edged,  small  grains  resembling  augite.  These  observations,  say 
Messrs.  Beyerinck  and  Van  Dam,  who  made  the  analyses,  "  fortify  us 
in  our  supposition  that  the  ashes  of  Krakatoa  have  come  down  in  Hol- 
land." On  the  17th  of  November  a  fall  of  layers  of  gray  and  black 
dust  took  place  at  Storlvdal,  Norway,  and  a  fall  of  discolored  rain 
near  Worcester,  England.  Grayish  sediments  were  found  deposited 
on  windows  at  Gainsborough  and  York,  England,  after  a  heavy  rain 
on  the  12th  of  December. 

Mr.  E.  Douglas  Archibald  has  suggested  in  "  Nature  "  that,  whether 
the  cause  of  the  phenomena  be  meteoric  dust  or  volcanic  ashes,  the  re- 
flection arises  from  a  definite  stratum,  and  not  merely  from  an  atmos- 
phere filled  throughout  with  such  dust.  Professor  Roujon,  of  Cler- 
mont, France,  has  also  observed  that  two  of  the  twilights,  one  following 
the  other  one  day  apart,  "  were  so  different  in  intensity  as  to  provoke 
the  supposition  that  the  substance  which  produced  them,  at  a  great 
height,  was  not  uniformly  diffused,  but  moved  in  vast  masses."  This 
would  serve  to  account  for  the  variations  that  all  must  have  observed 
in  the  brilliancy  of  the  glow. 

Mr.  Edmund  Clark  has  offered  a  suggestion  upon  which  the  theory 
that  invokes  the  agency  of  aqueous  vapor  and  the  one  which  refers 
the  manifestations  to  volcanic  or  meteoric  dust  may  be  combined,  viz., 
that  the  dust  may  act  as  a  nucleus  for  the  condensation  of  any  vapor 
that  may  exist  at  such  a  high  level.  The  height  of  the  mass  of  the 
matter  producing  the  glow  has  been  fixed  by  Miss  Ley,  of  England, 
at  thirteen  miles. 


THE  ANCESTRY  OF  BIRDS. 

By  Professor  GEANT  ALLEN. 

SEATED  on  the  dry  hill-side  here,  by  the  belted  blue  Mediterranean, 
I  have  picked  up  from  the  ground  a  bit  of  blanched  and  molder- 
ing  bone,  well  cleaned  to  my  hand  by  the  unconscious  friendliness  of 
the  busy  ants  ;  and  looking  closely  at  it  I  recognize  it  at  once,  with 
a  sympathetic  sigh,  for  the  solid  welded  tail-piece  of  some  departed 
British  tourist  swallow.  He  came  here  like  ourselves,  no  doubt,  to 
escape  the  terrors  of  an  English  winter :  but  among  these  pine-clad 


THE  ANCESTRY   OF  BIRDS.  607 

ProveD9al  summits  some  nameless  calamity  overtook  him,  from  greedy- 
kestrel  or  from  native  sportsman,  and  left  him  here,  a  sheer  hulk,  for 
the  future  contemplation  of  a  wandering  and  lazy  field-naturalist. 
Fit  text,  truly,  for  a  sermon  on  the  ancestry  of  birds  ;  for  this  solid 
tail-bone  of  his  tells  more  strangely  than  any  other  part  of  his  whole 
anatomy  the  curious  story  of  his  evolution  from  some  primitive  lizard- 
like progenitor.  Close  by  here,  among  the  dry  rosemary  and  large- 
leaved  cistus  by  my  side,  a  few  weathered  tips  of  naked  basking 
limestone  are  peeping  thirstily  through  the  arid  soil ;  and  on  one  of 
these  gray  lichen-covered  masses  a  motionless  gray  lizard  sits  sunning 
his  limbs,  in  hue  and  spots  just  like  the  lichen  itself,  so  that  none  but 
a  sharp  eye  could  detect  his  presence,  or  distinguish  his  little  curling 
body  from  the  jutting  angles  of  the  rock,  to  which  it  adapts  itself 
with  such  marvelous  accuracy.  Only  the  restless  sidelong  glance  from 
the  quick  upturned  eye  suffices  to  tell  one  that  this  is  a  living  animal 
and  not  a  piece  of  the  lifeless  stone  on  which  it  "  rests  like  a  shadow." 
A  very  snake  the  lizard  looks  in  outline,  with  only  a  pair  of  sprawling 
fore-legs  and  a  pair  of  sprawling  hind-legs  to  distinguish  him  out- 
wardly from,  his  serpentine  kin.  Yet  from  some  such  lizard  as  this, 
my  swallow  and  all  other  birds  are  ultimately  descended  ;  and  from 
such  a  little  creeping  four-legged  reptile  science  has  to  undertake 
the  evolutionary  pedigree  of  the  powerful  eagle  or  the  broad-winged 
albatross. 

Reptiles  are  at  present  a  small  and  dying  race.  They  have  seen 
their  best  days.  But  in  the  great  secondary  age,  as  Tennyson  graphi- 
cally puts  it,  "  A  monstrous  eft  was  of  old  the  lord  and  master  of  earth." 
At  the  beginning  of  that  time  the  mammals  had  not  been  developed 
at  all  ;  and  even  at  its  close  they  were  but  a  feeble  folk,  represented 
only  by  weak  creatures  like  the  smaller  pouched  animals  of  Australia 
and  Tasmania.  Accordingly,  during  the  secondary  period,  the  reptiles 
had  things  everywhere  pretty  much  their  own  way,  ruling  over  the 
earth  as  absolutely  as  man  and  the  mammals  do  now.  Like  all  domi- 
nant types  for  the  time  being,  they  split  up  into  many  and  various 
forms.  In  the  sea,  they  became  huge  paddling  enaliosaurians  ;  on  the 
dry  land,  they  became  great  erect  dinosaurians  ;  in  the  air,  they  be- 
came terrible  flying  pterodactyls.  For  a  vast  epoch  they  inherited 
the  earth  ;  and  then  at  last  they  began  to  fail,  in  competition  with 
their  own  more  developed  descendants,  the  birds  and  mammals.  One 
by  one  they  died  out  before  the  face  of  the  younger  fauna,  until  at 
last  only  a  few  crocodiles  and  alligators,  a  few  great  snakes,  and  a 
few  big  turtles,  remain  among  the  wee  skulking  lizards  and  geckos  to 
remind  us  of  the  enormous  reptilian  types  that  crowded  the  surface  of 
the  liassic  oceans. 

Long  before  the  actual  arrival  of  true  birds  upon  the  scene,  how- 
ever, sundry  branches  of  the  reptilian  class  had  been  gradually  approxi- 
mating to  and  foreshadowing  the  future  flying  things.     Indeed,  one 


6o8  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

may  say  that  at  an  early  period  the  central  reptilian  stock,  consisting 
of  the  long,  lithe,  four-legged  forms  like  the  lizards,  still  closely  allied 
in  shape  to  their  primitive  newt-like  and  eel-like  ancestors,  began  to 
divide  laterally  into  sundry  important  branches.  Some  of  them  lost 
their  limbs  and  became  serpents  ;  others  acquired  bony  body-cover- 
ings and  became  turtles  ;  but  the  vast  majority  went  off  in  one  of  two 
directions,  either  as  fish-like  sea-saurians,  or  as  bird-like  land-saurians. 
It  is  with  this  last  division  alone  that  we  shall  have  largely  to  deal  in 
tracing  out  the  pedigree  of  our  existing  birds.  Their  fossil  remains 
supply  us  with  many  connecting  links  which  help  us  to  bridge  over 
the  distance  between  the  modern  representatives  of  the  two  classes. 
It  is  true,  none  of  these  links  can  be  said  to  occupy  an  exactly  inter- 
mediate place  between  reptiles  and  birds  ;  none  of  them  can  be  re- 
garded as  forming  an  actual  part  of  the  ancestry  of  our  own  swallows 
and  pigeons  :  they  are  rather  closely  related  collateral  members  of 
the  family  than  real  factors  in  the  central  line  of  descent.  But  they 
at  least  serve  to  show  that,  at  and  before  the  period  when  true  birds 
first  appeared  upon  earth,  many  members  of  one  great  reptilian  group 
had  made  immense  advances  in  several  distinct  directions  toward  the 
perfected  avian  type. 

Clearly,  the  first  step  toward  the  development  of  a  bird  must  con- 
sist in  acquiring  a  more  or  less  upright  habit :  for  the  legs  must  be 
well  differentiated  into  a  large  hind  pair  and  a  free  fore  pair,  before 
the  last  can  be  further  specialized  into  feathered  wings  ;  and  the  body 
must  have  acquired  a  forward  poise  before  flying  becomes  a  possible 
mode  of  locomotion.  Such  an  upright  habit  is  first  foreshadowed 
in  the  larger-limbed  and  longer-legged  lizards  like  the  dinosaurians, 
which  walked  to  some  extent  erect,  and  more  particularly  in  some 
highly  specialized  reptiles  like  the  iguanodon,  which  had  large  hind- 
legs  and  small  fore-legs,  and  could  walk  or  hop  on  the  hind-legs  alone, 
much  after  the  fashion  of  a  kangaroo,  or  still  more  of  a  jerboa  or  a 
chinchilla.  Now,  it  is  noticeable  that  the  tendency  to  acquire  the 
most  rudimentary  form  of  flying  is  common  among  animals  of  this 
serai-erect  habit,  especially  when  they  frequent  forests  and  jump  about 
much  from  tree  to  tree.  For  example,  among  our  modern  mammals, 
the  squirrels  are  a  race  much  given  to  sitting  on  their  hind-legs  and 
using  their  paws  as  hands  ;  while  they  are  also  much  accustomed  to 
jumping  lightly  from  bough  to  bough  ;  and  some  among  them,  the 
flying  squirrels,  have  developed  a  sort  of  parachute  consisting  of  an 
extensible  skin  between  the  fore  and  hind  legs,  which  they  use  to 
break  their  fall  in  descending  to  the  ground.  Again,  among  the  lower 
monkey-like  animals,  the  so-called  flying  lemur  or  galeopithecus  has 
hit  upon  an  exactly  similar  plan  ;  while,  in  the  bats,  a  membrane  which 
may  be  fairly  called  a  wing  has  been  evolved  to  a  very  high  degree  of 
perfection.  Everywhere,  the  habit  of  living  among  trees  or  jumping 
from  rocks  tends  to  produce  either  parachute  or  wing-like  organs  ; 


THE  AJSrCESTRT   OF  BIRDS.  609 

and  in  our  own  time  the  tendency  is  very  fully  displayed  among  a 
large  number  of  forestine  mammals. 

During  the  secondary  ages,  however,  it  was  the  reptiles  which  took  to 
thus  developing  a  rudimentary  flying-mechanism.  Even  at  the  present 
day  there  are  some  modern  lizards,  the  "  flying-dragons  "  of  popular  natu- 
ral history,  which  possess  a  parachute  arrangement  of  the  front  ribs,  and 
are  so  enabled  to  jump  lightly  from  branch  to  branch,  somewhat  in  the 
same  manner  as  the  flying-squirrels.  But  this  is  an  independent  and 
comparatively  late  development  of  a  flying  apparatus  among  the  rep- 
tiles, quite  distinct  in  character  from  those  which  were  in  vogue  among 
the  real  and  much  more  terrible  flying-dragons  of  the  liassic  and  oolitic 
age.  Far  the  most  remarkable  of  these  predecessors  of  the  true  birds 
were  the  pterodactyls  whose  bones  we  still  find  in  our  English  cliffs  at 
Lyme  Regis  and  Whitby  ;  creatures  with  a  large  reptilian  head,  fierce 
jaws  set  with  sharp-pointed  teeth,  and  fore-arms  prolonged  into  a  great 
projecting  finger  so  as  to  support  a  membranous  wing  or  fold  of  skin, 
somewhat  analogous  to  that  of  the  bats.  The  pterodactyls  do  not 
stand  anywhere  in  the  regular  line  of  descent  toward  the  true  birds  ; 
but  they  are  interesting  as  showing  that  a  general  tendency  then  ex- 
isted among  the  higher  reptiles  toward  the  development  of  a  flying 
organ.  In  these  frightful  dragons,  the  organ  of  flight  is  formed  by 
an  immense  prolongation  of  the  last  finger  on  each  fore-leg,  to  a  length 
about  as  great  as  that  of  the  rest  of  the  leg  all  put  together.  Between 
this  long  bony  finger  and  the  hind-leg  there  stretched,  in  all  probabil- 
ity, a  featherless  wing  like  a  bat's,  by  means  of  which  the  pterodactyl 
darted  through  the  air  and  pounced  down  upon  its  cowering  victims. 
As  in  birds,  the  bones  were  made  very  light,  and  filled  with  air  instead 
of  marrow  ;  and  all  the  other  indications  of  the  skeleton  show  that  the 
creatures  were  specially  designed  for  the  function  of  flight.  Imagine 
a  cross  between  a  vulture  and  a  crocodile,  and  you  have  something 
like  a  vague  mental  picture  of  a  pterodactyl. 

But  at  the  very  time  when  the  terrestrial  reptilian  type  was 
branching  out  in  one  direction  toward  the  ancestors  of  the  pterodac- 
tyls, it  was  branching  out  in  another  direction  toward  the  ancestors  of 
the  true  birds.  In  the  curious  lithographic  slate  of  Solenhofen  we 
have  preserved  for  us  a  great  number  of  fossil  forms  with  an  extraor- 
dinary degree  of  perfection  ;  and  among  these  are  several  which  help 
us  on  greatly  from  the  reptilian  to  the  avian  structure.  The  litho- 
graphic slate  is  a  member  of  the  upper  oolitic  formation,  and  it  is 
w^orked,  as  its  name  implies,  for  the  purpose  of  producing  stones  for 
the  process  of  lithography.  But  the  same  properties  which  make  the 
slate  in  its  present  condition  take  so  readily  the  impress  of  a  letter  or 
a  sketch  made  it  in  its  earlier  condition  take  the  impress  of  the  vari- 
ous organisms  imbedded  as  they  fell  in  its  soft  mud.  Even  the  forms 
and  petals  of  early  flowers  w^ashed  down  by  floods  into  the  half -formed 
mud-bank''  have  been  thus  preserved  for  us  with  wonderful  minute- 
voL.  XXIV. — 39 


6io  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

ness.  Most  interesting  of  all  for  our  present  purpose,  however,  are  tlie 
bones  of  contemporary  reptiles  and  birds  which  this  Nature-printing 
rock  incloses  for  the  behoof  of  modern  naturalists.  One  such  reptile, 
known  as  compsognathus,  may  be  regarded  as  filling  among  its  own 
class  the  place  filled  among  existing  mammals  by  the  kangaroo.  It 
was  a  rather  swan-like,  erect  saurian,  standing  gracefully  on  its  hind- 
paws,  with  its  fore-legs  free,  and  probably  dragging  its  round  tail  be- 
hind it  on  the  ground  as  a  support  to  steady  its  gait.  The  neck  was 
long  and  arched,  and  the  head  small  and  bird-like  in  shape  ;  but  the 
jaws  are  armed  with  sharp  and  powerful  teeth,  as  in  the  pterodactyls. 
Altogether,  compsognathus  must  have  looked  in  outward  appearance 
not  at  all  unlike  such  birds  as  the  auks  and  penguins,  though  its  real 
structural  affinities  lie  rather  with  the  emus  and  cassowaries.  The 
apteryx  or  kiwi  of  New  Zealand,  which  is  a  bird  that  does  not  fly,  be- 
cause it  has  no  wings  worth  mentioning  to  fly  with,  approaches  even 
nearer  in  the  combination  of  both  points  to  this  very  bird-like  oolitic 
reptile. 

Even  compsognathus  himself,  however,  though  very  closely  allied 
to  the  true  birds,  can  not  be  held  to  stand  as  an  actual  point  in  the 
progressive  pedigree,  because  in  the  very  same  Solenhofen  slates  we 
find  a  real  feathered  bird  in  person.  Accordingly,  as  the  two  were 
thus  contemporaries,  the  one  could  not  possibly  be  the  direct  ancestor 
of  the  other.  Nevertheless,  it  is  certainly  from  some  form  very  closely 
resembling  compsognathus  that  the  true  birds  are  descended.  We 
have  only  to  suppose  such  a  reptile  to  acquire  forestine  habits,  and  to 
begin  jumping  freely  from  tree  to  tree,  in  order  to  set  up  the  series 
of  changes  by  which  a  true  bird  might  be  produced.  But  the  first 
historical  bird  of  which  we  know  anything,  the  archaeopteryx  of  the 
Solenhofen  slate,  still  remains  in  many  points  essentially  a  reptile.  It 
is  only  bird-like  in  two  main  particulars  ;  its  possession  of  rudiment- 
ary wings  and  its  possession  of  feathers.  From  the  popular  point  of 
view,  these  two  particulars  are  decisive  in  favor  of  its  being  consid- 
ered a  bird  ;  but  its  anatomical  structure  is  sufficient  to  make  it  at 
least  half  a  reptile  ;  and  eminent  authorities  have  differed  (with  their 
usual  acrimony)  as  to  whether  it  ought  properly  to  be  called  a  bird- 
like saurian  or  a  lizard-like  bird.  There  is  nothing  like  a  mere  ques- 
tion of  words  such  as  this  to  set  scientific  men  or  theologians  roundly 
by  the  ears  for  half  a  century  together. 

Archaeopteryx,  then,  is  just  compsognathus  provided  with  rude 
wings  and  feathers,  but  in  most  other  respects  a  good  lizard.  Unlike 
all  modern  birds,  it  has  a  long  tail  composed  of  twenty  separate  verte- 
brsB  ;  and  opposite  each  vertebra  stand  two  stout  quill-feathers,  so 
that  instead  of  forming  a  fan,  as  in  our  own  pigeons  and  turkeys,  they 
foi-m  a  long  pinnate  series  like  the  leaflets  of  yonder  palm-branch. 
These  feathers,  like  all  others,  show  traces  of  their  origin  from  the 
scales  of  lizards.     Moreover,  in  the  jaw  are  planted  some  small  conical 


THE  ANCESTRY   OF  BIRDS,  611 

teeth,  the  like  of  which  of  course  exist  in  no  living  bird.  The  skele- 
ton is  for  the  most  part  reptilian  ;  and,  though  the  legs  are  bird-like, 
they  are  not  much  more  so  than  those  of  compsognathus,  an  unmixed 
reptile.  Even  the  wings  are  more  like  the  fore-legs,  and  could  only 
be  used  for  flight  by  the  aid  of  a  side  membrane.  Accordingly,  we 
may  say  that  we  have  lithographed  for  us  in  archseopteryx  a  specimen 
of  the  intermediate  state,  when  reptiles  were  just  in  the  very  act  of 
passing  into  birds.  The  scales  and  protuberances  on  the  body  had 
already  developed  into  feathers  ;  the  fore-legs  had  already  developed 
into  rude  and  imperfect  wings,  and  the  feet  had  become  decidedly 
bird-like  ;  but  as  yet  there  was  only  a  very  small  breast-bone,  the  tail 
remained  in  internal  structure  like  that  of  a  lizard,  the  jaws  still  con- 
tained pointed  teeth,  and  the  wing  ended  in  a  three-toed  hand,  while 
flight  was  probably  as  rudimentary  as  in  the  flying-lemur  and  the  fly- 
ing-squirrel. Nowhere  in  the  organic  series  has  geology  supplied  us 
with  a  better  missing  link  than  this  uncouth  and  half -formed  creature. 
Nature's  first  tentative  rough  draft  of  the  beautiful  and  exquisitely 
adapted  modern  birds. 

Such  an  animal,  once  introduced,  was  sure  to  undergo  further  modi- 
fication, to  fit  it  more  perfectly  for  its  new  sphere  of  action.  In  the 
first  place,  the  tail  was  sure  to  grow  shorter  and  shorter,  by  stress  of 
natural  selection,  because  a  more  fan-like  organ  would  act  better  as  a 
rudder  to  steer  the  flight  than  the  long  lizard-like  tail  of  archgeopteryx. 
In  the  second  place,  the  general  bony  structure  was  sure  to  grow  bet- 
ter adapted  for  flight,  by  the  development  of  some  such  feature  as  the 
keeled  breast-bone,  and  the  general  modification  of  the  other  parts 
(especially  the  wing)  into  better  correspondence  with  their  new  func- 
tion. At  the  same  time,  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  all  intermediate 
birds  would  lose  their  reptilian  features  equally  and  symmetrically. 
Some  for  a  time  might  retain  one  lizard-like  peculiarity,  say  the  teeth, 
and  some  might  retain  another,  say  sundry  anatomical  points  in  the 
structure  of  the  skeleton.  It  was  long  indeed  before  the  whole  tribe 
of  birds  acquired  the  entire  set  of  traits  which  we  now  regard  as  char- 
acteristic of  their  class.  During  the  intervening  period  they  kept 
varying  in  all  directions,  tentatively,  if  one  may  say  so,  and  thus  the 
early  forms  of  birds  differ  far  more  among  themselves  than  do  any 
modern  members  of  the  feathered  kingdom.  In  other  words,  when 
the  full  bird  type  was  finally  evolved,  it  proved  so  much  better  adapted 
to  its  airy  mode  of  life  than  any  other  and  earlier  creature  that  it  lived 
down  not  only  the  rude  reptilian  pterodactyls  but  also  the  simpler 
primeval  forms  of  birds  themselves :  exactly  as  civilized  Euroj^ean 
man  is  now  living  down  not  only  the  elephants  and  buffaloes  but  the 
red  Indian  and  the  Australian  black  fellow  as  well. 

Some  of  the  varying  primeval  forms  have  been  preserved  for  us  as 
fossils  in  the  chalk  deposits  of  the  Western  States,  which  are  of  course 
later  in  date  than  the  oolitic  slates  of  Solenhofen,  where  we  find  the 


6i2  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

compsognathus  and  his  cousin  the  archseopteryx.  One  of  these  first 
sketches,  the  ichthyornis,  has  a  row  of  teeth  in  each  jaw,  and  displays 
another  strikingly  early  reptilian  or  fish-like  peculiarity  in  the  joints 
of  its  backbone,  which  are  cup-shaped  or  hollow  on  either  side,  exactly 
like  those  of  a  cod.  This  strange  bird  must  have  resembled  an  emu  in 
many  respects,  and  it  might  easily  have  devoured  the  large  ganoid  fish 
of  this  period  with  its  formidable  jaws.  Still  more  reptilian  in  some 
particulars  is  the  hesperornis,  also  found  in  the  Western  American 
chalk.  Hesperornis  was  a  huge  swimming  ostrich,  and  it  had  pointed 
teeth  like  a  crocodile's,  set  in  a  groove  running  down  the  jawbone. 
They  were  supported  on  stout  fangs,  in  the  same  way  as  the  teeth  of  its 
reptilian  allies,  the  mosasaurians.  Like  the  ostrich,  hesperornis  had  a 
broad  breast-bone,  but  this  breast-bone  was  destitute  of  a  keel,  as  is 
still  the  case  in  all  the  ostrich  family.  The  wings  were  also  very  im- 
perfect, like  those  of  the  cassowaries.  In  its  tail,  hesperornis  resem- 
bled its  predecessor,  archseopteryx,  so  far  as  regards  the  lizard-like 
separateness  of  the  vertebrae,  except  at  the  extreme  end,  where  they 
were  slightly  massed  together  into  the  first  resemblance  of  a  plowshare- 
bone,  such  as  the  one  I  hold  in  my  hand.  Thus  these  two  interme- 
diate birds  of  the  chalk  period,  though  slightly  more  bird-like  than 
their  cousins  of  the  oolitic  age,  still  retained,  each  in  its  own  way, 
many  unmistakable  relics  of  their  descent  from  reptilian  or  almost 
amphibian  ancestors.  As  usual,  the  further  back  we  go,  the  more  do 
we  find  all  the  lines  converging  toward  a  common  center. 

The  primitive  teeth  died  slowly  and  gradually  out  as  time  went  on. 
In  the  still  later  eocene  deposits  of  the  London  clay  in  the  Isle  of 
Sheppey,  we  find  the  remains  of  a  true  bird,  known  as  odontopteryx, 
in  which  the  teeth  have  entirely  coalesced  with  the  beak,  and  have 
assumed  the  form  of  bony  projections.  Strict  biologists  will  tell  us 
that  these  projections  are  not  teeth  at  all,  because  true  teeth  are  not 
bony  in  structure,  and  are  developed  from  the  skin  of  the  gums.  But 
such  hair-splitting  distinctions  are  of  little  value  from  the  evolutionary 
point  of  view  ;  the  really  important  fact  to  observe  is  this,  that  while 
hesperornis  has  teeth  in  a  groove,  reptile-fashion,  ichthyornis  has 
teeth  in  distinct  sockets,  mammal-fashion,  and  odontopteryx  has  them 
reduced  to  bony  projections  from  the  bill,  in  a  fashion  all  its  own,  thus 
leading  the  way  to  modern  birds,  in  which  the  teeth  are  wholly  want- 
ing and  the  bill  alone  remains.  Indeed,  among  our  existing  kinds 
there  are  some  which  still  keep  up  some  dim  memory  of  the  odonto- 
pteryx stage  ;  for  the  merganser,  a  swimming  fish-eating  bird,  has  bony 
ridges  on  its  bill,  which  help  it  to  grasp  its  prey  ;  and  the  South 
American  leaf -cutter  has  a  double  set  of  bony  bosses  on  its  beak  and 
palate. 

The  most  apparently  distinctive  feature  of  birds  lies  in  the  fact 
that  they  fly.  It  is  this  that  gives  them  their  feathers,  their  wings, 
and  their  peculiar  bony  structure.     And  yet,  truism  as  such  a  state- 


THE  ANCESTRY   OF  BIRDS.  613 

ment  sounds,  there  are  a  great  many  birds  that  do  not  fly  :  and  it  is 
among  these  terrestrial  or  swimming  kinds  that  we  must  look  for  the 
nearest  modern  approaches  to  the  primitive  bird  type.  From  the  very 
beginning,  birds  had  to  endure  the  fierce  competition  of  the  mammals, 
which  had  been  developed  at  a  slightly  earlier  period  ;  and  they  have 
for  the  most  part  taken  almost  entirely  to  the  air,  where  alone  they 
possess  a  distinct  superiority  over  their  mammalian  compeers.  There 
are  certain  spots,  however,  where  mammals  have  been  unable  to  pene- 
trate, as  in  oceanic  islands  ;  and  there  are  certain  other  spots  which 
were  insulated  for  a  long  period  from  the  great  continents,  so  that 
they  possessed  none  of  the  higher  classes  of  mammals,  as  in  the  case 
of  Australia,  South  America,  New  Zealand,  and  South  Africa.  In 
these  districts,  terrestrial  birds  had  a  chance  which  they  had  not  in  the 
great  circumpolar  land  tract,  now  divided  into  two  portions.  North 
America  on  the  west,  and  Asia  and  Europe  on  the  east.  It  is  in 
Australia  and  the  southern  extremities  of  America  and  Africa,  there- 
fore, that  we  must  look  for  the  most  antiquated  forms  of  birds  still 
surviving  in  the  world  at  the  present  day. 

The  decadent  and  now  almost  extinct  order  of  struthious  birds,  to 
which  ostriches  and  cassowaries  belong,  supplies  us  with  the  best  ex- 
amples of  such  antique  forms.  These  birds  are  all  distinguished  from 
every  other  known  species,  except  the  transitional  Solenhofen  creature 
and  a  few  other  old  types,  by  the  fact  that  they  have  no  keel  to  the 
flat  breast-bone — a  peculiarity  which  at  once  marks  them  out  as  not 
adapted  for  flight.  Every  one  whose  anatomical  studies  have  been 
carried  on  as  far  as  the  carving  of  a  chicken  or  a  pheasant  for  dinner 
knows  that  the  two  halves  of  the  breast  are  divided  by  a  sharp  keel 
or  edge  protruding  from  the  breast-bone  ;  but  in  the  ostrich  and  their 
allies  such  a  keel  is  wanting,  and  the  breast-bone  is  rounded  and  blunt. 
At  one  time  these  flat-chested  birds  were  widely  distributed  over  the 
whole  world  ;  for  they  are  found  in  fossil  forms  from  China  to  Peru  ; 
but,  as  the  mammalian  race  increased  and  multiplied  and  replenished 
the  earth,  only  the  best  adapted  keeled  birds  were  able  to  hold  their 
own  against  these  four-legged  competitors  in  the  great  continents. 
Thus  the  gigantic  ostriches  of  the  Isle  of  Sheppey  and  the  great  divers 
of  the  Western  States  died  slowly  out,  leaving  all  their  modern  kin- 
dred to  inhabit  the  less  progressive  southern  hemisphere  alone.  Even 
there,  the  monstrous  sepyornis,  a  huge,  stalking,  wingless  bird,  disap- 
peared from  Madagascar  in  the  tertiary  age,  while  the  great  moa  of 
New  Zealand,  after  living  down  to  almost  historical  times,  fell  a  victim 
at  last  to  that  very  aggressive  and  hungry  mammal,  the  Maori  himself. 
This  almost  reduces  the  existing  struthious  types  to  three  small  and 
scattered  colonies,  in  Australasia,  South  Africa,  and  South  America 
respectively,  though  there  are  still  probably  a  few  ostriches  left  in 
some  remote  parts  of  the  Asiatic  Continent. 

The  Australian  ostrich  kind  are  in  many  respects  the  most  archaic 


6i4  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

and  peculiar  of  all.  Strangest  among  them  is  the  kiwi  or  apteryx  of 
New  Zealand,  that  almost  wholly  wingless  bird  who  may  be  seen  any 
morning  at  the  Zoo,  gravely  stalking  up  and  down,  like  an  important 
political  prisoner,  within  the  small  inclosure  to  which  tyrannical  cir- 
cumstances have  temporarily  confined  him.  The  kiwi  has  feathers 
which  closely  resemble  hair  in  texture,  and  his  wings  are  so  very 
rudimentary  that  they  can  only  be  properly  observed  at  a  post-mortem 
examination.  His  bones  have  no  air-canals,  and  some  of  his  internal 
anatomy  is  very  abnormal.  The  cassowaries  of  the  Papuan  district 
are  somewhat  more  bird-like  in  type,  but  they  also  preserve  many 
antique  features,  especially  in  the  relative  smallness  of  the  head  and 
brain  compared  with  the  general  size  of  the  whole  body.  The  Aus- 
tralian emus  approach  more  closely  to  the  true  ostriches,  and  their 
feathers  are  far  more  feathery  than  those  of  the  cassowary.  In  both 
these  classes,  however,  the  small  and  functionless  wings  are  destitute 
of  plumes,  which  are  only  represented  by  a  few  stiff,  horny  shafts. 
The  true  ostriches,  including  both  the  familiar  African  species  and 
the  South  American  rheas,  have  real  wings  with  real  feathers  in  them, 
though  they  can  only  use  them  to  aid  them  in  running,  and  not  for 
the  purpose  of  flight.  They  are  therefore  the  most  bird-like  of  their 
order,  with  small  wings  and  very  feathery  plumes.  We  may  fairly 
regard  all  these  keelless  and  often  almost  wingless  birds — the  kiwis, 
cassowaries,  emus,  and  ostriches — as  the  last  survivors  of  a  very  an- 
cient group,  immediately  descended  from  ancestors  not  unlike  the 
toothed  hesperornis,  and  never  forced  by  circumstances  to  develop 
into  the  full  avian  type  represented  by  the  swallow^s,  hawks,  and 
herons.  All  of  them  are  strictly  terrestrial  in  their  habits  ;  none  of 
them  can  fly  in  even  the  slightest  degree  ;  and  the  feathers  of  the 
most  developed  among  them  invariably  lack  the  tiny  barbules  or  small 
hooks  which  bind  together  the  cross-barbs  in  the  feathers  of  the  flying 
bird,  so  as  to  form  a  compact  and  resisting  blade.  It  is  this  looseness 
of  the  cross-barbs  which  gives  ostrich-plumes  their  light  and  fluffy 
appearance  ;  while,  pushed  to  an  extreme  in  the  cassowary  and  the 
kiwi,  it  makes  the  plumage  of  those  ugly  birds  approximate  in  charac- 
ter to  the  hair  of  mammals.  Though  from  the  human  and  decorative 
point  of  view  we  may  admire  the  fluflSness  of  ostrich-plumes,  it  is 
obvious  that,  looked  upon  as  a  question  of  relative  development,  such 
loose,  floating  barbs  are  far  less  advanced  in  type  than  the  firm  and 
tightly  interlocked  quill-feathers  of  a  goose  or  a  raven,  with  which 
alone  sustained  flight  is  possible. 

Except  in  such  isolated  countries  where  higher  mammals  do  not, 
or  did  not  till  lately,  exist,  the  power  of  flight,  once  acquired,  was 
sure  to  be  developed  in  a  high  degree.  For  the  possession  of  feathers 
gives  birds  an  advantage  in  this  respect  which  enables  even  the  Utile 
sparrows  to  hold  their  own  in  the  midst  of  our  crowded  cities.  Hence 
all  other  modem  birds,  except  these  lingering,  ostrich-like  creatures. 


THE  ANCESTRY   OF  BIRDS,  615 

have  keeled  breast-bones,  which  imply  their  descent  from  forms  adapted 
to  true  flight.  They  are  linked  to  the  ostriches,  however,  and  there- 
fore to  the  still  earlier  toothed  ancestral  types,  by  the  South  American 
tinamous,  which  are  intermediate  in  various  anatomical  points  (too 
intricate  for  a  lazy  man  to  go  into  here  and  now),  between  the  two 
classes.  Put  briefly,  one  may  say  that  these  partridge-like  Paraguayan 
birds  are  ostriches  in  the  bones  of  their  head,  but  game-birds  in  those 
of  the  breast  and  body.  This  line  of  descent  seems  to  lead  us  up  di- 
rectly toward  the  cocks  and  hens,  the  pheasants,  and  the  other  scrapers. 
There  are  more  marks  of  a  primitive  organization,  however,  among 
the  penguins,  which  are  almost  wingless  swimming  birds,  belonging 
nearly  to  the  same  class  as  the  ducks  and  geese  ;  and  we  have  reason 
otherwise  to  consider  the  penguins  a  very  early  form,  since  fowls  re- 
sembling them  in  many  particulars  have  been  unearthed  in  the  upper 
greensand.  Here  the  wings  are  reduced  to  small  rudiments,  covered 
with  bristly,  scale-like  feathers,  and  so  rigid  that  they  can  be  only 
moved  in  the  mass  like  fins  by  a  single  joint  at  the  base.  They  are 
used,  in  fact,  exactly  in  the  same  way  as  the  flappers  in  seals,  to  assist 
the  bird  in  diving.  The  habitual  erect  attitude  of  the  penguins 
strongly  recalls  that  of  their  reptilian  ally,  compsognathus.  From 
such  an  incomplete  form  as  this,  the  gap  is  not  great  to  the  equally 
erect  auks,  the  guillemots,  the  grebes,  and  other  web-footed  divers, 
which  have  short,  pointed  wings  with  true  quills,  but  without  any 
extended  power  of  flight.  Some  species,  indeed,  can  not  fly  at  all, 
though  the  puffins  and  many  other  kinds  can  steer  their  way  through 
the  air  with  comparative  ease.  Thence  to  the  cormorants,  gulls,  and 
ducks  the  transitions  are  slight  and  easy.  We  are  thus  led  insensibly 
from  almost  wingless  erect  birds,  like  the  penguins,  through  winged, 
but  mainly  swimming  forms  like  the  auks  and  divers,  to  creatures 
with  such  marvelous  powers  of  flight  as  the  frigate-birds,  the  petrels, 
and  the  albatrosses,  which  pass  almost  their  whole  life  upon  the  wing. 
It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that  in  this  line  of  descent  the  com- 
paratively wingless  forms  must  be  regarded  as  somewhat  degenerate 
representatives  of  flying  ancestors  ;  for  the  presence  of  a  keeled  breast- 
bone almost  conclusively  proves  hereditary  connection  with  fully- 
winged  progenitors. 

By  far  the  greater  number  of  modern  birds  belong  to  the  still 
more  strictly  aerial  orders  of  the  perchers,  the  peckers,  and  the  birds 
of  prey.  In  almost  all  these  cases,  the  power  of  flight  is  highly  de- 
veloped, and  the  bird  type  reaches  its  highest  ideal  point  of  typical 
excellence.  Among  the  perchers,  this  perfection  of  form  is  best  seen 
in  the  swallows,  whose  ceaseless  and  graceful  curved  evolutions  every- 
body has  seen  with  his  own  eyes  ;  while  among  tropical  varieties  of 
the  same  type  the  birds-of-paradise,  the  sun-birds,  and  the  orioles  are 
the  most  conspicuous.  Among  the  peckers,  our  own  swifts  closely 
simulate  the  swallow  type,  while  their  American  relatives,  the  hum- 


6i6  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

ming  birds,  in  spite  of  their  small  size,  possess  a  power  of  rapid  flitting 
and  of  lightly  poising  themselves  in  front  of  flowers  which  makes 
them  in  some  ways  the  very  fullest  existing  embodiment  of  the  avian 
ideal.  To  the  same  order  belong  also  those  most  intelligent  of  all 
birds,  the  parrots,  whose  large  heads  and  crafty  eyes  mark  them  at 
once  as  the  opposite  pole  from  the  small-browed,  dull-eyed,  stupid 
cassowaries.  With  them  must  be  ranked  the  toucans,  the  barbets, 
the  king-fishers,  the  trogons,  and  whole  hosts  of  other  beautiful  south- 
ern creatures,  among  which  the  feathers  have  been  variously  modified 
into  the  most  exquisite  ornamental  devices.  As  for  the  birds  of  prey, 
the  eagles,  vultures,  falcons,  hawks,  owls,  and  ospreys  must  suffice  by 
way  of  example. 

Even  among  these  central  groups  of  birds,  which  have  varied  most 
and  developed  farthest  from  the  primitive  reptilian  character,  there 
are  many  kinds  which  retain  here  and  there  some  small  and  isolated 
peculiarities  of  the  ancestral  forms.  For  example,  among  the  duck- 
like birds,  as  we  have  already  seen,  a  single  group,  that  of  the  mer- 
gansers, still  keeps  up  some  faint  memory  of  the  original  sharp  teeth 
in  the  shape  of  a  few  horny  projections  along  the  edge  of  the  beak. 
The  tooth-billed  pigeon  of  Samoa,  a  close  relation  of  that  early  and 
extinct  form  the  dodo,  has  also  some  rudiments  of  horny  teeth  ;  and 
the  South  American  leaf -cutters,  a  primitive  set  of  songless  perchers, 
possess  somewhat  similar  relics  of  the  lost  fangs.  So,  too,  our  earliest 
known  bird,  the  archaeopteryx,  had  three  free  claws  on  its  fore-limb 
or  undeveloped  wing  ;  and  traces  of  such  claws  turn  up  in  sundry  un- 
connected birds  even  now,  no  doubt  by  reversion  to  the  almost  for- 
gotten ancestral  type.  In  all  modern  birds,  one  of  the  three  fingers 
which  make  up  the  pinion  still  remains  free  ;  and  in  some  species  this 
finger  supports  an  evident  claw,  sometimes  need  as  a  spur  for  the  pur- 
pose of  fighting.  In  many  thrushes  a  rudiment  of  this  claw  may  be 
perceived  in  the  shape  of  a  small  tubercle  or  knob  at  the  end  of  the 
wing,  thus  pointing  back  directly  to  some  remote  four-footed  and 
claw-bearing  reptilian  ancestor.  Several  plovers  have  spurs,  and  so 
has  the  spur-winged  goose  ;  while  the  horned  screamer  has  two  on 
each  wing,  which  he  uses  with  great  eifect  in  battling  with  his  rivals. 
The  Australian  brush-turkeys  have  also  the  rudiment  or  last  relic  of  a 
primitive  pinion-claw. 

There  is  another  way  in  which  modern  birds  still  partially  recall 
the  peculiarities  of  their  reptilian  ancestors,  and  that  is  in  the  course 
of  their  individual  development  within  the  Qg^.  No  adult  existing 
bird  has  all  the  bones  of  the  tail  distinct  and  separate,  like  those 
of  the  archaeopteryx  ;  the  last  joints  are  all  firmly  welded  together 
into  a  solid  expanded  piece,  known  from  its  queer  shape  as  a  plow- 
share-bone, such  as  the  one  which  I  am  holding  in  my  hand  as  the 
text  for  this  discourse.  The  use  of  the  plowshare-bone  is  to  sup- 
port the  fan-like  quill-feathers  of  the  tail,  and  also  to  shelter  the  oil- 


THE  ANCESTRY   OF  BIRDS.  617 

glands  with  whose  contents  the  birds  preen  and  dress  their  shining 
plumage,  to  secure  them  against  the  evil  effects  of  damp  or  rain.  But, 
while  the  young  chick  is  in  the  egg,  all  its  tail-bones  still  remain  sepa- 
rate, as  in  the  ancestral,  lizard-like  bird  and  the  still  earlier  ancestral 
lizard  ;  it  is  only  as  the  development  of  the  embryo  progresses  that 
they  become  firmly  united,  as  in  modern  forms.  In  other  words,  every 
young  bird  begins  forming  its  tail  as  if  it  meant  to  be  an  archseopteryx, 
and  only  afterward  so  far  changes  its  mind  as  to  become  a  crow  or  a 
sparrow.  Similarly,  no  adult  existing  bird  has  true  teeth  ;  but  the 
young  of  certain  parrots  show  in  the  egg  a  set  of  peculiar  little  swell- 
ings inside  the  jaw,  known  as  dental  papillae,  and  commonly  found  as 
the  first  stage  of  teeth  in  other  animals.  Moreover,  these  swellings 
are  actually  covered  by  a  thin  coat  of  dentine,  the  material  of  which 
true  teeth  are  made.  So  here  again  the  young  parrot  begins  its  devel- 
ment  as  though  it  meant  to  start  a  set  of  conical  fangs  in  its  jaw, 
like  those  of  the  archseopteryx,  but  afterward  changes  its  mind  and 
contents  itself  with  a  bill  instead.  Such  symptoms  as  these  point 
back  surely  though  remotely  to  a  far-distant  reptilian  ancestry. 

It  is  worth  while  noting,  too,  that  the  links  which  bind  the  birds 
to  the  reptiles  bind  them  also  in  part  to  the  lower  mammals.  For  the 
lowest  existing  mammal  is  that  curious  Australian  creature  known  to 
the  rough-and-ready  classification  of  the  colonists  as  the  water-mole, 
and  rejoicing  in  the  various  scientific  aliases  of  the  ornithorhynchus 
and  the  duck-billed  platypus.  Unsophisticated  English  people  know 
the  animal  best,  however,  as  "  the  beast  with  a  bill."  Now,  there  are 
many  close  resemblances  between  this  strange  Australian  burrower, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  such  antiquated  forms  of  birds  as  the  New 
Zealand  kiwi,  on  the  other.  In  many  particulars,  too,  the  water-mole 
recalls  the  structure  of  reptiles,  and  especially  of  the  ichthyosaurus. 
In  short,  it  is  at  once  the  most  bird-like  and  the  most  reptile-like  of 
mammals.  Hence  we  may  fairly  conclude  that  birds  and  mammals 
are  both  descended  by  divergent  lines  from  a  single  common  reptilian 
ancestry.  For,  on  the  one  hand,  the  kiwi,  an  early  type  of  nocturnal 
bird,  preserved  for  us  in  isolated  New  Zealand,  has  some  marked  rep- 
tilian and  mammalian  afiinities,  not  only  in  the  external  character  of 
its  hair-like  feathers,  but  also  in  the  more  important  structural  points 
of  its  diaphragm,  its  movable  vertebrae,  and  its  keelless  breast-bone, 
which  are  questions  rather  for  the  professed  anatomist  than  for  mere 
idle  loungers  basking  lazily  in  the  sun  on  a  Proven9al  hill-side.  And, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  ornithorhynchus,  an  early  type  of  burrowing 
aquatic  mammal,  preserved  for  us  in  isolated  Australia,  has  marked 
reptilian  affinities  in  its  bony  structure,  and  in  the  teeth  implanted  on 
its  tongue  ;  while  it  has  also  marked  resemblances  to  the  ducks  and 
other  swimming  birds  in  the  external  features  of  its  horny  bill  and 
webbed  feet,  besides  being  still  more  closely  related  to  them  in  many 
of  its  less  obvious  anatomical  peculiarities. 


6i8  TEE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Birds,  then,  may  be  roughly  described  as  reptiles  with  feathers. 
Professor  Huxley  was  the  first  to  see  the  real  closeness  of  the  connec- 
tion between  the  two  groups,  and  to  unite  them  under  a  common  name 
as  Sauropsida.  Strictly  speaking,  the  only  constant  difference  between 
them,  the  only  one  distinctive  character  of  birds  as  a  class,  is  the 
possession  of  feathers  ;  and,  if,  like  uncompromising  Karl  Vogt,  we 
insist  upon  calling  archseopteryx  a  reptile,  because  of  its  anatomical 
peculiarities,  even  this  solitary  distinction  must  vanish  utterly,  leaving 
us  no  point  of  difference  at  all  between  the  two  classes.  It  must  be 
remembered,  of  course,  that  all  the  other  characters  which  we  always 
have  in  our  mind  as  part  of  the  abstract  idea  of  a  bird  are  either  not 
constant  or  not  peculiar  to  birds  alone.  For  instance,  we  usually 
think  of  a  bird  as  a  flying  animal ;  but  then,  on  the  one  hand,  many 
birds,  such  as  the  ostriches,  kiwis,  penguins,  and  dodos,  do  not  or  did 
not  fly  at  all ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  many  other  creatures,  such  as 
the  bats,  flying-squirrels,  flying-lemurs,  pterodactyls,  dragon-lizards, 
and  butterflies,  do  or  did  once  fly  just  as  much  as  the  birds.  So  with 
their  other  peculiarities  :  their  habit  of  laying  eggs  descends  to  them 
from  fish  and  reptiles  ;  their  nest-building  propensities,  which  are  want- 
ing in  some  birds,  are  found  in  the  Australian  water-mole,  in  field- 
mice,  and  even  in  stickleback  ;  and  their  horny  bill,  which  is  almost 
confined  to  them,  nevertheless  occurs  again  in  the  ornithorhynchus 
and  in  many  turtles.  In  short,  every  other  apparently  distinctive  point 
about  birds  except  the  possession  of  feathers  either  breaks  down  on 
examination  or  else  descends  to  them  directly  from  early  unbird-like 
ancestors.  And  the  first  feathered  creature  of  which  we  know  any- 
thing, archsBopteryx,  was  at  least  as  much  of  a  reptile  as  of  a  bird. — 
Longman'' s  Magazine, 


MEXICO  AND  ITS  ANTIQUITIES.* 

THE  Mexican  Republic  extends  from  the  fifteenth  to  the  thirtieth 
degree  of  north  latitude,  and  embraces  an  area  of  about  750,000 
square  miles.  It  is  traversed  by  the  continuation  of  the  Cordillera  of 
South  America,  here  called  the  Sierra  Madre,  which  trends  north- 
westerly from  the  Isthmus  of  Tehuantepec,  and  varies  in  height  from 
a  moderate  elevation  in  the  southern  States  of  Chiapas  and  Oaxaca  to 
a  mean  height  in  the  nineteenth  degree  of  latitude  of  9,000  feet,  with 
the  peaks  of  Orizaba  and  Popocatepetl — "the  culminating  point  of 
North  America  " — rising  to  the  elevations  of  17,200  and  17,720  feet 
respectively.  On  the  parallel  of  21°,  the  Cordillera  becomes  very  wide 
and  divides  itself  into  three  ranges  :  one  running  eastwardly  to  Saltillo 

*  Appletons'  Guide  to  Mexico.     By  Alfred  R.  Conkling,  LL.  B.,  Ph.  B.     With  Rail- 
way Map  and  Illustrations.     New  York :  D.  Applcton  &  Co.    Pp.  378. 


MEXICO  AND  ITS  ANTIQUITIES. 


619 


and  Monterey  ;  one  traversing  the  States  of  Jalisco  and  Sinaloa,  and 
subsiding  in  Northern  Sonora  ;  and  a  central  ridge  extending  through 
the  States  of  Durango  and  Chihuahua,  and  forming  the  water-shed  of 
the  northern  table-land.  This  range  decreases  in  elevation  going  north- 
ward. Four  peaks — Popocatepetl,  Iztaccihuatl,  Orizaba,  and  the  Ne- 
vada de  Toluca — rise  above  15,000  feet,  and  three  others — the  Cofre 
de  Perote,  Ajusco,  and  the  volcano  of  Colima — above  11,000  feet. 


Fig.  1.— Indian  Hut  in  the  Tierba  Caliente. 

The  country  is  divided  into  three  zones  :  the  tierra  caliente,  or  hot 
land,  bordering  the  coast  of  either  sea  for  from  forty  to  seventy  miles 
inland  ;  the  tierra  templada,  or  temperate  land  ;  and  the  tierra  fria,  or 
cold  land.  About  one  half  the  surface  of  the  country  lies  in  the  latter 
zone,  while  the  remainder  of  the  republic  is  almost  equally  divided  be- 
tween the  temperate  and  hot  regions.  The  country  consists  for  the 
most  part  of  a  plateau,  having  an  average  height  of  about  6,000  feet 
above  the  level  of  the  sea,  which  extends  from  the  frontier  of  the 
United  States  to  the  Isthmus  of  Tehuantepec,  and  is  about  350  miles 
wide  in  the  latitude  of  the  capital.  But  few  of  the  rivers  are  navi- 
gable, and  the  longest  of  them,  the  Rio  de  Santiago,  is  only  542  miles 
long.  The  numerous  lakes  on  the  plateau  are  mostly  shallow  lagoons, 
the  mere  remains  of  large  basins  of  water  that  formerly  existed,  and 
without  outlet,  and  therefore  filled  with  salt  water.  After  the  lagoon 
of  Terminos,  on  the  coast  of  the  Gulf  of  Campeachy,  which  is  really 
an  arm  of  the  sea,  the  largest  lakes  are  the  Lake  of  Chapala,  in  the 
State  of  Jalisco,  and  Lakes  Patzcuaro  and  Cuitzco.  The  country  en- 
joys a  variety  of  climates,  of  which  those  of  the  temperate  and  cold 
regions  are  tolerably  uniform.     The  rainy  season  generally  occurs  in 


620  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

the  summer,  but  at  other  times  the  air  of  the  plateau  is  inconveniently 
dry. 

A  large  part  ot  the  country  is  overlaid  by  the  igneous  rocks,  of 
which  trachyte,  feldspar,  porphyry,  and  amygdaloid  basalt,  are  of  most 
frequent  occurrence.  In  the  Sierra  Madre  the  metamorphic  rocks  are 
common.  Limestone  is  extensively  quarried  at  Orizaba,  and  consti- 
tutes the  greater  part  of  the  eastern  branch  of  the  Cordillera  between 
San  Luis  Potosi  and  Monterey.  The  Cordillera,  from  Chihuahua  on 
the  north  to  Oaxaca  on  the  south,  contains  very  extensive  deposits  of 
gold,  silver,  iron,  copper,  and  lead  ;  and  zinc,  mercury,  tin,  platinum, 
and  coal  occur  in  a  few  places.  The  argentiferous  veins  constitute 
the  principal  part  of  the  mineral  wealth  of  the  country.  The  silver 
occurs  generally  in  the  form  of  sulphides,  in  gangues  of  quartz,  fre- 
quently in  the  metamorphic  clay-slate,  but  sometimes  in  porphyry,  as 
at  Real  del  Monte,  or  in  talcose  slate,  as  in  some  mines  at  Guanajuato. 
Among  the  most  remarkable  mineral  veins  of  the  continent,  after  the 
Comstock  lode,  are  the  Veta  Madre  of  Guanajuato  and  the  Veta 
Grande  of  Zacatecas,  which  have  been  worked  for  about  three  hun- 
dred years. 

The  next  most  important  deposits  are  the  immense  beds  of  iron, 
chiefly  in  the  form  of  the  magnetite  and  hematite  ores.  The  well- 
known  Cerro  del  Mercado,  in  the  State  of  Durango,  has  been  estimated 
to  contain  sixty  million  cubic  yards  of  iron-ore,  which  have  a  weight 
of  five  billion  quintals,  and  give,  according  to  an  analysis  by  Mr.  M.  H. 
Borje,  of  Philadelphia,  sixty-six  per  cent  of  pure  metal.  Lead-ores  are 
abundant  ;  copper  is  mined  at  various  places  ;  oxide  of  tin  is  found  in 
veins  and  alluvial  beds  at  Durango.  Mercury  occurs  as  cinnabar  in 
several  States  ;  and  zinc-ores,  with  platinum,  antimony,  cobalt,  and 
nickel,  in  not  large  quantities,  are  found  in  Chihuahua.  The  principal 
coal-beds  are  in  the  States  of  Oaxaca,  Vera  Cruz,  Mexico,  Puebla, 
Nuevo  Leon,  Tamaulipas,  and  Sonora.  The  anthracite-bed  recently 
discovered  at  Barranca,  on  the  Yaqui  River  in  Sonora,  is  probably  the 
largest  and  richest  deposit  of  coal  in  the  republic.  Lignite,  or  brown 
coal,  occurs  in  many  places,  but  is  not  used  to  any  great  extent.  The 
demand  for  coal  is,  so  far,  much  greater  than  the  supply  accessible 
to  the  railroads.  Mining  is  still  conducted  by  working  on  the  old 
Mexican  plan,  and  this  system  has  been  found,  under  existing  circum- 
stances, to  be  more  economical  and  profitable  than  a  system  in  which 
modern  and  improved  methods  are  applied. 

Some  of  the  oldest  mines  in  Mexico,  many  of  which  were  worked 
before  the  Spanish  conquest,  are  at  Pachuca,  in  the  State  of  Hidalgo. 
There  are  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  of  them,  seventy-five  of  which 
are  in  the  Real  del  Monte,  affording  an  ore  composed  mainly  of  black- 
ish silver  sulphides.  The  ore  is  worked  here,  as  at  Guanajuato,  by 
the  patio  process,  which  is  illustrated  in  the  accompanying  view.  It 
is  first  crushed  by  a  revolving  stone  wheel,  iron-tired,  in  a  pit,  at  the 


MEXICO  AND  ITS  ANTIQUITIES, 


621 


center  of  which  is  a  sieve  through  which  the  finer  pieces  are  shoveled 
into  a  vault  below.  These  pieces  are  then  carried  to  the  arrastras, 
flat  stones  of  hard  rock  kept  revolving  in  a  large  tub  half-filled  with 
water,  where  they  are  in  twenty-four  hours  ground  to  a  fine  powder. 


The  pulverized  ore,  called  lama,  is  next  carried  to  the  patio,  a  court- 
yard paved  with  large  flat  stones,  where  it  is  allowed  to  accumulate  to 
a  depth  of  about  two  feet.  The  muddy  mass  is  then  mixed  with  ma- 
gistral, or  blue  vitriol,  salt,  and  quicksilver,  and  the  whole,  now  called 
torta,  is  thoroughly  stirred  together  by  the  trampling  of  mules.  This 
process  is  kept  up  for  seven  hours  daily,  for  from  two  to  four  weeks, 
according  to  the  quality  of  the  ore.  The  torta  is  then  carried  to  the 
lavaderos,  or  large  cisterns,  where  it  is  washed  and  stirred  by  means  of 


622 


TBE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


revolving  sticks.  The  silvery  mass  being  heavy,  settles  at  the  bottom, 
and  in  two  or  three  days  the  muddy  water  is  drawn  off.  The  amal- 
gam, ov  pella,  which  has  been  formed,  is  now  taken  from  the  lavaderos 
to  a  sort  of  oven  or  depression  in  the  ground,  covered  with  a  huge 
metallic  hood  termed  a  capellina,  A  fire  is  built  around  the  capellina, 
and  the  mercury  is  separated  by  distillation  in  about  four  days.  The 
block  of  silver  which  remains  is  transported  to  the  nearest  mint,  and 
worked  into  coin  or  sold. 

The  volcanoes  form  one  of  the  most  interesting  features  of  the 
country.  Only  four  of  them  are  active,  but  no  eruption  has  taken 
place  from  either  of  these  during  the  present  century.  Earthquakes 
are,  however,  common,  and  solfataras,  fumaroles,  and  adjoining  warm 
springs,  indicate  that  these  volcanoes  are  still  in  a  semi-active  state. 
According  to  Humboldt,  they  lie  on  the  same  great  vent  of  the  earth's 
crust,  and  approximately  on  the  nineteenth  parallel  of  latitude.  Ori- 
zaba, which  may  be  reached  from  Esperanza  on  the  railway  from  Vera 
Cruz  to  Mexico,  has  been  quiet  since  1566,  but  was  reported  to  be 
smoking  in  April,  1883.     There  is  no  hazardous  climbing  on  the  mount- 


Fio.  3.— Popocatepetl. 


ain,  but  the  ascent  is  exceedingly  laborious  on  account  of  the  steepness 
of  the  snow-clad  cone.  About  five  hours  are  required  to  reach  the 
summit,  but  very  few  persons  have  thus  far  accomplished  the  task. 
The  excursion  to  Popocatepetl  starts  from  Amecameca,  on  the  Morelos 
Railway,  the  road  leading  at  first  through  fine  wheat-fields  watered  by 
the   melting   snows  of  the  great  volcano.     The  path  soon  rises  and 


MEXICO  AND   ITS  ANTIQUITIES.  623 

enters  a  magnificent  forest,  which  is  succeeded  by  a  growth  of  thick 
grass,  after  which  the  crest-line  of  the  ridge  is  crossed,  and  the  ranch 
of  Tlamacas,  the  starting-point  for  the  summit,  is  reached.  The  lower 
part  of  the  peak  of  the  volcano  has  a  slope  of  about  20°,  and  the  angle 
increases  in  ascending  till  it  reaches  about  45°  just  below  the  sum- 
rait.  The  crater  is  not  visible  until  the  traveler  arrives  at  the  edge. 
It  is  roughly  estimated  to  be  about  five  hundred  yards  in  diameter  and 
one  hundred  and  fifty  yards  deep,  and  contains  several  fumaroles,  with 
a  small  pond  at  its  bottom.  The  temperature  of  the  air  on  the  summit 
at  about  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  was  32°.  The  view  from  the  peak 
commands  an  area  of  about  one  hundred  thousand  square  miles,  and 
reaches  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  distant. 
The  descent  may  be  made,  if  the  snow  is  soft  enough,  by  coasting  on 
a  sled.  The  volcano  of  Jorullo,  in  Michoacan,  is  famous  for  having 
been  the  result  of  a  sudden  eruption  from  a  previously  peaceful  plain, 
on  the  night  of  the  28th — 29th  of  September,  1759,  the  phenomena  of 
which  are  fully  related  in  a  graphic  description  in  Humboldt's  "  Cos- 
mos." It  is  reached  by  a  fifty-five-mile  horseback-ride  from  Patz- 
cuaro-station  on  the  railroad  from  Mexico  to  Manzanillo.  Horses  may 
be  ridden  to  within  half  a  mile  of  the  crater.  The  volcano  is  pear- 
shaped,  with  the  outlet  of  the  crater  on  the  north  side.  The  cone  is 
covered  with  loose  black  ashes,  in  which  a  few  bushes  grow,  and  slopes 
at  about  45°  on  the  north  and  west  sides.  The  crater  is  about  a  mile 
in  circumference.  The  traveler  may  descend  in  it  to  the  bottom, 
about  five  hundred  feet  below  the  summit.  The  walls  slant  rapidly, 
and  are  covered  with  an  enormous  mass  of  talus.  Grass,  a  few  ferns, 
and  some  native  trees  grow  on  its  borders,  and  deer  are  abundant  on 
the  mountain.  Shocks  of  earthquakes  are  often  felt  in  the  environs  of 
Jorullo,  one  of  which,  in  March,  1883,  left  cracks  in  the  ground  at  a 
point  ten  miles  off.  Although  no  eruption  has  taken  place  for  more 
than  a  hundred  years,  the  volcano  is  still  in  a  semi-active  state,  as  is 
shown  by  the  heat  of  the  crater- walls,  the  emission  of  aqueous  gas  and 
vapor,  and  the  frequency  of  earthquakes.  A  very  extensive  view  is 
commanded  from  the  summit. 

Great  interest  is  given  to  Mexico  by  its  ancient  ruins,  relics  of  un- 
known people,  whose  character,  origin,  and  history  are  destined  long 
to  be  fruitful  themes  of  study.  They  consist  of  teocallis,  or  pyra- 
mids, in  different  parts  of  the  country,  and  the  remains  of  elaborate 
buildings  and  of  cities,  chiefly  situated  in  the  States  of  Yucatan,  Chia- 
pas, and  Oaxaca.  The  most  prominently  known  ruins  of  cities  are  those 
of  Uxmal,  in  Northern  Yucatan,  which  are  considered  to  be  the  oldest  ; 
those  of  Palenque,  in  Chiapas,  next  in  age  ;  and  those  of  Mitla,  in 
Oaxaca,  third  in  age.  The  buildings  were  usually  constructed  of 
hewed  stone,  and  have  excited  general  admiration  on  account  of  the 
skill  in  architecture  and  the  elaborate  workmanship  displayed  in  them. 
Near  some  of  them  are  the  remains  of  finely  constructed  artificial 


624  ^^^^  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

lakes,  with  bottoms  of  cemented  stones  ;  and  the  traces  of  a  very- 
ancient  paved  road  have  been  found  in  Yucatan.  Charnay  found  the 
country  in  Yucatan  covered  with  ruins  from  north  to  south  ;  and 
Stephens,  about  1840,  visited  forty-four  ruined  cities  or  places,  in  which 
remains  of  buildings  were  still  found,  most  of  which  were  unknown 
to  white  men,  even  to  those  inhabiting  the  country.  The  remains  of 
Mayapan,  the  ancient  capital  of  the  Mayas,  are  scattered  over  a  broad 
plain,  and  are  characterized  by  a  mound  sixty  feet  high  with  a  base  a 
hundred  feet  square,  the  summit  of  which,  a  stone  platform  fifteen 
feet  square,  was  reached  by  four  stairways  twenty-five  feet  wide. 
Another  building  is  of  stone,  and  circular,  and  stands  on  a  sloping 
foundation  thirty-five  feet  high.  Near  it  are  two  rows  of  capitals, 
without  columns. 

The  ruins  of  Uxmal  are  pronounced  by  Stephens,  who  explored 
them  thoroughly,  worthy  to  stand  side  by  side  with  those  of  Egyptian 
and  Roman  art.  The  most  important  building,  the  Casa  del  Goberna- 
dor,  is  three  hundred  and  twenty  feet  long,  and  was  built  of  hewed 
stone  laid  in  mortar  or  cement,  and  bore  a  cornice  which  was  deco- 
rated all  around  with  "  one  solid  mass  of  rich,  complicated,  and  elabo- 
rately sculptured  ornaments."  It  stands  on  a  foundation  of  three  ter- 
races, altogether  forty-two  feet  high,  the  lowest  of  which  was  five 
hundred  and  seventy-five  feet  long.  The  remains  of  Chichen-Itza 
are  similar  to  those  of  Uxmal.  In  one  building  the  walls  of  the  rooms 
are  covered  with  picture-writing  ;  and  figures  of  serpents  are  a  fre- 
quent ornament.  At  Ake,  thirty-six  columns,  in  three  parallel  rows, 
are  all  that  remain  of  a  once  magnificent  structure. 

At  Palenque,  Captain  del  Rio  found,  in  1787,  ruins  extending 
seven  or  eight  leagues  one  way  and  half  a  league  the  other,  and  visited 
and  described  fourteen  edifices  admirably  built  of  hewed  stone.  The 
largest  known  building  is  two  hundred  and  twenty-eight  feet  long,  one 
hundred  and  eighty  wide,  and  twenty-five  feet  high,  built  entirely  of 
hewed  stone,  laid  with  admirable  precision  in  excellent  mortar,  and  it 
stood  on  a  much  larger  terrraced  pyramidal  foundation.  A  corridor 
nine  feet  high,  and  roofed  by  a  pointed  arch,  went  round  the  building 
on  the  outside  ;  and  this  was  separated  from  another  within  of  equal 
width.  Other  buildings  are  nearly  as  remarkable.  Tablets,  with 
elegantly  carved  inscriptions,  are  plentiful ;  and  of  the  sculptured  hu- 
man figures  Stephens  says  that  "in  justness  of  proportion  and  sym- 
metry they  must  have  approached  the  Greek  models." 

The  four  palaces,  as  Dupaix  calls  them,  at  Mitla,  are  said  by  him 
to  have  been  "  erected  with  lavish  magnificence.  .  .  .  They  combine 
the  solidity  of  the  works  of  Egypt  with  the  elegance  of  those  of 
Greece.  But  what  is  most  remarkable,  interesting,  and  striking  in 
these  monuments,"  he  adds,  "  and  which  alone  would  be  sufficient  to 
give  them  the  first  rank  among  all  known  orders  of  architecture,  is  the 
execution  of  their  mosaic  rilievos,  very  different  from  plain  mosaic, 


MEXICO  AND  ITS  ANTIQUITIES. 


625 


and  consequently  requiring  more  ingenious  combination  and  greater 
art  and  labor.  They  are  inlaid  on  the  surface  of  the  wall,  and  their 
duration  is  owing  to  the  method  of  fixing  the  prepared  stones  into  the 
stone  surface,  which  makes  their  union  with  it  perfect."  M.  Charnay 
says  that  the  beauty  of  these  buildings  can  be  matched  only  by  that 
of  the  monuments  of  Greece  and  Rome  in  their  best  days. 

The  Pyramid  of  Cholula  was  one  of  the  great  edifices  of  the  world. 
It  was  1,423  feet  wide  at  the  base,  177  feet  high,  and  covered  a  super- 
ficial area  of  forty-five  acres.  Civilized  man  is  gradually  destroying 
it,  and  a  cut  has  been  made  in  one  side  of  it  for  a  railroad-track. 
Near  it  are  other  smaller  pyramids. 


Fig.  4.— Aztec  Temple  at  Cholui.a- 


The  teocallis  of  San  Juan  Teotihuacan  are  next  in  age  to  those  of 
Cholula.  The  two  largest  are  dedicated  to  the  Sun  and  the  Moon. 
The  former  is  180  feet  high,  and  682  feet  long  at  the  base.  Its  sum- 
mit— ^now  marked  by  a  platform  about  75  feet  square  and  a  modem 
cylindrical  monument  of  stone — is  said  to  have  been  crowned  with  a 
temple,  in  which  was  a  gigantic  statue  of  the  Sun,  made  of  an  entire 
block  of  stone,  and  wearing  a  breastplate  of  gold  and  silver.  The 
two  principal  pyramids  are  surrounded  by  several  smaller  ones,  few  of 
which  exceed  twenty-five  feet  in  height.  According  to  tradition,  they 
were  dedicated  to  the  Stars,  and  served  as  sepulchres  for  the  illustrious 
men  of  the  nation. 

Toltec  ruins  are  found  at  Tula,  about  fifty  miles  north  of  the 
capital. 

TOL.  XXIV. — 40 


626 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


Fig.  5.— Ptramtds  of  San  Juan  Teotihuacan. 

At  Papantla,  in  the  State  of  Vera  Cruz,  is  a  pyramid  remarkable 
for  its  symmetry,  built  of  immense  stones  of  porphyry,  regularly  cut 
and  finely  polished,  many  of  which  are  covered  with  hieroglyphics, 
with  carvings  of  serpents  and  crocodiles. 


Fig.  6.— Toltkc  Palace  at  Tula. 


The  Museum  of  the  city  of  Mexico  contains  a  sacrificial  stone,  and 
a  number  of  the  idols  of  Aztec  worship.  "VYe  give  cuts  of  two  of 
these  idols — Quetzalcoatl,  the  chief  god  of  the  people,  and  a  feathered 
serpent. 

The  Marquis  de  Nadaillac,  who  has  lately  reviewed  the  whole  sub- 


MEXICO  AND  ITS  ANTIQUITIES, 


627 


ject  of  "  Prehistoric  Art  in  America,"  has  given  a  graphical  descrip- 
tion of  the  Mexican  ruins  as  a  whole.  "  The  massive  constructions  in 
Mexico  and  Peru,"  he  says,  "  the  immense  spread  of  the  bases  and  the 
inclination  of  the  walls,  give  a 
pyramidal  tendency  and  an  ap- 
pearance of  stability  and  dura- 
bility that  force  us  to  think  of 
Egypt.  Palenque,  with  its  pal- 
aces, and  Tiaguanuco,  or  Huanu- 
cho-Yiejo,  in  Peru,  with  their 
monumental  portals  and  their  not 
numerous  openings  in  the  form 
of  the  tauy  for  the  admittance 
of  light,  their  walls  covered  with 
bright-red  paint,  and  their  figures 
always  in  profile,  would  not  be 
out  of  place  on  the  banks  of  the 
Nile.  The  bas-reliefs  of  Chichen- 
Itza  resemble  those  of  Babylon 
and  Nineveh  in  richness  of  orna- 
mentation. The  meanderings  of  the  friezes  of  Mitla,  of  the  Casa  del 
Gobernador,  and  the  Casa  de  Monjas,  at  Uxmal,  are  of  a  kind  with 
those  of  Greek  art.  The  porch  of  Kabah,  an  aqueduct  on  the  Roda- 
dero,  at  Cuzco,  might  have  stood  on  the  Roman  Campagna.  The 
figures  with  which  the  temple  of  Xochicalco  (Mexico)  was  adorned 
were  represented  sitting  with  crossed  legs  in  the  traditional  attitude 


Fia.  7.— QUETZALCOATI,. 


Fig.  8.— Feathered  Serpent. 

of  Buddha  ;  and  recently  a  Protestant  missionary  remarked  upon 
the  resemblances  between  the  edifices  at  Chichen-Itza  and  the  topes 
or  dagohas  he  had  seen  at  Anaradjapora,  the  ancient  capital  of 
Ceylon.  The  pyramids  are  certainly  the  most  salient  feature  in 
this  ancient  architecture.     The  walls  that  still  stand  are  composed  of 


628  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

immense  blocks  of  granite  or  porphyry  of  cyclopean  construction,  or 
of  mason-work  of  stone  or  brick  covered  with  cement.  All  travelers 
have  remarked  the  solidity  and  elegance  of  the  building.  The  fa9ade8 
were  regularly  shaped,  the  joints  well  pointed,  and  the  edges  clean-cut. 
Generally,  they  were  adorned  with  a  projecting  cornice  loaded  with 
rich  ornaments  in  stucco.  The  possibly  excessive  monotony  of  the 
architecture  was  relieved  by  square  towers  several  stories  high.  Such 
towers  may  be  seen  at  Copan,  Palenque,  and  Tikal ;  the  Casa  de  la 
Culebra  at  Uxmal  was  crowned  with  thirteen  turrets.  The  architects 
were  also  careful  in  placing  statues,  pilasters,  caryatides,  and  bas-re- 
liefs on  the  fayades  ;  and  important  mural  paintings  have  been  de- 
scribed at  Chichen-Itza.  They  represent  processions  of  men  and  ani- 
mals, combats,  struggles  between  man  and  the  tiger  or  the  serpent, 
trees,  and  houses.  One  painting,  the  only  one  relating  to  navigation, 
represents  a  boat  somewhat  like  a  Chinese  junk. 

"  The  sculptures  that  adorned  these  buildings,"  the  marquis  con- 
tinues, "present  so  many  differences  in  style  and  execution  that  we  can 
hardly  believe  them  the  work  of  the  same  race,  or  that  they  represent 
the  same  civilization.  In  some  cases  they  depict  strange  idols  in  incor- 
rect forms,  men  wearing  tigers'  heads,  an  alligator  holding  in  his  jaws 
a  figure  with  a  human  head  and  an  animal's  extremities,  or  a  gigantic 
frog  with  his  paws  terminating  in  a  cat's  claws.  Besides  such  mon- 
sters, we  recollect  at  Copan  a  statue  wearing  the  highest  expression  of 
Maya  art,  in  which  we  know  not  whether  to  be  most  astonished  at  the 
oddity  of  the  conception,  the  richness  of  the  ornamentation,  or  the 
fineness  of  the  execution.  At  Palenque  we  may  see  a  statue  with  a 
placid  expression  that  would  not  be  out  of  place  in  the  palace  of  a 
Pharaoh  ;  and  the  sepulchral  stone  of  Chac-Mol,  recently  found  at  Chi- 
chen,  the  bas-reliefs  of  Santa  Lucia,  and  other  works,  are  not  discord- 
ant with  modern  art.  These  striking  contrasts,  while  they  bring  no 
explanation,  add,  in  the  endless  problems  they  raise,  a  new  attraction 
to  American  archaeology." 


THE    EEMEDIES    OF   ISTATUKE. 

By  FELIX  L.  OSWALD,   M.  D. 
CATARRH.— PLEURISY.— CROUP. 

THE  progress  of  the  healing  art,  as  distinguished  from  certain  ster- 
ile branches  of  medical  science,  can  be  best  measured  by  the 
progress  of  our  insight  into  the  causes  of  special  maladies.  For  the 
accidental  discovery  of  a  "  specific  "  means  generally  nothing  but  the 
discovery  of  a  method  for  suppressing  special  symptoms  of  a  disease. 
Quinine  subdues  chills,  but  does  not  prevent  a  relapse  of  febrile  affec- 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE,  629 

tions  ;  brandy  neither  cures  nor  subdues  dyspepsia,  but  merely  inter- 
rupts it  with  a  transient  alcohol-fever.  But,  as  soon  as  we  ascertained 
that  scrofula,  or  the  "  king's-evil,"  was  not  caused  by  a  mysterious 
dispensation  of  Providence,  but  by  bad  food  and  foul  air,  the  cure  of 
the  disease  became  easy  enough  ;  the  king's-evil  disappeared  without 
the  aid  of  the  king. 

That  "colds,"  or  catarrhal  affections,  are  so  very  common — so 
much,  indeed,  as  to  be  considerably  more  frequent  than  all  other  dis- 
eases taken  together — is  mainly  due  to  the  fact  that  the  cause  of  no 
other  disorder  of  the  human  organism  is  so  generally  misunderstood. 
Few  persons  have  recognized  the  origin  of  yellow  fever  ;  about  the 
primary  cause  of  asthma  we  are  yet  all  in  the  dark  ;  but  in  regard  to 
"  colds  "  alone  the  prevailing  misconception  of  the  truth  has  reached 
the  degree  of  mistaking  the  cause  for  a  cure,  and  the  most  effective 
cure  for  the  cause  of  the  disease.  If  we  inquire-after  that  cause,  ninety- 
nine  patients  out  of  a  hundred,  and  at  least  nine  out  of  ten  physi- 
cians, would  answer,  "  Cold  weather,"  "  Raw  March  winds,"  or  "  Cold 
draughts,"  in  other  words,  out-door  air  of  a  low  temperature.  If  we 
inquire  after  the  best  cure,  the  answer  would  be,  "  Warmth  and  pro- 
tection against  cold  draughts  " — i.  e.,  warm,  stagnant,  in-door  air. 
Now,  I  maintain  that  it  can  be  proved,  with  as  absolute  certainty  as 
any  physiological  fact  admits  of  being  proved,  that  warm,  vitiated  in- 
door air  is  the  cause,  and  cold  out-door  air  the  best  cure,  of  catarrhs. 
Many  people  "  catch  cold  "  every  month  in  the  year  and  often  two  or 
three  times  a  month.  Very  few  get  off  with  less  than  three  colds  a 
year  ;  so  that  an  annual  average  of  five  catarrhs  would  probably  be  an 
underestimate.  For  the  United  States  alone  that  would  give  us  a  yearly 
aggregate  of  two  hundred  and  fifty -five  million  "  colds."  That  such 
facilities  for  investigation  have  failed  to  correct  the  errors  of  our  exe- 
getical  theory  is  surely  a  striking  proof  how  exclusively  our  dealings 
with  disease  have  been  limited  to  the  endeavor  of  suppressing  the 
symptoms  instead  of  ascertaining  and  removing  the  cause.  For,  as  a 
test  of  our  unbiased  faculty  of  observation,  the  degree  of  that  failure 
would  lead  to  rather  unpronounceable  conclusions.  What  should  we 
think  of  the  scientific  acumen  of  a  traveler  who,  after  a  careful  ex- 
amination of  the  available  evidence,  should  persist  in  maintaining  that 
mosquitoes  are  engendered  by  frost  and  exterminated  by  sunshine? 
Yet,  if  his  attention  had  been  chiefly  devoted  to  the  comparative 
study  of  mosquito-ointments  and  mosquito-bars,  he  might,  for  the  rest, 
have  been  misled  by  such  circumstances  as  the  fact  that  mosquitoes 
abound  near  the  ice-bound  shores  of  Hudson  Bay,  and  are  rarely 
seen  on  the  sunny  prairies  of  Southern  Texas.  In  all  the  civilized 
countries  of  the  colder  latitudes,  catarrhs  are  frequent  in  winter  and 
early  spring,  and  less  frequent  in  midsummer  :  hence  the  inference 
that  catarrhs  are  caused  by  cold  weather,  and  can  be  cured  by  warm 
air.      Yet   of  the  two   fallacies  the  mosquito  theory  would,  on  the 


630  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

whole,  be  the  less  preposterous  mistake  ;  for  it  is  true  that  long 
droughts,  by  parching  out  the  swamps,  may  sometimes  reduce  the 
mosquito-plague,  but  no  kind  of  warm  weather  will  mitigate  a  catarrh, 
while  the  patient  persists  in  doing  what  thousands  never  cease  to  do 
the  year  round,  namely,  to  expose  their  lungs,  night  after  night,  to  the 
vitiated,  sickening  atmosphere  of  an  unventilated  bedroom.  "  Colds  " 
are,  indeed,  less  frequent  in  midwinter  than  at  the  beginning  of 
spring.  Frost  is  such  a  powerful  disinfectant  that  in  very  cold  nights 
the  lung-poisoning  atmosphere  of  few  houses  can  resist  its  purifying 
influence  ;  in  spite  of  padded  doors,  in  spite  of  "  weather-strips  "  and 
double  windows,  it  reduces  the  in-door  temperature  enough  to  paralyze 
the  floating  disease-germs.  The  penetrative  force  of  a  polar  night- 
frost  exercises  that  function  with  such  resistless  vigor  that  it  defies 
the  preventive  measures  of  human  skill ;  and  all  Arctic  travelers  agree 
that  among  the  natives  of  Iceland,  Greenland,  and  Labrador  pulmo- 
nary diseases  are  actually  unknown.  Protracted  cold  weather  thus 
prevents  epidemic  catarrhs,  but  during  the  first  thaw  *  Kature  suc- 
cumbs to  art :  smoldering  stove-fires  add  their  fumes  to  the  effluvia 
of  the  dormitory,  tight-fitting  doors  and  windows  exclude  the  means 
of  salvation  :  superstition  triumphs  ;  the  lung-poison  operates,  and 
the  next  morning  a  snuffling,  coughing,  and  red-nosed  family  discuss 
the  cause  of  their  affliction.  "  Taken  cold  " — that  much  they  premise 
without  debate.  But  where  and  when?  Last  evening,  probably, 
when  the  warm  south  wind  tempted  them  to  open  the  window  for  a 
moment.  Or  "  when  those  visitors  kept  chatting  on  the  porch,  and  a 
drop  of  water  from  the  thawing  roof  fell  on  my  neck."  Or  else  the 
boys  caught  it  by  playing  in  the  garden  and  not  changing  their  stock- 
ings when  they  came  home.  Resolved,  that  a  person  can  not  be 
too  careful,  as  long  as  there  is  any  snow  on  the  ground.  But  even 
that  explanation  fails  in  spring  ;  and,  when  the  incubatory  influence  of 
the  first  moist  heat  is  brought  to  bear  on  the  lethargized  catarrh- 
germs  of  a  large  city,  a  whole  district-school  is  often  turned  into  a 
snuffling-congress.  The  latter  part  of  March  is  the  season  of  epidemic 
colds. 

The  summer  season,  however,  brings  relief.  In  the  sweltering 
summer  nights  of  our  large  sea-board  towns  the  outcry  of  instinct  gen- 
erally prevails  against  all  arguments  of  superstition  ;  parents  know 

*  The  correlation  of  damp  weather  and  catarrhs  can  be  explained  by  the  fact  that 
moisture  lessens  the  modicum  of  fresh  air  which  would  otherwise  penetrate  a  building  in 
spite  of  closed  windows.  "  All  materials,"  says  a  correspondent  of  the  *'  Revue  dcs 
Deux  Mondes,"  "  become  impermeable  to  the  air  when  they  are  wet.  It  has  been  found 
less  easy  to  drive  moisture  through  bricks  and  mortar  than  to  make  air  pass  through 
them ;  only  a  few  drops  of  the  liquid  can  be  made  to  appear  on  the  opposite  surface. 
Water  is  therefore  not  easy  to  dislodge  from  the  pores  it  has  occupied,  and  is  removed  at 
most  very  slowly  by  evaporation.  But,  when  water  stops  the  pores,  it  prevents  the  air 
from  circulating  through  them — a  mischievous  effect  upon  the  permeability  of  building 
materials."— ( Fiic?e  "  Popular  Science  Monthly  "  for  December,  1S83,  p.  170.) 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE,  631 

that  their  boys  would  desert  and  sleep  in  a  ditch  rather  than  endure 
the  horrors  of  an  air-tight  sweat-box  ;  so  the  windows  are  partially- 
opened.  The  long,  warm  days  also  offer  increased  opportunities  for 
out-door  rambles.  In  midsummer,  therefore,  Nature  rallies  once  more. 
But  not  always.  There  are  people  whose  prejudices  can  not  be 
shaken  by  experience,  and  in  their  households  a  perennial  system  of 
air-poisoning  overcomes  the  redeeming  tendencies  of  out-door  life,  as 
the  subtile  mixtures  of  La  Brinvilliers  overcame  the  iron  constitution 
of  her  last  husband.  Their  children  snuffle  the  year  round  ;  no  cough- 
medicine  avails,  no  flannels  and  wrappers,  even  in  the  dog-days  ;  and 
the  evil  is  ascribed  to  "  dampness,"  when  the  cold-air  theory  becomes 
at  last  too  evidently  preposterous. 

To  an  unprejudiced  observer,  though,  that  theory  is  equally  un- 
tenable in  the  coldest  month  of  the  year.  No  man  can  freeze  himself 
into  a  catarrh.  In  cold  weather  the  hospitals  of  our  Northern  cities 
sometimes  receive  patients  with  both  feet  and  both  hands  frozen,  with 
frost-bitten  ears  and  frost-sore  eyes,  but  without  a  trace  of  a  ca- 
tarrhal affection.  Duck-hunters  may  wade  all  day  in  a  frozen  swamp 
without  affecting  the  functions  of  their  respiratory  organs.  Ice-cut- 
ters not  rarely  come  in  for  an  involuntary  plunge-bath,  and  are  obliged 
to  let  their  clothes  dry  on  their  backs  :  it  may  result  in  a  bowel-com- 
plaint, but  no  catarrh.  Prolonged  exposure  to  a  cold  storm  may  in 
rare  cases  induce  a  true  pleural  fever,  a  very  troublesome  affection,  but 
as  different  from  a  "  cold  "  as  a  headache  is  from  a  toothache — the 
upper  air-passages  remain  unaffected.  Sudden  transition  from  heat  to 
cold  does  not  change  the  result.  In  winter  the  "  pullers  "  of  a  rolling- 
mill  have  often  to  pass  ten  times  an  hour  from  the  immediate  neigh- 
borhood of  a  furnace  to  the  chill  draught  of  the  open  air  ;  their  skin 
becomes  as  rough  as  an  armadillo's,  their  hair  becomes  grizzly  or  lead- 
colored  ;  but  no  catarrh.  On  my  last  visit  to  Mexico,  I  ascended  the 
peak  of  Orizaba  from  the  south  side,  and  reached  the  crater  bathed  in 
perspiration  ;  and,  following  the  guide  across  to  the  northwest  slope, 
we  were  for  ten  minutes  exposed  to  an  ice-storm  that  swept  the  sum- 
mit in  blasts  of  fitful  fury.  Two  of  my  companions,  a  boy  of  sixteen 
and  an  old  army-surgeon,  were  not  used  to  mountain-climbing,  and 
could  hardly  walk  when  we  got  back  to  our  camp  in  the  foot-hills,  but 
our  lungs  were  none  the  worse  for  the  adventure.  Dr.  Franklin,  who, 
like  Bacon  and  Goethe,  had  the  gift  of  anticipative  intuitions,  seems 
to  have  suspected  the  mistake  of  the  cold-air  fallacy.  "  I  shall  not 
attempt  to  explain,"  says  he,  "  why  damp  clothes  occasion  colds,  rather 
than  wet  ones,  because  I  doubt  the  fact  ;  I  believe  that  neither  the 
one  nor  the  other  contributes  to  this  effect,  and  that  the  causes  of  colds 
are  totally  independent  of  wet  and  even  of  cold  "  ("  Miscellaneous 
Works,"  p.  216). 

"  I  have,  upon  the  approach  of  colder  weather,  removed  my  under- 
garments," says  Dr.  Page,  **  and  have  then  attended  to  my  out-door 


632  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

affairs,  minus  the  overcoat  habitually  worn  ;  I  have  slept  in  winter 
in  a  current  blowing  directly  about  my  head  and  shoulders  ;  upon 
going  to  bed,  I  have  sat  in  a  strong  current,  entirely  nude^  for  a 
quarter  of  an  hour,  on  a  very  cold,  damp  night,  in  the  fall  of  the  year. 
These  and  similar  experiments  I  have  made  repeatedly,  and  have  never 
been  able  to  catch  cold.  I  became  cold,  sometimes  quite  cold,  and 
became  warm  again,  that  is  all "  ("  Natural  Cure,"  p.  40). 

There  are  many  ways,  less  often  sought  than  found,  for  "  becoming 
quite  cold,  and  warm  again,"  but  an  experimenter,  trying  to  contract 
a  catarrh  in  that  way,  would  soon  give  it  up  as  a  futile  enterprise  ; 
after  two  or  three  attempts  he  would  find  the  attainment  of  his  pur- 
pose more  hopeless  than  before  ;  he  would  find  that,  instead  of  impair- 
ing, he  had  improved  the  functional  vigor  of  his  breathing-apparatus. 
Cold  is  a  tonic  that  invigorates  the  respiratory  organs  when  all  other 
stimulants  fail,  and,  combined  with  arm-exercise  and  certain  dietetic 
alteratives,  fresh,  cold  air  is  the  best  remedy  for  all  the  disorders  of 
the  lungs  and  upper  air-passages.  As  soon  as  oppression  of  the  chest, 
obstruction  of  the  nasal  ducts,  and  unusual  lassitude  indicate  that  a 
"  cold  has  been  taken  " — in  other  words,  that  an  air-poison  has  fastened 
upon  the  bronchi — its  influence  should  at  once  be  counteracted  by  the 
purest  and  coldest  air  available,  and  the  patient  should  not  stop  to 
weigh  the  costs  of  a  day's  furlough  against  the  danger  of  a  chronic 
catarrh.  In  case  imperative  duties  should  interfere,  the  enemy  must 
be  met  after  dark,  by  devoting  the  first  half  of  the  night  to  an  out- 
door campaign,  and  the  second  half  to  an  encampment  before  a  wide- 
open  window.  If  the  fight  is  to  be  short  and  decisive,  the  resources 
of  the  adversary  must  be  diminished  by  a  strict  fast.  Denutrition, 
or  the  temporary  abstinence  from  food,  is  the  most  effective,  and  at 
the  same  time  the  safest,  method  for  eliminating  the  morbid  elements 
of  the  system  ;  and  there  is  little  doubt  that  the  proximate  cause  of 
a  catarrh  consists  in  the  action  of  some  microscopic  parasite  that  de- 
velops its  germs  while  the  resistive  power  of  the  respiratory  organs 
is  diminished  by  the  influence  of  impure  air.  Cold  air  arrests  that 
development  by  direct  paralysis.  Toward  the  end  of  the  year  a  damp, 
sultry  day — the  catarrh-weather  joar  excellence — is  sometimes  followed 
by  a  sudden  frost,  and  at  such  times  I  have  often  found  that  a  six 
hours'  inhalation  of  pure,  cold  night-air  will  free  the  obstructed  air- 
passages  so  effectually  that  on  the  following  morning  hardly  a  slight 
huskiness  of  the  voice  suggests  the  narrowness  of  the  escape  from  a 
two  weeks'  respiratory  misery.  But,  aided  by  exercise,  out-door  air 
of  any  temperature  will  accomplish  the  same  effect.  In  two  days  a 
resolute  pedestrian  can  walk  away  from  a  summer  catarrh  of  that 
malignant  type  that  is  apt  to  defy  half-open  windows.  But  the  specific 
of  the  movement-cure  is  arm-exercise — dumb-bell  swinging,  grapple- 
swing  practice,  and  wood-chopping.  On  a  cold  morning  (for,  after  all, 
there  are  ten  winter  catarrhs  to  one  in  summer),  a  wood-shed  matinee 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE.  633 

seems  to  reach  the  seat  of  the  disease  by  an  air-line.  As  the  chest 
begins  to  heave  under  the  stimulus  of  the  exercise,  respiration  becomes 
freer  as  it  becomes  deeper  and  fuller,  expectoration  ceases  to  be  pain- 
ful, and  the  mucus  is  at  last  discharged  en  masse,  as  if  the  system  had 
only  waited  for  that  amount  of  encouragement  to  rid  itself  of  the 
incubus.  A  catarrh  can  thus  be  broken  up  in  a  single  day.  For  the 
next  half-week  the  diet  should  be  frugal  and  cooling.  Fruit,  light 
bread,  and  a  little  cold,  sweet  milk,  is  the  best  catarrh-diet.  A  fast- 
day,  though,  is  still  better.  Fasting  effects  in  a  perfectly  safe  way 
what  the  old-school  practitioners  tried  to  accomplish  by  bleeding ;  it 
reduces  the  semi-febrile  condition  which  accompanies  every  severe 
cold.  There  is  no  doubt  that  by  exercise  alone  a  catarrh  can  gradually 
be  "  worked  off."  But  in-doors  it  is  apt  to  be  steep  up-hill  work,  while 
cold  air — even  before  the  season  of  actual  frosts — acts  upon  pulmonary 
disorders  as  it  does  upon  malarial  fevers  :  it  reduces  them  to  a  less 
malignant  type. 

A  combination  of  the  three  specifics — exercise,  abstinence,  and 
fresh  air — will  cure  the  most  obstinate  cold  ;  only,  the  first  signs  of 
improvement  should  not  encourage  the  convalescent  to  brave  the  at- 
mosphere of  a  lung-poison  den.  So-called  chronic  catarrhs  are,  prop- 
erly speaking,  a  succession  of  bronchial  fevers.  The  popular  idea 
that  an  average  "  cold  "  lasts  about  nine  days,  has  some  foundation  in 
truth.  Like  other  fevers,  catarrhs  have  a  self -limited  period  of  de- 
velopment, but  the  recovery  from  the  first  attack  constitutes  no 
guarantee  against  an  immediate  relapse  ;  on  the  contrary,  the  first 
seizure  appears  to  prepare  the  way  for  its  successors.  A  long  sojourn 
in  an  absolutely  pure  atmosphere,  as  in  a  summer  camp  on  the  mount- 
ains, seems  for  a  while  to  make  the  lungs  catarrh-proof,  by  increasing 
the  vigor  of  their  resisting  ability,  and  the  returned  tourist  may  find 
to  his  surprise  that  the  air  of  his  family  den  can  now  be  breathed 
without  the  wonted  consequences.  But  the  addition  of  a  stove  or  a 
double  window  at  last  turns  the  scales  against  Nature,  and  the  first 
malignant  cold  reproduces  the  sensitiveness  of  the  respiratory  organs. 

After  recovery  from  a  chronic  catarrh  the  danger  of  contagion 
should  therefore  be  carefully  avoided.  In  many  of  our  N^orthern  cities 
ill-ventilated  reading-rooms  are  veritable  hot-beds  of  lung-poison,  as 
crowded  court-rooms  in  the  villages,  and  taverns  and  quilting-assem- 
blies  in  the  backwoods.  Meeting-houses,  with  their  large  windows 
and  small,  rarely-used  stoves,  are  less  dangerous  ;  but  stuffy  school- 
rooms are  as  prolific  of  colds  as  swamps  of  mosquitoes,  and  often 
counteract  all  sanitary  precautions  of  the  domestic  arrangements. 
Stuffed  railway-cars,  too,  could  claim  a  premium  as  galloping-con- 
sumption factories  ;  and  after  dark  the  retreat  to  an  over-heated 
*'  Pullman  sleeper  "  would  hardly  increase  the  chances  of  longevity  ; 
the  best  plan  for  long-distance  travelers  would,  on  the  whole,  be  to 
secure  a  rear  seat,  where  open  windows  are  less  apt  to  awaken  the 


634  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

groans  of  air-fearing  fellow-passengers,  and  risk  cinders  and  smoke 
rather  than  the  miasma  of  the  galloping  man-pen. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  "  colds  "  can  be  propagated 
only  by  direct  transmission  or  the  breathing  of  recently  vitiated  air. 
Catarrh-germs,  floating  in  the  atmosphere  of  an  ill- ventilated  bedroom, 
may  preserve  their  vitality  for  weeks  after  the  house  has  been  aban- 
doned ;  and  the  next  renter  of  such  a  place  should  not  move  in  till 
wide-open  windows  and  doors  and  a  thorough  draught  of  several  days 
has  removed  every  trace  of  a  "  musty  "  smell. 

If  a  bronchial  catarrh  is  accompanied  by  a  persistent  cough,  it  in- 
dicates that  the  affection  is  deep-seated,  and  that  it  has  probably  spread 
to  the  upper  lobes  of  the  lungs.  Arm-exercise  and  a  mild,  saccharine 
diet  generally  suffice  to  loosen  the  phlegm  and  thereby  remove  the 
proximate  cause  of  the  evil.  But,  if  those  remedies  fail,  there  is  a 
presumption  that  the  chronic  character  of  the  affection  is  due  to  a 
permanent  external  cause  of  irritation,  which  can  be  removed  ouly  by 
a  change  of  air.  In  such  cases  cough-sirups  merely  palliate  the  evil. 
Medicines,  counter-irritants,  and  fasting  are  in  vain,  if  the  lungs  of 
the  patient  are  constantly  impregnated  with  new  morbific  germs  ;  even 
exercise  can  do  little  more  than  alleviate  the  distress  of  the  symp- 
toms ;  a  radical  cure  is  impossible  as  long  as  every  night  undoes 
the  work  of  the  preceding  day.  In  a  home  of  prejudices  the  patient 
should  at  once  change  his  bedroom  and  take  care  to  profit  by  the 
change. 

A  neglected  catarrh  may  result  in  an  attack  of  pleurisy.  Each 
lung  is  inclosed  in  a  sack-like  serous  membrane,  which  connects  with 
a  similar  membrane  lining  the  inner  surface  of  the  chest.  This  double 
integument,  known  as  the  pleura,  or  the  visceral  and  parietal  layer  of 
the  pleural  membrane,  communicates  both  with  the  lungs  and  with 
the  upper  air-passages,  and  is  more  or  less  affected  by  every  morbid 
condition  of  the  respiratory  organs.  Pleurisy,  or  the  congestion  of 
the  pleural  membrane,  is  generally  an  inflammatory  complication  of  a 
chronic  catarrh.  The  original  affection  may  have  apparently  subsided. 
Counter-irritants,  alcoholic  tonics,  etc.,  have  subdued  the  cough  ;  with 
the  exception  of  an  occasional  uneasiness  about  the  chest,  the  condi- 
tion of  the  patient  seems  greatly  improved  ;  only  an  abnormally  rapid 
pulse  justifies  a  suspicion  that  the  smothered  fire  has  not  been  wholly 
extinguished.  A  change  of  residence  or  plenty  of  out-door  exercise 
may  perhaps  ratify  the  sham-cure.  A  normal  pulse  would  give  assur- 
ance that  the  masked  fever  has  really  subsided.  But  under  less  favor- 
able circumstances  an  oppressive  heat  and  a  strange  feeling  of  un- 
easiness will  some  day  announce  the  approaching  crisis  of  the  latent 
disorder.  Chills  follow  at  shorter  and  shorter  intervals,  and  at  last 
a  pricking  pang  in  the  region  of  the  upper  ribs  reveals  the  seat  of  the 
affection.  Breathing  soon  becomes  so  painful  that  the  patient  finds 
no  rest  in  a  horizontal  position,  but  has  to  sit  up  in  his  bed,  and  may 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE,  635 

feel  sorely  tempted  to  relieve  his  distress  by  invoking  the  aid  of  the 
drug-gods.  For  believers  in  the  remedial  resources  of  Nature,  pleurisy 
is,  indeed,  a  crucial  test  of  faith,  and  Dr.  Isaac  Jennings's  observations 
on  his  experience  during  an  acute  attack  of  the  disease  deserve  to 
be  framed  in  every  hygienic  sanitarium. 

"For  twelve  hours,"  says  he,  "breathing  was  at  best  laborious 
and  painful,  confining  me  to  nearly  an  erect  j^osition  in  bed  ;  but  the 
distress  occasioned  by  efforts  at  coughing  was  indescribable.  The 
confidence  of  my  wife  in  the  '  let-alone '  treatment,  which  had  been 
strengthening  for  years,  and  had  carried  her  unflinchingly  through  a 
number  of  serious  indispositions,  on  this  occasion  faltered  ;  and  she 
begged  me  to  let  her  send  for  a  physician  to  bleed  me  or  do  something 
to  give  at  least  temporary  relief  ;  *  for,'  said  she,  *  you  can  not  live 
so.'  In  my  own  mind  there  was  not  the  least  vestige  of  misgiving  re- 
specting the  course  pursued. 

"  In  view  of  the  constitutional  defect  in  the  pulmonary  department 
of  my  system,  and  the  nature  and  severity  of  the  symptoms,  it  ap- 
peared to  me  very  doubtful  whether  the  powers  of  life  would  hold 
out  and  be  able  to  accomplish  what  they  had  undertaken  and  put  me 
again  upon  my  feet.  But  I  felt  perfectly  satisfied  that  whatever 
could  be  done  to  good  purpose  would  be  done,  by  *  due  course  of  law.' 
My  mind,  therefore,  was  perfectly  at  ease  in  trusting  Nature's  work 
in  Nature's  hands.  There  was  no  danger  in  the  symptoms,  let  them 
run  as  high  as  they  would.  They  constituted  no  part  of  the  real  dif- 
ficulty, but  grew  out  of  it.  The  general  movement  which  made  them 
necessary  was  aiming  directly  at  the  removal  of  that  difficulty.  In- 
stead, therefore,  of  being  troubled  with  the  idea  that  I  could  not  live 
with  such  symptoms,  my  conviction  was  very  strong  that  I  could  live 
better  with  them  than  without  them. 

"  In  the  morning,  ten  or  twelve  hours  from  the  beginning  of  the 
cold  chill,  there  was  some  mitigation  of  suffering,  which  continued 
till  afternoon,  when  there  was  a  slight  exacerbation  of  symptoms  ; 
but  the  heaviest  part  of  the  work  was  accomplished  within  the  first 
twenty-four  hours.  From  that  time  there  was  a  gradual  declension  of 
painful  symptoms,  till  the  fifth  day,  when  debility  and  expectoration 
constituted  the  bulk  of  the  disease. 

"  Full  bleeding  at  the  commencement  of  the  disease,  followed  by 
the  other  *  break-up '  means  usually  employed  in  such  affections,  would 
have  given  me  immediate  relief,  and,  by  continuing  to  ply  active  means 
as  the  work  was  urged  on  (for  there  would  have  been  no  stopping  of 
it,  short  of  stopping  the  action  of  the  heart),  the  strongest,  most  dis- 
tressing, and  critical  part  of  the  disease  might  have  been  pushed  for- 
ward to  the  fifth  day  ;  and  I  might  even  then  possibly  have  recovered. 
But,  granting  that  my  life  would  have  been  spared,  I  suffered  much 
less  on  the  whole  under  the  *  let  alone  '  treatment  than  I  should  have 
done  under  a  perturbating  one,  besides  having  the  curative  process  con- 


636  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

ducted  with  more  regularity,  made  shorter,  and  done  up  more  effectu- 
ally" ("Medical  Reform,"  p.  312). 

After  the  paroxysm  of  the  disease  has  subsided,  the  pectoral  fever 
can  be  alleviated  by  the  free  use  of  cold  water  and  strict  abstinence 
from  solid  food.  Avoid  over- warm  bedclothing.  By  a  load  of  warm 
covers  alone  a  common  catarrh  can  be  aggravated  into  a  hot  fever 
till  the  blanket-smothered  patient  is  awakened  by  the  throbbing  of  a 
galloping  pulse.  Exercise  would  promote  the  discharge  of  the  ac- 
cumulated serum,  but,  while  the  patient  is  too  sore  to  turn  over  in  his 
bed,  gymnastics  are  out  of  the  question,  and  their  effect  must  be  ac- 
complished by  "  passive  exercise,"  manipulation  of  the  thorax,  and  a 
swinging  motion  in  a  hammock  or  a  rocking  easy-chair.  With  the 
aid  of  fresh  air  and  abstinence  the  remedies  of  the  movement-cure 
might  be  entirely  dispensed  with,  if  the  accumulation  of  purulent 
matter  were  the  only  risk,  but  in  acute  pleurisy  there  is  a  greater 
danger  from  another  cause,  namely,  that  the  inflamed  surface  of  the 
visceral  pleura  has  a  tendency  to  adhere  to  the  lining  of  the  thorax 
and  thus  obliterate  the  pleural  cavity.  The  consequences  of  that  re- 
sult would  be  a  permanent  embarrassment  of  breathing,  or  even  the 
total  paralysis  of  the  affected  lung.  Passive  exercise  and  friction 
(rubbing  the  less  affected  parts  of  the  chest  with  a  bathing-brush) 
will,  however,  not  fail  to  obviate  that  danger.  As  soon  as  Nature 
finds  relief  in  a  copious  expectoration,  the  crisis  of  the  disease  is 
weathered,  and  further  precautions  may  be  limited  to  rest  and  a  sparse 
but  emulsive  diet — a  modicum  of  sweet  cream,  with  oatmeal-gruel 
and  stewed  raisins.  That  pleurisy  was  formerly  considered  a  most 
fatal  disease  can  be  more  than  suificiently  explained  by  the  fatal 
measures  of  treatment  which  were  then  in  vogue.  Dr.  Buchan's 
"  Family  Medical  Library,"  not  more  than  thirty  years  ago  about  the 
most  popular  pathological  compend,  contains  the  following  directions  : 
"  In  the  beginning  of  a  pleurisy  the  only  efficient  course  is  to  make 
the  patient  stand  up  on  the  floor,  while  blood  is  drawn  from  a  large 
orifice  until  he  faints  or  is  about  falling.  ...  If,  after  the  first  bleed- 
ing, the  pain,  with  the  other  violent  symptoms,  should  still  continue, 
it  will  be  necessary  to  take  eight  or  nine  ounces  more.  If  the  symp- 
toms do  not  then  abate,  and  the  blood  shows  a  strong  buffy-coat,  a 
third  or  even  a  fourth  bleeding  may  be  requisite.  .  .  .  Topical  bleeding 
has  also  a  good  effect  in  this  disease.  It  may  be  performed  by  apply- 
ing a  number  of  leeches  to  the  parts  affected,  or  by  cupping,  which  is 
both  a  more  certain  and  expeditious  method  than  the  other.  .  .  .  Then, 
take  :  Solution  of  acetated  ammonia,  three  drachms  ;  mint-water,  one 
ounce ;  tincture  of  opium,  twenty-five  drops ;  sirup  of  tolu,  two 
drachms  ;  antimonial  wine,  thirty  drops.  Nothing  is  so  certain  to 
give  speedy  and  permanent  relief  as  a  combination  of  ipecac,  calomel, 
and  opium."  And  in  that  form  of  the  disease  known  as  "bilious 
pleurisy,"  "  emetics  and  mercurial  cathartics  are  of  the  utmost  im- 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE,  6^7 

portance.  .  .  .  Purgatives  should  be  continued  through  the  whole  course 
of  the  disease  ;  .  .  .  a  blister  should  be  applied  of  sufficient  size  to  em- 
brace the  whole  hreasV* !  ("Family  Medical  Library,"  pages  174,  183). 

Croup  is  an  obstruction  of  the  upper  air-tubes,  induced  by  the 
lethargic  influence  of  overfeeding  and  warm,  impure  air.  How  an 
overloaded  stomach  reacts  on  the  functions  of  the  respiratory  organs, 
many  adults  have  an  opportunity  to  experience  in  the  strangling  sen- 
sations of  a  "  nightmare,"  though  the  respiratory  stimulus  of  the  cool 
night-air  generally  helps  to  overcome  such  affections,  especially  if  the 
sufferer  can  ease  his  lungs  by  a  contraction  of  his  arms  or  by  turning 
over  on  his  side.  But  infants  are  not  only  more  grossly  overfed  than 
the  most  gluttonous  adults,  while  the  phlegm-producing  quality  of 
their  food  increases  the  danger  of  respiratory  obstructions,  but  that 
danger  is  still  aggravated  by  feeding  their  lungs  on  the  sickening  air 
of  an  overheated  and  ill- ventilated  bedroom,  and  still  further  aggra- 
vated by  swaddling  and  bandaging  them  in  a  way  to  prevent  every 
motion  that  might  help  to  ease  their  distress.  Spasmodic  croup  gen- 
erally occurs  after  the  establishment  of  a  plethoric  diathesis — after 
persistent  overfeeding  has  turned  a  baby  into  a  mass  of  fat  and  fretful 
sickliness.  Some  night,  usually  after  a  heavy  surfeit,  the  child  is 
awakened  by  a  feeling  of  suffocation  and  gasps  for  breath  till  the  ob- 
struction is  removed  by  a  violent  fit  of  coughing.  '*  Croup-sirup  " 
(treacle  and  laudanum)  subdues  the  symptoms  by  lethargizing  the  ir- 
ritability— for  a  little  while,  for  soon  a  second  and  more  violent  fit 
has  to  complete  the  work  of  the  first  paroxysm  by  expelling  the  accu- 
mulated phlegm. 

But  a  far  more  dangerous  form  of  the  disease  is  developed  when 
the  predisposing  causes  are  aggravated  by  an  inflammation  of  the 
larynx.  Inflammatory  croup,  or  exudative  laryngitis,*  does  not  oc- 
cur unawares,  but  is  preceded  by  a  very  peculiar  cough,  a  hoarse, 
cough-like  bark,  mingled  with  strange  wheezing  and  metallic  sounds. 
The  windpipe  is  congested,  and  in  that  note  of  warning  appeals  for  re- 
lief from  impure  air  and  deliverance  from  the  influence  of  a  crapulent 
diet.  Nine  times  out  of  ten  the  effect  of  its  appeal  is  a  dose  of  nar- 
cotic cough-medicine,  more  tightly-closed  windows  and  a  hotter  stove. 
The  process  of  surfeit  in  the  mean  while  continues ;  the  windpipe,  al- 
ready abnormally  contracted  by  its  inflamed  condition,  becomes  less 
and  less  able  to  resist  the  obstructing  influence  of  the  accumulated 
phlegm  ;  at  night,  when  the  exclusion  of  every  breath  of  fresh  air  f  has 

*  Called  also  "  true  croup,"  or  "pseudo-membranous  laryngitis,"  "  plastic  laryngitis." 
t  "  I  lately  attended  an  infant,  whom  I  found  muffled  up  over  head  and  ears  in  many 
folds  of  flannel,  though  it  was  in  the  middle  of  June.  I  begged  for  a  little  free  air  to  the 
poor  creature  ;  but,  though  this  indulgence  was  granted  during  my  stay,  I  found  it  al- 
ways on  my  return  in  the  same  situation.  Death,  as  might  have  been  expected,  soon 
freed  the  infant  from  all  its  miseries  ;  but  it  was  not  in  my  power  to  free  the  minds  of 
its  parents  from  those  prejudices  which  proved  fatal  to  their  child  "  (Dr.  G.  G.  Nor- 
wood, "  Management  of  Children,"  p.  619). 


638  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

still  further  reduced  the  functional  energy  of  the  respiratory  organs,  a 
viscid  matter  rises  in  bubbles,  and  one  of  these  bubbles,  like  a  tena- 
cious membrane,  closes  the  tube  of  the  larynx.  Suffocation  results, 
and/  in  the  ensuing  struggle  for  life.  Nature  has  a  very  slim  chance  to 
prevail.  In  our  Northern  States  alone,  five  or  six  thousand  perish  thus 
every  year — killed  by  domestic  contrivances  as  surely  as  the  prisoners 
of  Surajah  Dowlah  were  killed  by  the  architectural  arrangements 
of  the  Black  Hole.  If  the  physician  is  only  called  in  the  last  stage 
of  the  deliquium,  inflammatory  croup  constitutes  one  of  those  excep- 
tional cases  where  artificial  causes  of  disease  have  to  be  met  by  arti- 
ficial remedies.  The  far-gone  exhaustion  of  the  patient,  a  thin,  expir- 
ing pulse,  would  indicate  that  tracheotomy,  or  the  opening  of  the 
windpipe,  offers  the  only  hope  of  salvation.  A  violent,  suffocating, 
and  spasmodic  cough  would  indicate  that  the  expulsive  efforts  of  Na- 
ture require  the  aid  of  a  swift  emetic — tartar  or  ipecacuanha. 

But,  if  the  symptoms  of  danger  are  heeded  in  time,  croup  is  as  cu- 
rable as  a  common  catarrh.  As  soon  as  the  characteristic  cough  be- 
trays the  condition  of  the  windpipe,  the  patient — infant  or  adult — 
should  be  reduced  to  two  meals,  the  last  one  not  later  than  four  hours 
before  sunset.  Flesh-food,  greasy  made- dishes,  narcotic  drinks,  as 
well  as  all  kinds  of  alcoholic  stimulants,  should  be  strictly  avoided. 
Before  night  the  bed  should  he  removed  to  a  cool  and  carefully  venti- 
lated room.  Families  who  have  no  alternative  should  not  hesitate  to 
open  every  window  for  at  least  fifteen  minutes,  and  in  the  mean  while 
compromise  with  their  prejudices  by  carrying  the  child  to  the  next 
neighbors,  rather  than  bring  it  back  before  the  air  of  the  bedroom  has 
been  thoroughly  purified.  A  draught  of  very  cold  air  might  possibly 
excite  a  cough  that  would  precipitate  the  crisis  of  the  disease,  though 
by  no  means  lessen  the  chances  of  a  lucky  issue.  But  more  probably 
fresh  air,  whether  cold  or  cool,  would  so  re-enforce  the  remedial  re- 
sources of  Nature  that  the  inflammation  would  subside  in  the  course 
of  a  few  days. 

If  in  spite  of  such  precautions  a  strangling-fit  should  occur  at 
night,  the  child  should  be  immediately  raised  to  a  half-upright  p>osi' 
tion,  by  making  the  weight  of  the  body  rest  on  the  knees,  with  the 
head  slightly  inclined  (face  downward),  the  elbows  back,  and  the  hands 
resting  against  the  hips — the  position  which  a  person  would  instinct- 
ively assume  in  the  endeavor  to  aid  an  expulsive  effort  of  the  lungs. 
Between  the  paroxysms  ease  the  chest  by  a  quicJc  forward-and-hack- 
ward  movement  of  the  arms,  and  hj  persistent  friction  loith  a  wet  hrush^ 
applied  to  the  neck  and  the  upper  ribs.  Under  the  influence  of  these 
stimulants,  combined  with  the  invigorating  tendency  of  fresh  air,  the 
organism  will  employ  all  its  resources  to  the  best  advantage  and  soon 
relieve  itself  by  a  sort  of  retching  cough.  If  the  difliculty  has  not 
been  aggravated  by  the  use  of  "  croup-sirup,"  the  patient  will  rest  at 
ease  for  the  remaining  hours  of  the  night.     A  week  may  go  by  with- 


STUDT^PHYSIOLOGICALLY  CONSIDERED,        639 

out  a  recurrence  of  the  suffocating  fit  ;  but  only  the  subsidence  of 
the  inflammation  —  indicated  by  the  diminished  hoarseness  of  the 
cough — gives  a  guarantee  that  the  danger  is  past. 


STUDY— PHYSIOLOGICALLY  CO:^SIDEEED. 

By  p.  J.  HIGGINS,  M.  D. 

THE  ultimate  element  by  means  of  which  those  processes  that  con- 
stitute the  mind  are  carried  on,  is  the  microscopic  cell  of  the 
gray  matter  of  the  brain.  These  gray  nerve-cells,  with  the  delicate 
tissue  in  which  they  are  imbedded,  form  a  layer,  from  one  sixth  to  one 
twelfth  of  an  inch  in  thickness,  on  the  surface  of  the  brain.  This  area 
would  be  small,  were  it  not  disposed  in  folds  or  convolutions  which 
greatly  increase  its  extent.  It  is  upon  the  number  and  quality  of  these 
nerve-cells,  and  the  systematic  exercise  of  their  function,  rather  than 
upon  mere  size  or  weight  of  brain,  that  the  mental  capacity  of  the 
individual  depends. 

The  activity  of  the  nerve-cells  of  the  brain,  in  other  words,  de- 
pends partly  upon  their  inherent  vitality  or  vigor  of  constitution,  and 
partly  upon  the  quantity  and  quality  of  their  blood-supply.  They 
may  be  stimulated  into  unwonted  activity  by  an  effort  of  the  will  or 
the  spur  of  excited  consciousness  ;  but  even  in  these  cases,  should  the 
strain  last  any  length  of  time,  the  blood-supply  is  quickly  and  largely 
increased. 

Skeptics  may  cavil,  but  the  solid  fact  remains  that  strength  of 
intellect,  like  that  of  muscle,  is  frequently  inherited.  Capacities  differ 
from  the  beginning.  For  this  reason,  children  can  not  be  expected  to 
make  equal  progress  under  any  system  of  teaching,  any  more  than 
horses  upon  a  race-course.  But,  by  persistent  and  judicious  training, 
the  strength,  speed,  and  endurance  of  all  may  be  increased  through  a 
steady  and  gradual  development. 

In  order  that  the  teacher  may  utilize  his  efforts  to  the  best  advan- 
tage, he  should  understand  the  laws  of  the  mind's  development,  and 
the  influences  that  modify  and  regulate  its  activity.  Mental  philoso- 
phy deals  with  the  former — to  explain  some  of  the  latter  is  the  object 
of  this  paper. 

The  brain-substance  may  be  touched,  and  even  cut,  with  little  or 
no  consciousness  of  sensation ;  yet  the  gray  nerve-matter  is  very  deli- 
cate in  construction,  and  exquisitely  sensitive  to  changes  in  its  blood- 
supply.  Like  other  organs,  it  is  exhausted  by  continued  activity,  and 
needs  rest  in  order  to  recuperate  its  vitality.  All  tissues  wear  more  or 
less  by  work  ;  that  is,  molecules  of  their  cell-substance  die  and  become 
foreign  matter,  which  must  be  cast  off  and  replaced  by  new  material. 


640  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

This  new  material  is  absorbed  by  the  cells  from  the  blood,  through 
the  thin  walls  of  the  minute  blood-vessels  in  their  vicinity.  Through 
the  walls  of  the  same  vessels  the  cast-off  matters  pass  in  the  opposite 
direction  into  the  circulation  and  are  washed  away  by  its  current. 
While  the  tissue  is  hard  at  work,  the  process  of  disintegration  is  at 
a  maximum,  and  that  of  repair  at  the  opposite  extreme — consequently 
the  waste  is  produced  more  rapidly  than  it  can  be  carried  away,  and 
accumulates.  As  ashes  in  a  stove  interfere  with  combustion,  it  im- 
pedes the  current  of  thought,  and  lessens  its  intensity.  But,  during 
repose,  the  opposite  conditions  obtain — repair  is  at  its  maximum,  and 
waste  almost  or  entirely  suspended.  The  blood  has  been  busy  all 
night  ridding  itself  and  the  tissues  of  all  impurities,  and  is  richly 
charged  with  oxygen.  The  brain,  and  consequently  the  mind,  is  fresh 
and  vigorous  after  the  night's  repose  ;  the  damages  have  been  all 
repaired,  and  the  debris  cleared  away.  It  is  a  matter  even  of  common 
observation  that  at  no  other  time  is  the  mind  so  sharp,  clear,  and 
strong,  as  in  the  morning. 

Concrete  ideas  tax  the  mind  but  lightly.  The  more  abstract  ideas 
become,  the  more  difficult  is  their  comprehension,  and  the  greater  the 
nervous  strain  involved  in  their  contemplation.  For  this  reason,  the 
abstruse  studies  should  be  taken  up  during  the  forenoon  session,  as  the 
faculties  of  the  mind  are  then  in  the  most  favorable  condition  to  grap- 
ple with  their  difficulties. 

Of  all  school-studies,  mathematics  requires  the  strongest  grasp  of 
mind,  and  the  closest  exercise  of  the  reasoning  powers  and  the  judg- 
ment. In  abstruseness  and  difficulty  of  comprehension,  geometry, 
algebra,  and  arithmetic,  rank  in  the  order  enumerated.  Rhetoric,  in- 
cluding grammar  and  composition,  comes  next.  In  every  school  and 
college,  therefore,  these  subjects  should  be  taken  up  during  the  morn- 
ing session. 

The  mind  learns  by  means  of  impressions  made  upon  the  gray 
nerve-cells,  through  the  senses,  of  which  sight  is  the  most  vivid  and 
durable  in  its  effects.  Hearing  ranks  next,  but  its  impressions  are  less 
vivid  and  more  fleeting.  Further,  they  are  recalled  to  the  memory 
less  readily  and  distinctly.  We  all  remember  what  we  see  longer  than 
what  we  hear.  Hence  the  most  reliance  should  be  placed  upon  the 
eye  as  an  avenue  of  instruction,  and  the  teacher  should  make  use  of  it 
whenever  practicable.  When  an  impression  is  made  upon  a  nerve-cell, 
it  is  said  to  retain  it  "  in  potency  " — that  is,  it  is  capable  of  renewing 
it  by  an  exercise  of  the  memory.  Now,  the  clearness  and  permanence 
of  a  mental  impression  depend — {a)  upon  its  vividness  ;  {h)  upon 
the  frequency  of  its  repetition  ;  and  (c)  upon  the  inherent  vigor  of 
the  nerve-cell. 

To  obtain  vividness  of  impression,  the  teacher's  language  should  be 
clear  and  simple  ;  his  descriptions  of  processes  and  objects  sharp  and 
vivid  ;  he  must  present  the  same  ideas  again  and  again,  in  order  to  fix 


STUDY— PHYSIOLOGICALLY   CONSIDERED.        641 

them  permanently  in  the  memory.  The  inherent  vigor  of  the  mind 
can  be  strengthened  by  systematic  exercise,  just  as  the  muscles  of  a 
blacksmith's  arm  become  strong  and  brawny  by  years  of  daily  toil  at 
the  clinking  anvil. 

Throughout  animated  nature,  a  period  of  repose  succeeds  one  of 
activity,  both  recurring  in  regular  alternation.  The  vegetable  world 
grows  and  blooms  ;  then,  for  a  season,  all  the  vital  processes  stand  still. 
Work  brings  weariness,  which  rest  must  dissipate.  So  is  it  with  the 
tissues  of  the  body  ;  and  the  younger  and  more  delicately  organized 
they  are,  the  sooner  does  toil  exhaust  them.  Brain-matter  is  the  most 
delicate  of  all  our  tissues,  and  nearly  one  third  of  the  pure  blood 
thrown  out  by  the  heart  at  each  contraction  goes  to  supply  it.  A 
tissue,  when  at  work,  has  its  blood-supply  largely  increased.  When 
the  mind  is  actively  engaged  in  study,  the  circulation  in  the  brain  is 
full  and  active,  the  temperature  is  raised,  even  the  face  is  flushed  ; 
and  the  more  difficult  the  study,  the  more  these  effects  are  intensified. 
After  a  time,  the  brain  becomes  so  engorged  with  blood  that  its  activ- 
ity is  depressed  and  its  energies  begin  to  flag.  The  younger  a  pupil 
is,  the  sooner  does  his  mind  grow  tired.  Between  the  ages  of  six  and 
seven,  the  lessons  should  not  exceed  ten  minutes'  duration,  as  young 
children  are  unable  to  keep  their  attention  fixed  upon  one  subject  for 
a  greater  length  of  time.  It  may  be  laid  down  as  a  safe  rule,  that 
close  mental  application  for  an  hour  and  a  half  will  tire  out  the  ma- 
jority of  pupils,  and  leave  them  unfit  and  indisposed  to  proceed  further 
without  a  relaxation  of  at  least  ten  or  fifteen  minutes. 

Here  the  forenoon  recess  is  indicated — not,  as  some  imagine,  simply 
to  kill  time,  but  as  a  positive  physical  necessity,  not  for  the  pupil 
alone,  but  also  for  the  teacher.  The  worry  and  mental  strain  of  gov- 
erning a  roomful  of  nervous,  restless  children,  and  teaching  at  the 
same  time,  no  one  can  fully  realize  without  actual  experience. 

How  should  recess  be  spent  by  the  pupil  ?  To  reply  to  this,  his 
physical  condition  must  be  considered.  As  the  blood  is  contained  in 
a  series  of  closed  vessels,  it  is  evident  that,  if  the  circulation  be  in- 
creased in  one  portion,  it  is  correspondingly  diminished  in  another. 
When  the  brain  is  engorged,  some  other  portion  of  the  economy  must 
be  under-supplied.  By  a  wise  provision  of  Nature,  the  surplus  is 
drawn  from  the  tissue  that  is  least  active — in  this  case,  from  the  mus- 
cular system.  The  indication  is  to  relieve  the  congested  brain,  and 
this  is  best  met  by  muscular  exercise,  as  a  tissue  in  action  has  its 
blood-supply  largely  increased.  The  muscular  system  is  of  consider- 
able extent,  and  the  exercise  that  brings  the  most  muscle  into  action 
is  the  most  beneficial. 

Therefore,  during  recess,  nothing  can  take  the  place  of  active  exer- 
ycise  ifi  the  open  air. 

But  if  the  temperature  is  very  low,  recess  had  better  be  taken  in- 
doors, for  the  intense  cold  exhausts  the  vitality  by  drawing  largely 

YOL.  XXIV. — il 


642  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

upon  the  heat-supply.  By  constringing  the  cutaneous  vessels,  it  con- 
gests the  internal  organs  and  weakens  the  heart,  while  it  requires  some 
time  to  restore  the  equilibrium  of  the  circulation.  In  rainy  weather, 
the  result  is  still  more  detrimental.  In  a  climate  like  ours,  exposure 
to  rain  is  at  all  times  fraught  with  danger  to  health,  and  particularly 
when  one  sits  still  in  wet  or  damp  garments  for  any  great  length  of 
time.  No  recess  out-doors,  on  a  bitterly  cold  or  rainy  day,  should  be 
the  rule,  and  gymnastic  exercises,  calisthenics,  motion-songs,  etc., 
should  take  its  place.  Every  grammar-school  should  have  one  room 
fitted  up  as  a  gymnasium.  There  is  a  certain  amount  of  nerve-energy 
that  is  accustomed  to  find  outlet  in  the  muscles,  and,  if  unduly  re- 
pressed, it  will  often  break  through  the  strictest  discipline  and  cause 
the  teacher  much  annoyance.  It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  muscles 
were  not  created  to  be  kept  still  during  waking  hours,  and,  when  kept 
at  rest  an  hour  or  two,  a  surplus  of  energy  accumulates,  which  recess 
gets  rid  of  legitimately.  It  also  serves  another  purpose  admirably. 
Of  all  sedatives  of  the  nervous  system,  muscular  exercise  is  the  most 
efficient,  because  physiological.  It  quickens  the  circulation,  and  stimu- 
lates the  heart  and  all  the  vegetative  functions. 

After  exercise,  the  muscles — of  the  hand  and  forearm  particularly 
— are  subject  to  rhythmic,  automatic  waves  of  contraction  ;  that  is, 
there  is  a  tremor  beyond  the  power  of  the  will  to  control.  So  that 
writing  and  drawing,  which  require  great  steadiness  of  the  hand  and 
fingers,  should  never  be  taken  up  after  recess,  or  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  afternoon  session.  Of  the  elementary  studies,  mental 
arithmetic  involves  the  closest  application  of  the  highest  powers  of  the 
mind — drawing  at  once  upon  memory,  reason,  and  judgment — and  this 
may  be  taken  up  advantageously  from  half -past  eleven  to  twelve. 
Breakfast  digestion  is  then  nearly  if  not  quite  completed,  and  intense 
application  is  least  detrimental  to  the  vegetative  system. 

The  morning  meal  is  usually  light  in  material  and  amount ;  dinner, 
partaken  of  soon  after  noon  (except  in  the  largest  cities),  is  the  prin- 
cipal meal.  It  is  "  solid,"  in  a  physiological  not  less  than  in  a  popular 
sense,  for  it  is  most  generous  in  amount,  and  usually  rich  in  nitrogen- 
ized  matters — flesh-meat,  puddings,  eggs,  etc.  After  its  ingestion,  the 
digestive  organs  are  taxed  to  their  utmost  capacity,  and  soon  become 
loaded  and  distended  with  blood.  The  digestive  system  is  quite  ex- 
tensive, and  is  richly  supplied  with  blood-vessels,  which  are  imbedded 
in  rather  loose  tissue,  so  that  they  may  dilate,  to  accommodate  the 
sudden  influx  from  the  outlying  portions  of  the  body,  together  with 
the  newly-absorbed  products  of  digestion.  The  brain  is  thus  deprived 
of  its  full  supply  ;  and  if,  by  reason  of  severe  study,  it  draws  upon  the 
circulation,  the  digestive  organs  are  robbed  of  their  needs,  and  their 
efficiency  interfered  with  seriously.  Intense  application  at  this  time 
does  harm  in  another  way.  All  the  functions  of  the  body  are  under 
nervous  control.     The  digestive  organs  are  mainly  innervated  by  the 


STUDY— PHYSIOLOGICALLY  CONSIDERED.       643 

pneumogastrics — two  nerves  arising  from  the  lower  portion  of  the 
brain,  near  the  base.  Now,  the  thinking  portion  of  the  brain  being 
situated  on  the  convex  surface,  deep  and  perplexing  thought  robs 
the  roots  of  the  pneumogastric  nerves  of  their  circulation,  and  in  this 
way  depresses  their  influence.  Lacking  the  proper  nervous  stimulus, 
the  digestive  juices  become  scanty  in  amount ;  peristalsis  is  enfeebled; 
the  liver — that  refinery  where  the  crude  products  of  digestion  are 
purified  and  elaborated — loses  tone,  and  allows  the  peptones  to  pass 
unchanged  into  the  general  circulation,  giving  rise  to  much  discomfort 
and  mental  depression.  Thus  are  laid  the  foundations  of  dyspepsia, 
that  common  complaint  of  students  ;  and  in  the  higher  institutions  of 
learning,  where  the  course  is  difficult  and  protracted,  many,  after 
graduation,  return  home  invalids— often  only  to  die. 

The  products  of  digestion  are  taken  up  by  two  different  sets  of 
vessels.  The  fatty  matters,  in  the  form  of  an  emulsion,  go  almost 
directly  to  the  right  side  of  the  heart ;  while  the  others,  before  enter- 
ing the  general  circulation,  pass  through  the  liver.  A  portion  of  the 
refuse  is  excreted  here  ;  the  rest,  remaining  in  solution  in  the  blood,  is 
carried  to  other  organs  to  be  gradually  eliminated.  So  that,  during 
digestion,  the  blood  is  not  only  charged  with  impurities  from  the  ali- 
mentary canal,  but  also  with  newly  or  imperfectly  formed  material. 

The  brain,  then,  being  deprived  of  its  full  blood-supply,  and  the 
blood  itself  being  impure  and  impoverished,  it  may  at  once  be  seen 
that  the  mind  is  not  very  active  after  dinner,  and  by  no  means  fitted 
for  severe  study.  Hence  the  lighter  subjects — reading,  geography, 
history,  writing,  drawing,  music — should  occupy  the  afternoon  session, 
as  these  subjects  involve  chiefly  the  imitative  faculty  and  the  memory. 
Of  these,  reading  and  music — the  lightest  of  all — should  precede  ;  dic- 
tation and  geography  may  follow.  When  the  programme  includes  an 
afternoon  recess,  history  may  follow  with  advantage.  The  most  ap- 
propriate time  for  writing  and  drawing  is  from  half -past  three  to  four. 
The  muscles  of  the  hand  are  steady,  the  pupils  are  fatigued  mentally, 
and  the  imitative  faculty — the  lowest  in  the  scale — is  the  only  one 
called  into  play. 

Two  o'clock  may  be  set  down  as  the  most  judicious  time  for  the 
opening  of  the  afternoon  session.  Half-past  one  is  not  quite  so  good, 
but  will  answer  very  well.  To  begin  at  one  is  a  positive  detriment. 
The  pupils  hurry  home,  snatch  a  hasty  dinner,  and  as  hurriedly  return. 
Those  who  dwell  at  some  distance  are  often  late.  Some  are  obliged 
to  attend  to  household  duties,  and  this  also  occasions  tardiness.  Sun- 
light is  cheap  and  plenty,  and  the  half-hour  gained  would  be  more 
useful  if  taken  at  the  end  of  the  session.  Indeed,  two  hours'  steady 
work  will  exhaust  the  majority  of  children,  and  will  leave  all  seriously 
disinclined  to  exertion.  When  school  assembles  at  two,  and  is  dis- 
missed at  four,  no  recess  is  necessary,  if  the  plan  here  indicated  is  fol- 
lowed, for  the  work  is  much  lighter  than  during  the  morning  session. 


644  T^^  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Of  late  certain  spasmodic  efforts  have  been  made  to  abolish  recess, 
and  hold  but  one  long  session  per  day — from  nine  to  one  or  half -past 
one ;  but  this  is  a  mistaken  notion,  founded  on  lack  of  knowledge  of 
the  effects  of  long-continued  study  and  the  physical  needs  of  the 
young.  It  is  true  that  in  some  of  the  largest  cities  this  plan  is  fol- 
lowed in  the  high-schools,  but  the  cause  is  local,  for  the  pupils  come 
from  long  distances — in  New  York  city,  for  instance,  as  far  as  five 
miles.  Besides,  in  many  of  these  schools  the  pupils  do  much  of  their 
studying  at  their  homes,  and  the  majority  are  in  the  neighborhood  of 
twenty  years  of  age,  so  that  they  are  in  a  better  condition  to  stand 
the  additional  strain  without  injury. 

Anything  that  distracts  the  pupil's  attention  from  his  studies  re- 
tards his  progress,  by  making  less  vivid  the  impressions  received  by 
the  nerve-cells  ;  for,  by  concentrating  the  mental  vision  upon  one 
point,  to  the  exclusion  of  others,  we  see  that  point  more  distinctly. 
All  peripheral  irritation,  therefore,  should  be  removed  as  far  as  pos- 
sible. The  distraction  of  discomfort,  particularly  of  the  cutaneous 
surface,  is  a  serious  drawback  ;  comfortable  seats — preferably  single — 
high  enough  to  support  the  lower  limbs,  and  desks  of  the  proper  height 
to  rest  the  arms,  are  in  this  way  valuable  indirect  aids  to  study.  But 
of  all  peripheral  irritation,  that  produced  by  cold  is  perhaps  the  most 
distracting.  "When  the  temperature  of  the  room  falls  below  50°  Fahr., 
the  next  exercise  should  be  dismissal.  Between  50°  and  70°  the 
temperature  may  range  ;  but  from  60°  to  65°  is  the  safest  and  most 
comfortable  ;  safest,  because  the  cutaneous  surface  does  not  become 
overheated  and  congested — liable  to  be  chilled  by  the  lower  tempera- 
ture of  the  open  air — and  most  comfortable,  because  neither  heat  nor 
cold  is  perceptible.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  every  school-room  should 
have  a  thermometer,  which  the  teacher  should  frequently  consult,  and 
govern  himself  according  to  its  indications. 

For  the  reasons  noted  above,  children  at  home  should  not  be  al- 
lowed to  prepare  their  lessons  immediately  after  supper,  or  late  into 
the  night ;  for  study  congests  the  brain,  and,  as  sleep  is  produced  by 
the  opposite  condition,  they  lie  awake  and  restless  until  the  amount 
and  pressure  of  blood  within  the  cranium  are  greatly  diminished. 

Strange  as  the  assertion  may  seem,  a  pupil's  diet  has  much  to  do 
with  his  progress.  A  liberal  supply  of  non-stimulating  food — in  other 
words,  bread,  milk,  vegetables,  fruits,  and  a  farinaceous  diet  princi- 
pally— is  far  superior  for  the  healthy  growth  of  bone  and  nerve  and 
muscle  than  a  regimen  into  which  nitrogenized  materials — flesh-meat, 
eggs,  etc. — enter  largely.  These  latter  unduly  stimulate  the  nervous 
system,  cause  a  premature  development  of  the  body,  and  load  the  blood 
with  impurities,  that  tax  the  liver  and  the  excretory  organs  sorely.  In 
a  warm  climate,  such  as  ours,  the  liver,  choked  with  albuminoids,  will 
fail  in  its  function  periodically,  through  sheer  fatigue  ;  the  bilious 
matters  then  circulate  throughout  the  system  and  stain  the  complex- 


FASHION  AND   DEFORMITY  IN  THE  FEET.       645 

ion  ;  torpor,  malaise,  and  headache,  will  result.  In  this  condition  study- 
is  a  task  instead  of  a  pleasure  ;  the  mind  is  weak,  and  the  memory 
can  not  retain  imparted  knowledge  for  any  great  length  of  time. 

In  general  terms,  it  may  be  laid  down  as  a  rule,  that  much  effect- 
ive study  must  not  be  expected  from  a  pupil  who  is  overfed,  especially 
if  on  rich  and  stimulating  food.  Let  it  not  be  understood  that  flesh- 
meat  should  be  excluded  from  the  diet  of  the  young.  By  no  means  ; 
it  is  only  its  excess  that  is  objected  to.  An  overfed  pupil  is  indolent, 
intellectually,  not  because  he  may  be  so  inclined  willfully,  but  for  the 
reason  that  his  digestive  organs  rob  his  brain,  and  his  blood  is  charged 
with  effete  matter ;  in  figurative  phrase,  the  fire  is  slow  because  the 
stove  is  filled  with  coal  and  choked  with  ashes. 

To  recapitulate  :  The  more  abstruse  studies — mathematics,  science, 
rhetoric — should  be  taken  up  during  the  morning  session.  The  proper 
time  for  the  forenoon  recess  is  at  half -past  ten.  The  lighter  or  concrete 
subjects — reading,  history,  geography,  writing,  drawing,  music — should 
occupy  the  afternoon  session,  commencing  preferably  at  two  o'clock. 
When  it  begins  at  half -past  one,  a  recess  of  ten  or  fifteen  minutes  is 
necessary,  preferably  the  quarter-hour  preceding  three  o'clock.  No 
out-door  recess  when  the  weather  is  inclement.  For  the  younger  pu- 
pils, short  lessons  frequently  repeated,  exercising  chiefly  the  imitative 
faculty  and  the  memory,  should  be  the  rule. 


FASHION  AND  DEFOEMITT  IN  THE  FEET. 

By  ADA  H.  KEPLEY. 

"  A  WELL-FORMED  foot,"  says  Chapman  in  "The  American 
-^^  Drawing-Book,"  "  is  rarely  to  be  met  with  in  our  day,  from  the 
lamentable  distortion  it  is  doomed  to  endure  by  the  fashion  of  our  shoes 
and  boots.  Instead  of  being  allowed  the  same  freedom  as  the  fingers 
to  exercise  the  purposes  for  which  Nature  intended  them,  the  toes  are 
cramped  together,  and  are  of  little  more  value  than  if  they  were  all  in 
one  ;  their  joints  enlarged,  stiffened,  and  distorted,  forced  and  packed 
together,  often  overlapping  one  another  in  sad  confusion,  and  wantonly 
placed  beyond  the  power  of  service.  As  for  the  little-toe  and  its 
neighbor,  in  a  shoe-deformed  foot,  they  are  usually  thrust  out  of  the 
way  altogether,  as  if  considered  supernumerary  and  useless,  while  all 
the  work  is  thrown  upon  the  great-toe,  although  that  too  is  scarcely 
allowed  working-room  in  its  prison-house  of  leather.  It  is,  therefore, 
hopeless  to  look  for  a  foot  that  has  grown  under  the  restraints  of 
leather,  for  perfection  of  form  ;  and  hence  the  feet  of  children,  al- 
though less  marked  in  their  external  anatomical  development,  present 
the  best  models  for  the  study  and  exercise  of  the  pupil  in  drawing." 


646  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Camper,  who  wrote,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  "  On  the  Best  Form 
of  Shoe,"  says  that  his  treatise  originated  in  a  jest  made  with  his  pu- 
pils, who  "  did  not  believe  I  should  dare  to  make  public  a  work  on 
such  a  subject,"  which  indicates  the  small  estimate  that  was  put  upon 
the  foot  as  an  organ  of  the  body.  He  begins  by  deploring  the  per- 
versity which  wholly  neglects  the  human  feet,  while  forcing  the  great- 
est attention  to  the  feet  of  "  horses,  mules,  oxen,  and  other  animals  of 
burden,"  and  declares  that  from  the  earliest  infancy  the  foot-coverings 
worn  serve  but  to  deform  them,  and  make  walking  painful,  and  some- 
times impossible  ;  and  he  lays  the  blame  on  the  ignorance  of  shoe- 
makers. 

James  Dowie,  a  practical  and  scientific  Scotch  shoemaker,  in  his 
excellent  little  book,  makes  the  same  statements  as  the  artist ;  and  the 
great  Dutch  surgeon,  whose  treatise  he  had  translated  into  the  English 
language,  also  laments  that  the  subject  of  the  feet  is  so  neglected  by 
those  who  are  competent  to  instruct  us  about  them.  Lord  Palmer- 
ston  said  to  Dowie  that  "  shoemakers  should  all  be  treated  like  pirates, 
put  to  death  without  trial  or  mercy,  as  they  had  inflicted  more  suffer- 
ing on  mankind  than  any  class  he  knew." 

One  can  not  treat  of  the  deform- 
ities of  the  feet  without  considering 
the  nature  of  their  covering,  the  boots 
and  shoes,  for  it  is  these  which  cramp, 
distort,  and  disable  them  ;  therefore 
in  this  article,  after  a  brief  account 
of  the  anatomy  of  the  foot,  our  atten- 
tion will  be  confined  to  its  principal 
distortions  and  the  causes  which  pro- 
duce them. 

The  feet  furnish  a  firm  base  for  the 
body  in  standing,  and,  undeformed, 
make  walking  easy  and  healthful. 
They  sustain  alternately  the  whole  of 
the  body's  weight,  and,  though  com- 
paratively small,  are  admirably  fitted 
to  carry  it  without  jar  or  discomfort, 
if  unhampered  by  their  coverings. 
They  are  in  the  highest  degree  elas- 
tic, from  the  large  number  of  bones, 
with  many  articulations,  with  their 
attachments,  and  the  plentiful  supply 
of  muscles,  blood-vessels,  and  nerves  to  keep  them  vigorous  and  well- 
nourished.  This  elasticity  enables  them  to  carry  the  body  over  smooth 
and  rough  surfaces,  not  only  without  injury,  but  to  its  greater  health. 
In  just  so  far  as  this  elasticity  and  freedom  of  natural  action  are  inter- 
fered with,  is  their  health,  and  with  it  that  of  the  body,  lowered. 


FASHION  AND  DEFORMITY  IN  THE  FEET,       64,7 

Anatomists  divide  the  skeleton  of  the  foot  into  three  portions,  the 
tarsus,  with  seven  bones,  forming  the  heel  and  arch  bones  ;  the  meta- 
tarsus, with  five  bones  just  forward  of  the  tarsus  ;  and  the  toes,  which 
contain  fourteen  bones,  two  in  the  great-toe,  three  in  each  of  the  other 
toes  ;  beneath  the  ball  of  the  foot,  as  it  is  called,  are  two  small  bones, 
which  lie  under  the  articulation  of  the  great-toe  and  the  adjoining 
metatarsal  bones,  making  twenty-eight  bones  in  each  foot  (see  Figs.  16, 
IT,  19). 

The  large  articulating  surface  of  the  feet,  and  their  numerous 
blood-vessels,  muscles,  nerves,  etc.,  render  it  peculiarly  susceptible  to 
injuries.  Their  distance  from  the  center  of  circulation,  together  with 
the  variations  of  temperature  they  have  to  endure,  make  them  ex- 
tremely liable  to  contract  disease. 

It  seems  as  if  the  general  injuries  to  the  body  resulting  from  dis- 
eased and  crippled  feet  should  be  plain  enough  to  attract  attention,  but 
such  does  not  appear  to  be  the  case,  l^o  complete  treatise  on  the  feet 
has  been  produced.  Physicians  as  a  class  seem  to  pay  the  subject  but 
little  attention.  In  the  books  in  which  the  diseases  and  injuries  of  the 
feet  are  considered,  the  causes  of  disease,  if  stated,  seem  to  be  men- 
tioned incidentally,  and  without  proper  notice  of  the  connection  be- 
tween the  diseases  and  the  bad  physiological  conditions  they  induce. 
Physicians  will  prescribe  for  diseases  caused  largely  by  unsuitable  cloth- 
ing of  the  feet,  without  saying  anything  of  the  reform  in  the  chaus- 
sure  by  means  of  which  the  disorder  might  be  greatly  mitigated,  if  not 
cured.  A  delicate  woman  was  treated  for  months  for  a  peculiar  dis- 
ease which  made  her  a  complete  invalid,  by  an  eminent  specialist,  who 
said  nothing  of  the  high-heeled,  paper-soled,  thin  boots,  the  habitual 
wearing  of  which  greatly  aggra- 
vated her  disorder.  A  paper  show- 
ing the  deleterious  eifects  of  such 
shoes  on  the  health  of  women,  read 
at  a  recent  meeting  of  an  associa- 
tion of  doctors,  seemed,  according 
to  the  reports,  to  call  out  more  ob- 
jectors than  it  found  friends.  A 
competent  woman  physician  ex- 
cused herself  for  wearing  such 
shoes  because  it  was  so  hard  to  find  hygienic  shoes  in  stock,  and  added 
that,  when  physicians  prescribed  reforms  in  clothing,  they  had  to  be 
politic,  to  keep  their  patients  ;  and  when  asked  if  she  ever  saw  a  woman 
who  wore  tight  shoes,  replied  "  No  "  ;  nor  did  she  know  any  who  wore 
tight  corsets. 

Walking  is  the  exercise  that,  more  than  any  other,  brings  every 
portion  of  the  system  into  healthful  activity.  Many  complaints  would 
disappear  under  a  thorough  and  careful  course  of  pedestrianism  ;  but 
who  can  walk  if  the  feet  are  sore  or  diseased  ?     General  bad  condi- 


FiG.  2. 


648 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


tions  arise  from  lack  of  exercise,  which  invigorates  the  muscles  and 
oxygenizes  the  vital  fluid.  Dyspepsia  is  the  usual  attendant  on  such 
conditions,  and  may  manifest  itself  either  by  general  emaciation  or 
by  fatty  degeneration. 

The  feet  demand  a  covering  which  shall  conform  to  their  shape, 
allow  them  free  play,  and  afford  protection  from  injuries.*  Dowie 
scoffingly  remarks,  in  his  treatise,  respecting  shoes  so  cut  at  the  toes 
as  to  represent  the  foot  like  that  of  a  goose,  with  the  great-toe  in  the 
middle.  We  are  now  in  an  era  of  "pencil-toed"  shoes,  so  called, 
which  recall  Dowie's  comparison.  It  is  difficult  to  understand  how 
shoemakers  can  be  so  careless  of  the  shape  of  the  feet  and  their  needs 
as  to  cut  shoes  that  in  the  toe  are  the  very  reverse  of  what  toes  de- 
mand ;  but  it  is  more  difficult  to  conceive  how  any  one  can  endure  the 
suffering  they  inflict.  Dowie  insists  that  tight-toed  stockings  are  in- 
jurious to  the  feet,  and  recommends  that  they  be  woven  with  a  sepa- 
rate covering  for  each  toe,  as  gloves  are  made  with  fingers. 

Fig.  1  is  a  foot  copied  from  the  antique,  and  shows  "beauty  of 
form  and  proportion,  ease  and  elasticity  of  motion,  as  well  as  an  ad- 
mirable expression  of  adaptation  and  power  for  use  throughout." 

Fig.  2  shows  the  distorted  foot  of  a  Chinese  woman,  photographed 
from  nature. 

Fig.  3  represents  the  sole  of  a  normal  human  foot.  The  dotted 
line  shows  how  the  foot  is  usually  cramped  in  the  shoe-sole.  The  heel 
of  the  foot  is  narrow,  the  anterior  portion  broad,  the  toes  are  nearly 
parallel  to  a  line  "  C,"  drawn  through  the  center  of  the  sole  from  heel 
to  toe.  The  line  A  B  is  drawn  through  the  center  of  the  instep,  or 
great  arch  of  the  foot,  and  bisects  the  great-toe.  It  is  this  arch  which 
mainly  supports  the  weight  of  the  body  ;  the  heel  forms  one  of  its 


Fig.  3. 


piers,  the  great-toe  the  other.  One  may  easily  see  that  when  the 
great-toe  is  drawn  from  its  line  with  the  arch,  as  indicated  by  the 
dotted  lines,  the  stability  of  the  body  is  by  so  much  destroyed  ;  and 
when  the  heel  is  taken  from  its  level  with  the  bulk  of  the  foot,  by  a 
high  heel,  yet  more  is  the  stability  of  the  body  destroyed.  Erichson 
says  :  "  Firmness  of  gait  is  caused  by  the  foot  resting  on  the  heel  be- 

*  The  Indian  moccasin  is  probably  the  easiest  and  most  comfortable  foot-covering 
worn,  as  it  adapts  itself  perfectly  to  the  shape  and  motion  of  the  foot. 


FASHION  AND  DEFORMITY  IN  THE  FEET,       649 

hind  and  the  ball  in  front,  and  principally  by  the  foot  resting  on  the 
broad  line  formed  by  the  great-toe  and  the  breadth  of  the  fore  part 
of  the  foot." 

The  dotted  lines  in  Fig.  3  show  the  outlines  of  a  quite  liberal  sole. 
It  is  easy  to  see  how  an  ordinary  foot  would  be  cramped  if  confined 
within  its  limits. 

Fig.  4  shows  a  very  common  shape  of  the  foot,  produced  by  cramp- 
ing and  crowding  the  toes.  Many  persons  have  only  to  look  at  their 
own  feet  to  see  fine  specimens  of  this  sort. 


Pig  4. 


The  diseases  most  common  to  the  feet  are  corns,  bunyons,  calluses, 
enlarged  and  stiffened  joints,  stiff  and  wasted  toes,  overlapping  and 
underlapping  toes,  in-growing  nails,  caries  of  the  bone,  exostosis 
of  the  toe-bones,  onyxitis  of  the  toes,  flat-foot,  club-foot,  ulcers,  malig- 
nant and  fibrous  tumors,  dislocations,  changes  in  the  shape  of  the 
bones  from  pressure,  and  elephantiasis.  All  wounds,  injuries,  and  dis- 
eases are  extremely  liable  to  take  on  erysipelatous  and  scrofulous  con- 
ditions, which  speedily  endanger  life  through  their  inflammatory,  gan- 
grenous, or  debilitating  nature  ;  fatty  degeneration  of  the  tissues  may 
take  place,  and  weakness  of  the  joints  and  thickening  of  the  ankles 
plague  their  owners. 

Corns  consist  of  hardened  flesh  that  becomes  thorn-like  in  its  shape 
and  density,  and  a  dismal  source  of  pain.  "  A  corn,"  says  a  writer, 
"  is  really  a  wicked  demon,  incarnated  in  a  piece  of  callous  skin.  Its 
mission  is  to  distress  and  agonize  humanity  and  increase  its  wicked- 
ness." Gross  says,  "  A  bunyon  is  a  corn  on  a  large  scale,"  and  he  and 
other  writers  agree  that  it  is  caused  by  a  diversion  of  the  great-toe 
from  its  line  with  the  arch  of  the  foot.  When  the  toe  is  thus  diverted, 
it  forms  an  angle  on  the  foot,  which  the  shoe  irritates  and  makes 
callous  ;  inflamniation  sets  in,  and  suppuration  frequently  ensues, 
that,  in  extreme  cases,  may  make  necessary  amputation  of  the  foot 
or  feet. 

Fig.  5  represents  the  foot  of  a  young  woman  who  wore  high- 
heeled,  narrow-soled  shoes,  which  must  also  have  been  too  short. 

Figures  6  and  7  represent  forms  of  bunyon  complicated  with  under- 
and  over-lapping  toes. 


650 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


Fig.  8  shows  a  deformity  of  the  foot  resulting  from  inflammation 
of  the  metatarsal,  phalangeal,  or  great-toe  joint. 

Fig.  9  shows  an  apparatus  for  the  cure  of  bunyons.  Its  object  is 
to  draw  the  great-toe  back  into  line  with  the  great  arch  of  the  foot. 


Fig.  o. 


Fio.  6. 


Erichson  says,  bunyon  is  caused  by  improji^rly  cut  shoes,  and  adds 
that  to  cure  it  the  foot  should  be  put  in  a  shoe  cut  straight  from 
heel  to  toe  at  the  inner  line  of  the  sole.  The  toes  are  naturally  quite 
flexible.  Cases  are  well  known  of  men  and  women  who,  being  devoid 
of  hands  or  fingers,  have  learned  to  use  the  feet  and  toes  instead. 
Miss  Biffin,  of  London,  became  expert  as  a  portrait-painter  ;  another 

woman  used  scissors  to  cut  out  all  sorts 
of  figures  from  paper  ;  and  men  have 
been  fully  as  capable  with  their  toes.  The 
Chinese  and  Hindoos  are  said  to  be  able 
to  pick  up  the  most  delicate  objects  with 
their  toes.  Yet  in  most  feet  the  toes  are 
wholly  incapable  of  independent  motion, 
while  in  many  feet  they  are  entirely  stiff, 
and  are  distressing  objects  to  look  at. 

In -growing  nails  are  caused  by  shoes 
which  are  too  short,  and  are  a  source  of 
exquisite  torture.  This  disease  may  de- 
generate into  a  worse  condition  called 
onyxitis  (see  Fig.  10),  when  it  discharges 
a  fetid  humor,  and  may  render  a  resort 
to  the  surgeon's  knife  a  necessity.  Caries 
of  the  bone  may  follow  wounds,  bruises, 
contusions,  bunyons,  corns,  and  calluses  of  the  feet ;  and  bunyons,  corns, 
and  calluses,  as  well  as  wounds,  bruises,  and  contusions,  may  take  on 
erysipelatous,  scrofulous,  ulcerous,  or  tumorous  conditions.     Exostosis 


Fig. 7. 


FASHION  AND  DEFORMITY  IN  THE  FEET.       651 

of  the  bones  (Fig.  11)  is  an  abnormal  growth  which  requires  the  saw, 
knife,  and  gouge  of  the  surgeon  for  its  extirpation.  The  toes  are  es- 
pecially liable  to  this  disease. 

Fig.  12  is  a  specimen  of  splay  or  flat  foot.  It  is  caused  by  a  break- 
ing down  of  the  arch  of  the  foot,  whereby  locomotion  becomes  painful 
and  sometimes  impossible.  Impairment  of  the  general  health  accom- 
panies it ;  in  its  worst  forms  a  partial  displacement  of  the  bones  occurs, 
the  toes  turn  up,  and  the  sole  grows  convex,  while  the  ankle  is  very 
likely  to  thicken  and  lose  strength  by  fatty  degeneration.  It  is  most 
common  among  youth.  Some  writers  attribute  it  to  "  vicious  eversions 
of  the  foot  in  attempts  at  polite  walking"  ;  by  others  it  is  attributed 
to  overwork.  It  is  most  common  among  the  children  of  the  wealthy 
classes.  Old  people  are  subject  to  it  from  a  breaking  down  of  the 
tissues  with  age.  For  its  cure  local  means  must  be  used,  and  special 
attention  be  given  to  the  general  health. 


Fig.  8. 


A  disease  called  elephantiasis,  sometimes  necessitating  amputation 
of  the  whole  limb,  may  result  from  injuries  to  the  foot.  A  case  of  this 
sort  is  found  in  the  books,  where  a  dislocation  of  the  foot,  caused  by 
drawing  off  a  boot,  induced  the  disease. 

It  is  now  time  to  consider  defects  in  shoes,  by  which  most  of  these 
diseases  may  be  provoked  or  aggravated. 

Dowie,  who  was  a  practical  as  well  as  theoretical  shoemaker,  and 
so  full  of  enthusiasm  that  he  studied  the  foot  under  skillful  anatomists, 
and  sent  all  his  journeymen  to  a  course  of  lectures  on  the  feet,  enumer- 
ates as  the  principal  evils,  that  shoes  are  worn  too  short ;  that  they  are 
cut  too  narrow  at  the  toes  and  in  the  sole;  that  the  soles  do  not  con- 
form to  the  shape  of  the  inner  curve  of  the  foot,  nor  to  the  line  of 
the  great  arch  or  instep  and  the  great-toe  ;  that  at  the  waist,  or  mid- 
dle, the  sole  is  too  stiff  and  unyielding  ;  that  the  toe  is  vertically  too 


652 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


shallow,  or  "  wedge-toed,"  as  lie  calls  it ;  that  the  heel  is  too  high  ; 
that  the  sole  turns  up  too  much  at  the  toes.  He  and  Camper  agree  on 
these  points.  The  evils  attending  shoes  too  short  will  be  more  readily- 
perceived  when  it  is  understood  that  the  foot  is  lengthened  in  walk- 
ing, and  more  in  running  and  jumping. 

The  degree  of  elongation  depends  upon  the  shape  of  the  foot. 
Long,  slim,  high-arched  feet  elongate  most  ;  short,  fleshy  feet  least. 
In  the  first  case  the  elongation  varies  from  one  fourth  of  an  inch  to 
one  inch.  It  takes  place  forward  and  back,  and  the  shoe  should  be 
long  enough  to  allow  for  it.     It  is  produced  by  the  flattening  of  the 


Fig.  9. — Apparatus  for  the  Treatment 
of  buntons. 


Fig.  10. — Onyxitis  of  the  Great  Toe. 


arch  of  the  foot,  when  the  weight  of  the  body  falls  upon  it  ;  just  as  a 
carriage-spring  elongates  under  pressure.  The  shoe  which  is  just  long 
enough  when  the  foot  is  at  rest,  becomes  too  short  when  the  elongation 
takes  place,  and  the  toes  rise,  as  shown  by  the  dotted  lines  in  Fig.  13, 
preventing  them  from  forming  the  firm  pier  which  the  anterior  portion 
of  the  arch  of  the  foot  should  have  to  rest  upon,  diminishing  the  elas- 
ticity of  the  organs,  impairing  their  muscular  force,  and  inducing  the 
formation  of  corns  through  the  rubbing  of  the  toes  against  the  leather. 
The  weight  of  the  body  also  crowds  the  toes  up,  and,  turning  the  great- 
toe  out  of  place,  unfits  it  for  its  useful  function.  In-Growing  nails 
are  caused  by  short  shoes.     An  old  poet  says — 

"  The  shoe  too  short,  the  foot  will  wring  "  ; 

and  an  old  English  couplet  sums  up  the  height  of  aggravating  mis- 
ery in  these  lines  : 

"  Here's  to  our  friends  ;  as  for  our  foes, 
We  wish  them  tihort  shoes,  and  corns  on  their  toes." 


FASHION  AND   DEFORMITY  IN  THE  FEET.       653 

Narrow-toed  shoes  aggravate  the  abnormal  position  of  the  great- 
toe,  and  cramp  the  other  toes  closely  together,  stopping  all  their  free 
and  healthful  motion. 

Narrow  soles  cramp  the  whole  foot  ;  calluses,  corns,  stiff  and  in- 
elastic joints,  and  wasted  muscles  follow.  The  distress  endured  by  a 
fleshy  foot  in  a  narrow  shoe  must  be  felt  to  be  appreciated.  If  shoes 
are  not  cut "  rights  and  lefts,"  they  do  not  conform  to  the  shape  of  the 
foot,  and  keep  it  in  a  continuous  strain,  exercising  also  a  tendency  to 
break  down  the  supporting  arch.  The  foot,  thrown  out  of  position, 
falls  too  far  to  one  side  or  the  other,  and  we  have  "  running  down  at 
the  heels,"  and  vicious  inversions  of  the  foot  in  walking. 

Tight  shoes  impede  the  circulation,  deprive  the  feet  of  the  warmth 
they  need,  and  ultimately  cause  waste  of  the  tissues.  A  friend  of 
the  writer,  a  strong,  vigorous  man,  in  splendid  health,  nearly  lost  his 
life  from  congestion  induced  by  an  hour's  wearing  of  a  pair  of  tight 
boots.  Of  shoes  too  stiff  at  the  waist  or  middle,  Dowie  says,  "  Rigidity 
of  this  portion  of  the  foot-covering  is  particularly  destructive  of  the 
muscles  of  the  foot  and  leg,  for  it  interferes  almost  entirely  with  the 
free  play  of  the  whole  foot."  * 

"  Wedge-toed  "  shoes  call  for  some  preliminary  remark.  If  one 
examines  the  ends  of  the  fingers,  it  will  be  seen  that  they  have  a 
fleshy  protuberance  ;  the  toes  have  this  in  common  with  the  fingers, 
and  its  office  in  both  is  to  make  a  soft,  cushion-like  protection  for  the 
bones.  A  wedge-toed  shoe,  such  as  is  seen  in  Fig.  14,  forces  the  toes 
immovably  into  a  close  envelope  that  crowds  this  cushion  away  from 
the  bones,  and  wastes  it  to  such  an  extent  that  the  bones,  lacking  its 
protection,  become  diseased  often  to  a  degree  requiring  surgical  treat- 
ment. The  dotted  lines  in  Fig.  14  indicate  how  the  evil  might  be 
mitigated  by  giving  a  fullness  in  the  upper  leather. 
Take  a  round  and  narrow  wedge-toed  shoe,  and 
let  it  be  short  as  one  may  generally  see  them, 
worn,  and  you  have  an  instrument  of  torture  that 
is  little  short  of  the  famous  iron  boot  of  the  past 
ages. 

"  Box-toes  "   possessed  the   virtues    of   giving    Fig.  11.— Exostosis  op  the 

room  for  the  extension  of  the  foot,  and  saved 

their  wearers  from  the  torments  of  "  wedge-toes,"  but  they  harl  other 

defects,  and  are  now  almost  out  of  use. 

High  heels  augment  all  the  injuries  and  miseries  we  have  enumer- 
ated. The  foot  on  heels  is  in  the  position  it  occupies  in  going  down-hill, 
or  down  the  roof  of  a  house,  a  most  insecure  and  unstable  one.  The 
weight  of  the  body  is  thus  thrown  forward,  the  center  of  gravity 

*  This  is  a  prolific  cause  of  the  homely  spindle-shank,  which  he  says  marks  the  Eng- 
lish laborer  in  his  wooden  solid  shoe.  Dowie  cites  the  Irish  laborer,  who  goes  barefoot, 
and  has  a  splendid  muscle  in  his  calf,  as  a  sample  of  what  free  play  of  the  foot  will  do 
for  the  improvement  of  the  leg. 


654-  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

is  shifted,  and  the  weight  becomes  unequally  distributed  among  the 
different  parts  of  the  foot,  and  the  forward  portion  has  to  do  the  bulk 
of  the  work.  The  inevitable  detriment  such  a  condition  entails  upon 
the  health  of  the  foot  and  of  the  body  does  not  need  to  be  enlarged 
upon.  Additional  inconveniences  resulting  from  it  arise  from  the  lia- 
bility of  the  body  to  fall  from  its  unstable  poise,  and  the  propensity 
of  the  narrowly  pointed  heels  to  catch  in  every  little  crack  or  opening, 
and  trip  up  the  wearer.  Of  these  evils  the  awkward,  tottering  gait 
produced  by  high-heeled  shoes  is  visible  evidence. 

The  center  of  gravity  of  the  body  falls  directly  on  the  angle  pro- 
duced by  the  lines  A  and  B  in  Fig.  15,  which  shows  the  foot  at  rest 
in  its  normal  position  on  a  level  surface  ;  the  line  A  falls  inside  the 
outline  of  the  foot,  whereby  the  harmonious  relations  of  each  portion 
of  the  foot  are  indicated.  Figs.  13  and  16  represent  the  foot  as  in 
position  upon  high  heels,  13  being  rather  exaggerated,  but  16  little 
higher  than  the  average  heel.  A  glance  will  show  that  just  as  the 
heel  is  elevated,  the  line  A  is  thrown  outside  of  the  outline  of  the 
foot,  disturbing  the  relation  of  its  parts,  throwing  the  weight  of  the 
body  unequally  upon  it,  and  thereby  seriously  interfering  with  its 
functions. 


Fig.  12— Splay  or  Flat  Fooa 

There  are  those  who  believe  and  assert  that  an  upright  carriage  of 
the  body  is  assisted  by  high  heels.  A  little  thought  and  observation 
will  convince  the  candid  inquirer  that  this  is  a  mistake.  A  shoemaker 
called  my  attention  to  the  baggy  trousers  knees  observable  in  connec- 
tion with  the  wearing  of  high -heeled  boots,  and  said, "  Elevation  of  the 
heel  thrusts  the  knee  forward."  The  human  body  should  stand  erect 
from  the  heels  upward,  but  the  projection  of  the  knee  makes  necessary 
a  bending  forward  of  the  whole  frame,  to  maintain  an  equilibrium. 
This  is  undoubtedly  one  cause  of  the  ungraceful  round  shoulders  and 
poked-forward  head  noticeable  with  so  many  women  and  girls. 

The  shoes  of  men,  as  a  rule,  are  not  so  badly  constructed  and  worn 
as  the  shoes  of  women  and  children.  A  larger  proportion  of  men 
wear  custom-made  shoes,  in  which  some  effort  is  made  to  fit  the  foot. 
Business-men  generally  have  eschewed  heels,  except  the  lowest  "lifts." 


FASHION  AND   DEFORMITY  IN  THE  FEET,       655 

Among  soldiers  and  policemen,  foot-soreness  is  a  common  complaint, 
and  renders  the  man  who  has  to  endure  it  unfit  for  service.  It  is  stated 
that,  during  the  late  East  Indian  wars,  the  native  foot-soldiery,  when 
ordered  to  "  march,"  took  off  their  regulation  shoes  and  hung  them  on 
the  ends  of  their  muskets,  while  they  went  barefoot.  Commanding 
officers  reported  great  loss  of  men  who  could  not  keep  up  on  account 
of  foot-soreness,  and  were  easily  picked  off  by  the  enemy.  A  High- 
land regiment,  when  ordered  to  "  charge  "  the  foe,  took  off  their  shoes 
and  charged  barefoot,  as  they  could  do  more  effective  work.  The  regu- 
lation shoes  interfered  with  free  muscular  action.  Dowie  characterizes 
the  shoe  as  a  "Juggernaut  of  cruelty,"  saying  it  possesses  wedge-toes, 
a  rigid  waist,  high  heels,  and  convex  inner  soles,  and  adds  :  "  If  a  sol- 
dier be  weak  or  lame  in  the  feet,  he  can  never  apply  with  advantage 
the  strength  of  his  arm  in  charging  the  enemy,  or  in  sustaining  a 
charge,  because  the  foot  is  that  part  of  the  mechanical  system  or  lev- 
erage which  rests  upon  the  fulcrum,  the  ground,  and,  if  you  weaken  the 
leverage  at  this  important  point,  the  strength  of  the  whole  system  is 
reduced." 


Fig.  13. 


The  opinions  of  Mr.  Dowie  on  this  subject  coincide  with  those  of 
eminent  military  men.  The  defects  which  he  enumerated  were  com- 
mon in  the  shoes  of  our  own  soldiery  during  the  late  war,  and  were 
followed  with  the  same  results. 

It  is  very  hard  to  find  any  woman  who  will  confess  that  her  shoes 
are  too  tight,  too  short,  or  too  high-heeled.  Her  shoes  are  usually 
"  miles  too  big,"  and  hurt  by  their  looseness.  If  women  complain  of 
lame  backs  or  aching  feet,  they  will  be  sure  the  shoes  have  no  part  in 
it ;  because  women  are  really  not  aware  how  they  have  departed  from 
nature  in  this  regard.  The  perfect  female  foot  is  described  by  a  phy- 
sician as  follows  :  "  It  should  have  great  breadth  and  fullness  of  instep, 
a  well-marked  great-toe,  a  long  second  toe,  a  small  little-toe."  "Wom- 
an needs  a  strong  and  firm  footing,  particularly  because  of  her  func- 
tion of  motherhood,  and  yet  this  perfect  foot  is  the  exact  opposite  of 


656  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

the  ideal  lady's  foot  of  to-day  ;  narrowness,  shortness,  and  littleness 
are  the  qualities  that  go  to  make  it  up  ;  and  there  are  women,  if  we 
may  believe  what  is  said  in  the  newspapers,  who  to  secure  a  narrow 
foot  are  willing  to  have  the  little-toe  ruined. 

Strange  as  it  is,  the  American  women,  while  cramping  the  feet, 
deny  it.  The  Chinese  are  more  logical.  They  distort  and  cripple  the 
feminine  foot  to  a  much  greater  degree,  and  then  sing  its  praises.  Its 
favorite  name,  the  "  golden  lily,"  is  well  known. 

Many  of  the  peculiar  ailments  under  which  w^omen  pass  their  days 
in  invalidism,  unhappy  and  miserable  themselves  and  making  others 
unhappy,  would  vanish  or  be  greatly  mitigated  if  they  would  but 
apply  common  sense  to  the  selection  of  their  shoes.  It  is  very  hard  to 
persuade  them  to  reform  their  habits  on  this  point,  but  I  have  never 
known  any  woman  who  had  learned  the  new  comfort  to  go  back  to  the 
old  habit. 

Xo  exercise  is  so  healthful  and  delightful  as  walking,  yet  few  wom- 
en can  endure  it.  For  to  walk  in  their  ordinary  shoes  is  one  of  the 
most  exhausting  labors  women  can  attempt.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
by  a  thorough  and  careful  system  of  pedestrianism  many  women  would 
become  robust,  though  now  half-invalids.  I  know  of  one  who  walked 
on  an  average  two  or  three  miles  a  day,  and  would  spend  an  hour  or 

two  cutting  brush,  saplings,  and  small 
trees,  lopping  off  limbs,  hauling  brush 
to  gullies  and  into  heaps,  and  climbing 
fences.  Her  garments  were  warm  and 
loose,  her  shoes  "  stogies,"  big,  broad, 
and  low-heeled.  Health  came  as  a  re- 
ward. Another  case  is  of  a  lady  who 
Fiaw-AWEDOK-TOEDSHOK.         ;^  ^  couimercial   traveler   in   a  large 

Western  State.  Her  health  broke  with  in-door  confinement  at  school- 
teaching  and  book-keeping,  and  she  was  advised  to  try  the  road,  which 
she  did,  as  agent  for  a  sash,  door,  and  blind  factory,  and  afterward  for 
a  paint,  oil,  and  glass  establishment.  She  never  misses  a  day  nor  a 
train,  dresses  feet  and  body  for  comfort,  is  hearty  and  well,  and  earns 
a  large  salary. 

The  feet  not  only  look  smaller,  but  really  become  so  in  tight,  high- 
heeled  shoes,  in  consequence  of  a  reduction  of  the  blood-supply.  We 
are  told  of  a  Frenchman  who  invented  an  apparatus  for  reducing  the 
size  of  the  nose,  and  it  consisted  only  of  a  spring  which  cut  off  the 
supply  of  blood  to  the  organ.  A  paper  was  read  at  a  recent  health 
congress  in  Switzerland,  calling  attention  to  a  French  style  of  shoe, 
which,  the  author  remarked,  gave  the  foot  a  "hoof -like"  appearance. 
This  style  is  much  worn  here,  and  produces  a  clumping,  ungraceful 
jolt  in  the  gait,  tending  to  induce  destructive  spinal  vibrations. 

Probably  the  worst  and  most  lasting  injuries  to  the  foot  are  pro- 
duced during  childhood,  when  the  bones  and  cartilages  are  tender,  and 


FASHION  AND  DEFORMITY  IN  THE  FEET.       657 

the  muscles  are  soft  and  most  sensitive  to  strains.  As  a  rule,  chil- 
dren's shoes  are  too  short  and  too  tight,  and  no  allowance  is  made  in 
them  for  the  growth  which  is  all  the  time  going  on,  or  trying  to  go 
on,  in  the  foot.  Evidently  an  injury  cramping  the  growth  at  this 
time  can  not  be  remedied  ;  and  if  the  children  have  any  tendency  to 
become  bandy-legged  or  knock-kneed,  badly  shaped  shoes,  especially  if 
they  have  high  heels,  will  aggravate  the  evil  and  make  it  more  lasting. 


Fig.  15. — Proper  Position  of  the  Foot  upon  the  Ground. 

Andre,  an  old  French  writer,  is  quoted  by  Camper  as  saying  that 
high-heeled  boots  produce  curvature  of  the  spine  in  children.  The 
shifting  of  the  body  from  foot  to  foot  to  get  ease  contributes  to  this 
effect  in  one  direction,  and  the  bending  forward  of  the  body  to  pre- 
serve equilibrium  in  another,  while  the  soft  condition  of  the  bones 
and  muscles  is  a  helping  influence  to  it. 


Fig.  16. 


It  should  be  remembered,  too,  that  children  suffer  most  from  in- 
growing nails  caused  by  short  shoes.  Flat-foot,  which  is  also  most 
common  among  children  and  youth,  is  largely  the  result  of  convexity 
of  the  inner  sole — a  too  common  fault  of  children's  shoes.  In  such 
shoes  the  center  of  gravity  of  the  body  is  thrown  out  of  its  relations 
with  the  corresponding  point  in  the  foot,  and  eversions  take  place. 
The  continuous  strain  between  the  foot  and  an  improperly  fitted  shoe 
VOL.  XXIV. — 42 


658 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


tends  to  produce  dislocations  of  the  bones  and  to  weakening  of  the 
muscles.  Doubtless  much  of  the  breaking  down  of  girls  at  school 
may  be  traced  to  some  such  cause  as  this.  Boys'  shoes,  on  the  other 
hand,  generally  have  low  heels  and  broad  soles,  and  their  wearers  are 
relieved  from  the  special  suffering  which  too  vain  mothers  allow  to  be 
inflicted  on  the  feet  of  their  daughters. 

The  evils  to  which  women  are  subjected  from  the  causes  we  have 
delineated  do  not  stop  with  the  sufferers  who  indu,ce  them  upon  them- 
selves, but  are  transmitted  to  their  children,  an  inheritance  of  acquired 
weakness  and  suffering. 


Fig.  17. 

Some  specimens  of  the  shoemaker's  art  are  shown,  to  illustrate  how 
far  those  artists  are  from  adapting  their  work  to  what  the  feet  require. 

Fig.  17  is  the  sole  of  an  old  lady's  shoe,  custom-made,  for  the 
wearer,  suffering  from  constant  aching  feet,  wanted  shoes  cut  for  ease. 
The  heel  is  correctly  cut,  but  the  soles  are  made  convex,  or  not  curved, 
as  the  dotted  line  indicates  they  should  be,  to  the  inner  curve  of  the 
foot ;  the  toes  are  narrowed,  or  rounded,  turning  the  great-toe  inward 
and  cramping  the  rest,  and  they  allow  nothing  whatever  for  the  elonga- 
tion of  the  foot,  and  would  look  like  stuffed  puddings  when  the  feet 
were  in  them.  They  were  cut  of  soft  kid,  but,  except  the  low  heel  and 
the  soft  material,  they  had  not  a  single  merit.  They  were  cut  in  exact 
contrariety  to  the  shape  of  the  feet,  and  did  not  bring  about  the  relief 
that  was  sought  for  in  them. 

Fig.  18  is  a  sample  of  an  improved  cut  of  shoe  for  women  and 
misses.     These  shoes  are  worn  by  a  small  minority  at  present.     They 


Pig.  18. 


Pig.  19. 


do  not  altogether  escape  the  faults  of  other  shoes  ;  some  are  wedge- 
toed  ;  in  others  the  heel  is  too  high  ;  and  oftentimes  a  fault  in  the  sole 
wrenches  or  distorts  the  foot.  The  best  grades  of  these  shoes  are  too 
high  in  price  for  other  than  well-to-do  people  to  enjoy  them. 


ON  RAINBOWS.  659 

Fig.  19  is  a  specimen  of  the  best  sort  of  shoe  made  for  children, 
but,  worn  too  short  and  too  tight,  it  will  become  a  means  of  harm  to 
the  tender  foot  of  the  child. 

It  is  hard  to  understand  how  men  and  women  can  endure  to  wear 
the  present  style  of  pointed-toed  shoes  and  boots.  The  "  corn-crop  " 
is  one  that  never  fails,  and  the  prevalent  fashion  will  certainly  assure 
a  yield  of  unusual  abundance.  The  devotee  who  wore  peas  in  his  shoes 
for  penance  could  make  ample  atonement  for  all  his  sins  by  simply 
dressing  his  feet  according  to  the  mode. 

The  whole  subject  is  worthy  of  the  profound  study  of  the  physi- 
cian, the  shoemaker,  and  the  shoe-wearer,  all  of  whom  seem  to  have 
wickedly  neglected  it.  If  men  and  women,  in  this  period  of  the  revival 
of  the  antique,  will  study  the  natural  and  beautiful  feet  of  that  era, 
when  the  appreciation  of  physical  beauty  was  most  perfectly  devel- 
oped, we  may  hope  for  some  not-far-distant  time  when  our  demand 
will  be  for  a  normal  healthy  foot  in  a  natural  and  comfortable  cover- 
ing, and  not  for  a  crippled  and  distorted,  withered,  ugly  "  club,"  bound 
in  an  instrument  of  torment. 


ON  KAmEOWS.* 

By  JOHN  TYNDALL,  F.E.S. 

THE  oldest  historic  reference  to  the  rainbow  is  known  to  all :  "  I 
do  set  my  bow  in  the  cloud,  and  it  shall  be  for  a  token  of  a  cove- 
nant between  me  and  the  earth.  .  .  .  And  the  bow  shall  be  in  the 
cloud  ;  and  I  shall  look  upon  it,  that  I  may  remember  the  everlasting 
covenant  between  God  and  every  living  creature  of  all  flesh  that  is 
upon  the  earth."  To  the  sublime  conceptions  of  the  theologian  suc- 
ceeded the  desire  for  exact  knowledge  characteristic  of  the  man  of 
science.  Whatever  its  ultimate  cause  might  have  been,  the  proximate 
cause  of  the  rainbow  was  physical,  and  the  aim  of  science  was  to  ac- 
count for  the  bow  on  physical  principles.  Progress  toward  this  con- 
summation was  very  slow.  Slowly  the  ancients  mastered  the  princi- 
ples of  reflection.  Still  more  slowly  were  the  laws  of  refraction  dug 
from  the  quarries  in  which  Nature  had  imbedded  them.  I  use  this 
language  because  the  laws  were  incorporate  in  Nature  before  they  were 
discovered  by  man.  Until  the  time  of  Alhazan,  an  Arabian  mathe- 
matician, who  lived  at  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century,  the  views 
entertained  regarding  refraction  were  utterly  vague  and  incorrect. 
After  Alhazan  came  Roger  Bacon  and  Yitellio,t  who  made  and  re- 

*  From  author's  advance  sheets. 

f  Whewell  ("  History  of  the  Inductive  Sciences,"  vol.  i,  p.  345)  describes  Yitellio  as  a 
Pole.  His  mother  was  a  Pole;  but  Poggendorff  ("Handworterbuch  d,  Exacten  Wissen- 
schaften  ")  claims  Vitellio  himself  as  a  German,  bom  in  Thiiringen.  "  Vitellio  "  is  de- 
scribed as  a  corruption  of  Witelo. 


66o  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

corded  many  observations  and  measurements  on  the  subject  of  refrac- 
tion. To  them  succeeded  Kepler,  who,  taking  the  results  tabulated 
by  his  predecessors,  applied  his  amazing  industry  to  extract  from  them 
their  meaning — that  is  to  say,  to  discover  the  physical  principles  which 
lay  at  their  root.  In  this  attempt  he  was  less  successful  than  in  his 
astronomical  labors.  In  1604  Kepler  published  his  "  Supplement  to 
Yitellio,"  in  which  he  virtually  acknowledged  his  defeat,  by  enunciat- 
ing an  approximate  rule,  instead  of  an  all-satisfying  natural  law.  The 
discovery  of  such  a  law,  which  constitutes  one  of  the  chief  corner- 
stones of  optical  science,  was  made  by  Willebrord  Snell,  about  1621.* 

A  ray  of  light  may,  for  our  purposes,  be  presented  to  the  mind  as 
a  luminous  straight  line.  Let  such  a  ray  be  supposed  to  fall  vertically 
jupon  a  perfectly  calm  water-surface.  The  incidence,  as  it  is  called,  is 
then  perpendicular,  and  the  ray  goes  through  the  water  without  devia- 
tion to  the  right  or  left.  In  other  words,  the  ray  in  the  air  and  the 
ray  fin  the  water  form  one  continuous  straight  line.  But  the  least 
deviation  from  the  perpendicular  causes  the  ray  to  be  broken,  or  "  re- 
fracted," at  the  point  of  incidence.  What,  then,  is  the  law  of  refrac- 
tion discovered  by  Snell  ?  It  is  this,  that  no  matter  how  the  angle  of 
incidence,  and  with  it  the  angle  of  refraction,  may  vary,  the  relative 
magnitude  of  two  lines,  dependent  on  these  angles,  and  called  their 
sines,  remains,  for  the  same  medium,  perfectly  unchanged.  Measure, 
in  other  words,  for  various  angles,  each  of  these  two  lines  with  a  scale, 
and  divide  the  length  of  the  longer  one  by  that  of  the  shorter  ;  then, 
however  the  lines  individually  vary  in  length,  the  quotient  yielded 
by  this  division  remains  absolutely  the  same.  It  is,  in  fact,  what  is 
called  the  index  of  refraction  of  the  medium. 

Science  is  an  organic  growth,  and  accurate  measurements  give  co- 
herence to  the  scientific  organism.  Were  it  not  for  the  antecedent 
discovery  of  the  law  of  sines,  founded  as  it  was  on  exact  measure- 
ments, the  rainbow  could  not  have  been  explained.  Again  and  again, 
m6reover,  the  angular  distance  of  the  rainbow  from  the  sun  had  been 
determined  and  found  constant.  In  this  divine  remembrancer  there 
was  no  variablene'ss.  A  line  drawn  from  the  sun  to  the  rainbow,  and 
another  drawn  from  the  rainbow  to  the  observer's  eye,  always  inclosed 
an  angle  of  41°.  Whence  this  steadfastness  of  position — this  inflexi- 
ble adherence  to  a  particular  angle  ?  Newton  gave  to  De  Dominis  f 
the  credit  of  the  answer  ;  but  we  really  owe  it  to  the  genius  of  Des- 
cartes. He  followed  with  his  mind's  eye  the  rays  of  light  impinging 
on  a  rain -drop.  He  saw  them  in  part  reflected  from  the  outside  surface 
of  the  drop.     He  saw  them  refracted  on  entering  the  drop,  reflected 

*  Born  at  Leyden  1591 ;  died  1626. 

f  Archbishop  of  Spalatro,  and  Primate  of  Dalmatia.  Fled  to  England  about  1616  ; 
became  a  Protestant,  and  was  made  Dean  of  Windsor.  Returned  to  Italy  and  resumed 
his  Catholicism ;  but  was  handed  over  to  the  Inquisition,  and  died  in  prison  (Poggen- 
dorfTs  "Biographical  Dictionary"). 


ON  RAINBOWS.  66i 

from  its  back,  and  again  refracted  on  their  emergence.  Descartes 
was  acquainted  with  the  law  of  Snell,  and,  taking  up  his  pen,  he  cal- 
culated, by  means  of  that  law,  the  whole  course  of  the  rays.  He 
proved  that  the  vast  majority  of  them  escaped  from  the  drop  as  cliver- 
gent  rays,  and,  on  this  account,  soon  became  so  enfeebled  as  to  produce 
no  sensible  effect  upon  the  eye  of  an  observer.  At  one  particular 
angle,  however — namely,  the  angle  41°  aforesaid — they  emerged  in  a 
practically  parallel  sheaf.  In  their  union  was  strength,  for  it  was  this 
particular  sheaf  which  carried  the  light  of  the  "  primary  "  rainbow  to 
the  eye. 

There  is  a  certain  form  of  emotion  called  intellectual  pleasure, 
which  may  be  excited  by  poetry,  literature,  nature,  or  art.  But  I 
doubt  whether  among  the  pleasures  of  the  intellect  there  is  any  more 
pure  and  concentrated  than  that  experienced  by  the  scientific  man 
when  a  difficulty  which  has  challenged  the  human  mind  for  ages  melts 
before  his  eyes,  and  recrystallizes  as  an  illustration  of  natural  law. 
This  pleasure  was  doubtless  experienced  by  Descartes  when  he  suc- 
ceeded in  placing  upon  its  true  physical  basis  the  most  splendid  meteor 
of  our  atmosphere.  Descartes  showed,  moreover,  that  the  "  secondary 
bow  "  was  produced  when  the  rays  of  light  underwent  two  reflections 
within  the  drop,  and  two  refractions  at  the  points  of  incidence  and 
emergence. 

It  is  said  that  Descartes  behaved  ungenerously  to  Snell — that, 
though  acquainted  with  the  unpublished  papers  of  the  learned  Dutch- 
man, he  failed  to  acknowledge  his  indebtedness.  On  this  I  will  not 
dwell,  for  I  notice  on  the  part  of  the  public  a  tendency,  at  all  events 
in  some  cases,  to  emphasize  such  short-comings.  The  temporary  weak- 
ness of  a  great  man  is  often  taken  as  a  sample  of  his  whole  character. 
The  spot  upon  the  sun  usurps  the  place  of  his  "  surpassing  glory." 
This  is  not  unfrequent,  but  it  is  nevertheless  unfair. 

Descartes  proved  that,  according  to  the  principles  of  refraction, 
a  circular  band  of  light  must  appear  in  the  heavens  exactly  where  the 
rainbow  is  seen.  But  how  are  the  colors  of  the  bow  to  be  accounted 
for  ?  Here  his  penetrative  mind  came  to  the  very  verge  of  the  solu- 
tion, but  the  limits  of  knowledge  at  the  time  barred  his  further  prog- 
ress. He  connected  the  colors  of  the  rainbow  with  those  produced 
by  a  prism  ;  but  then  these  latter  needed  explanation  just  as  much  as 
the  colors  of  the  bow  itself.  The  solution,  indeed,  was  not  possible 
until  the  composite  nature  of  white  light  had  been  demonstrated  by 
Newton.  Applying  the  law  of  Snell  to  the  different  colors  of  the 
spectrum,  Newton  proved  that  the  primary  bow  must  consist  of  a  se- 
ries of  concentric  circular  bands,  the  largest  of  which  is  red,  and  the 
smallest  violet  ;  while  in  the  secondary  bow  these  colors  must  be  re- 
versed. The  main  secret  of  the  rainbow,  if  I  may  use  such  language, 
was  thus  revealed. 

I  have  said  that  each  color  of  the  rainbow  is  carried  to  the  eye  by 


662 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


a  sheaf  of  approximately  parallel  rays.  But  what  determines  this  par- 
allelism ?  Here  our  real  difficulties  begin,  but  they  are  to  be  sur- 
mounted by  attention.  Let  us  endeavor  to  follow  the  course  of  the 
solar  rays  before  and  after  they  impinge  upon  a  spherical  drop  of 
water.  Take  first  of  all  the  ray  that  passes  through  the  center  of  the 
drop.  This  particular  ray  strikes  the  back  of  the  drop  as  a  perpen- 
dicular, its  reflected  portion  returning  along  its  own  course.  Take 
another  ray  close  to  this  central  one  and  parallel  to  it — for  the  sun's 
rays  when  they  reach  the  earth  are  parallel.  When  this  second  ray 
enters  the  drop  it  is  refracted  ;  on  reaching  the  back  of  the  drop  it  is 
there  reflected,  being  a  second  time  refracted  on  its  emergence  from 
the  drop.  Here  the  incident  and  the  emergent  rays  inclose  a  small 
angle  with  each  other.  Take  again  a  third  ray  a  little  farther  from 
the  central  one  than  the  last.  The  drop  will  act  upon  it  as  it  acted 
upon  its  neighbor,  the  incident  and  emergent  rays  inclosing  in  this  in- 
stance a  larger  angle  than  before.  As  we  retreat  farther  from  the 
central  ray  the  enlargement  of  this  angle  continues  up  to  a  certain 
point,  where  it  reaches  a  maximum,  after  which  further  retreat  from 
the  central  ray  diminishes  the  angle.  Now,  a  maximum  resembles  the 
ridge  of  a  hill,  or  a  water-shed,  from  which  the  land  falls  in  a  slope  at 
each  side.  In  the  case  before  us  the  divergence  of  the  rays  when  they 
quit  the  rain-drop  would  be  represented  by  the  steepness  of  the  slope. 
On  the  top  of  the  water-shed — that  is  to  say,  in  the  neighborhood  of 
our  maximum — is  a  kind  of  summit  level,  where  the  slope  for  some 
distance  almost  disappears.  But  the  disappearance  of  the  slope  indi- 
cates, in  the  case  of  our  rain-drop,  the  absence  of  divergence.  Hence 
we  find  that  at  our  maximum,  and  close  to  it,  there  issues  from  the 
drop  a  sheaf  of  rays  which  are  nearly,  if  not  quite,  parallel  to  each 
other.     These  are  the  so-called  "  efi^ective  rays  "  of  the  rainbow.* 

Let  me  here  point  to  a  series  of  measurements  which  will  illustrate 
the  gradual  augmentation  of  the  deflection  just  referred  to  until  it 
reaches  its  maximum,  and  its  gradual  diminution  at  the  other  side  of 
the  maximum.  The  measures  correspond  to  a  series  of  angles  of  inci- 
dence which  augment  by  steps  of  ten  degrees  : 


i  d 

10° 10° 

20° 19°86' 


30° 


28°  20' 


40° 35°  36' 


60° 


40°  40' 


I 

60°. 
70°. 
80°. 
90°. 


d 

42°  28' 
39°  48' 
31*    4' 

16 


The  figures  in  the  column  i  express  these  angles,  while  under  d  we 
have  in  each  case  the  accompanying  deviation,  or  the  angle  inclosed 

*  There  is,  in  fact,  a  bundle  of  rays  near  the  maximum,  which,  when  they  enter  the 
drop,  are  converged  by  refraction  almost  exactly  to  the  same  point  at  its  back.  If  the 
convergence  were  quite  exact,  then  the  symmetry  of  the  liquid  sphere  would  cause  the 
rays  to  quit  the  drop  aa  they  entered  it — that  is  to  say,  perfectly  parallel.    But  inasmuch 


ON  RAINBOWS.  663 

by  the  incident  and  emergent  rays.  It  will  be  seen  that  as  the  angle 
i  increases,  the  deviation  also  increases  up  to  42°  28',  after  which, 
although  the  angle  of  incidence  goes  on  augmenting,  the  deviation 
becomes  less.  The  maximum  42°  28'  corresponds  to  an  incidence 
of  60°,  but  in  reality  at  this  point  we  have  already  passed,  by  a  small 
quantity,  the  exact  maximum,  which  occurs  between  58°  and  59°.  Its 
amount  is  42°  30'.  This  deviation  corresponds  to  the  red  band  of  the 
rainbow.  In  a  precisely  similar  manner  the  other  colors  rise  to  their  maxi- 
mum, and  fall  on  passing  beyond  it  ;  the  maximum  for  the  violet  band 
being  40°  30'.  The  entire  width  of  the  primary  rainbow  is  therefore 
2°,  part  of  this  width  being  due  to  the  angular  magnitude  of  the  sun. 
We  have  thus  revealed  to  us  the  geometric  construction  of  the 
rainbow.  But  though  the  step  here  taken  by  Descartes  and  Newton 
was  a  great  one,  it  left  the  theory  of  the  bow  incomplete.  Within 
the  rainbow  proper,  in  certain  conditions  of  the  atmosphere,  are  seen  a 
series  of  richly-colored  zones,  which  were  not  explained  by  either  Des- 
cartes or  Newton.  They  are  said  to  have  been  first  described  by 
Mariotte,*  and  they  long  challenged  explanation.  At  this  point  our 
difficulties  thicken,  but,  as  before,  they  are  to  be  overcome  by  atten- 
tion. It  belongs  to  the  very  essence  of  a  maximum,  approached  con- 
tinuously on  both  sides,  that  on  the  two  sides  of  it  pairs  of  equal  value 
may  be  found.  The  maximum  density  of  water,  for  example,  is  39° 
Fahr.  Its  density  when  5°  colder,  and  when  5°  warmer,  than  this 
maximum  is  the  same.  So,  also,  with  regard  to  the  slopes  of  our 
water-shed.  A  series  of  pairs  of  points  of  the  same  elevation  can  be 
found  upon  the  two  sides  of  the  ridge  ;  and,  in  the  case  of  the  rain- 
bow, on  the  two  sides  of  the  maximum  deviation  we  have  a  succession 
of  pairs  of  rays  having  the  same  deflection.  Such  rays  travel  along 
the  same  line,  and  add  their  forces  together  after  they  quit  the  drop. 
But  light,  thus  re-enforced  by  the  coalescence  of  non-divergent  rays, 
ought  to  reach  the  eye.  It  does  so  ;  and  were  light  what  it  was  once 
supposed  to  be — a  flight  of  minute  particles  sent  by  luminous  bodies 
through  space — then  these  pairs  of  equally  deflected  rays  would  dif- 
fuse brightness  over  a  large  portion  of  the  area  within  the  primary 
bow.  But  inasmuch  as  light  consists  of  waves  and  not  of  particles, 
the  principle  of  interference  comes  into  play,  in  virtue  of  which  waves 
can  alternately  re-enforce  and  destroy  each  other.  Were  the  distance 
passed  over,  by  the  two  con*esponding  rays  within  the  drop,  the  same, 
they  would  emerge  exactly  as  they  entered.     But  in  no  case  are  the 

as  the  convergence  is  not  quite  exact,  the  parallelism  after  emergence  is  only  approxi- 
mate. The  emergent  rays  cut  each  other  at  extremely  sharp  angles,  thus  forming  a 
"  caustic  "  which  has  for  its  asymptote  the  ray  of  maximum  deviation  In  the  secondary 
bow  we  have  to  deal  with  a  minimum,  instead  of  a  maximum,  the  crossing  of  the  incident 
and  emergent  rays  producing  the  observed  reversal  of  the  colors.  (See  Engel  and  Shell- 
bach's  diagrams  of  the  rainbow.) 

*  Prior  of  St.  Martin-sous-Beaune,  near  Dijon,  member  of  the  French  Academy  of 
Sciences  ;  died  in  Paris,  May,  1684. 


664  TH^  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

distances  the  same.  The  consequence  is  that  when  the  rays  emerge 
from  the  drop  they  are  in  a  condition  either  to  support  or  to  destroy 
each  other.  By  such  alternate  re-enforcement  and  destruction,  the 
colored  zones  are  produced  within  the  primary  bow.  They  are  called 
"  supernumerary  bows,"  and  are  seen  not  only  within  the  primary  but 
sometimes  also  outside  the  secondary  bow.  The  condition  requisite 
for  their  production  is,  that  the  drops  which  constitute  the  shower  shall 
all  be  of  nearly  the  same  size.  When  the  drops  are  of  different  sizes, 
we  have  a  confused  superposition  of  the  different  colors,  an  approxi- 
mation to  white  light  being  the  consequence.  This  second  step  in  the 
explanation  of  the  rainbow  was  taken  by  a  man  the  quality  of  whose 
genius  resembled  that  of  Descartes  or  Newton,  and  who  eighty-two 
years  ago  was  appointed  Professor  of  Natural  Philosophy  in  the  Royal 
Institution  of  Great  Britain.  I  refer,  of  course,  to  the  illustrious 
Thomas  Young.* 

But  our  task  is  not,  even  now,  complete.  The  finishing  touch  to 
the  explanation  of  the  rainbow  was  given  by  our  last,  eminent,  As- 
tronomer Royal,  Sir  George  Airy.  Bringing  the  knowledge  possessed 
by  the  founders  of  the  undulatory  theory,  and  that  gained  by  subse- 
quent workers  to  bear  upon  the  question,  Sir  George  Airy  showed 
that,  though  Young's  general  principles  were  unassailable,  his  calcula- 
tions were  sometimes  wide  of  the  mark.  It  was  proved  by  Airy  that 
the  curve  of  maximum  illumination  in  the  rainbow  does  not  quite  co- 
incide with  the  geometric  curve  of  Descartes  and  Newton.  He  also 
extended  our  knowledge  of  the  supernumerary  bows,  and  corrected 
the  positions  which  Young  had  assigned  to  them.  Finally,  Professor 
Miller,  of  Cambridge,  and  Dr.  Galle,  of  Berlin,  illustrated  by  careful 
measurements  with  the  theodolite  the  agreement  which  exists  between 
the  theory  of  Airy  and  the  facts  of  observation.  Thus,  from  Des- 
cartes to  Airy,  the  intellectual  force  expended  in  the  elucidation  of  the 
rainbow,  though  broken  up  into  distinct  personalities,  might  be  re- 
garded as  that  of  an  individual  artist  engaged  throughout  this  time 
in  lovingly  contemplating,  revising,  and  perfecting  his  work. 

We  have  thus  cleared  the  ground  for  the  scries  of  experiments 
which  constitute  the  subject  of  this  discourse.  During  our  brief  resi- 
dence in  the  Alps  this  year,  we  were  favored  with  some  weather  of 
matchless  perfection ;  but  we  had  also  our  share  of  foggy  and  drizzly 
weather.  On  the  night  of  the  22d  of  September,  the  atmosphere  was 
especially  dark  and  thick;  At  9  r.  m.  I  opened  a  door  at  the  end  of  a 
passage  and  looked  out  into  the  gloom.  Behind  me  hung  a  small 
lamp,  by  which  the  shadow  of  my  body  was  cast  upon  the  fog.  Such 
a  shadow  I  had  often  seen,  but  in  the  present  case  it  was  accompanied 
by  an  appearance  which  I  had  not  previously  seen.  Swept  through 
the  darkness  round  the  shadow,  and  far  beyond,  not  only  its  boundary, 
*  Young's  works,  edited  by  Peacock,  vol.  i,  pp.  185,  29S,  357. 


ON  RAINBOWS.  665 

but  also  beyond  that  of  the  illuminated  fog,  was  a  pale,  white,  lumi- 
nous circle,  complete  except  at  the  point  where  it  was  cut  through  by 
the  shadow.  As  I  walked  out  into  the  fog,  this  curious  halo  went  in 
advance  of  me.  Had  not  my  demerits  been  so  well  known  to  me,  I 
might  have  accepted  the  phenomenon  as  an  evidence  of  canonization. 
Benvenuto  Cellini  saw  something  of  the  kind  surrounding  his  shadow, 
and  ascribed  it  forthwith  to  supernatural  favor.  I  varied  the  position 
and  intensity  of  the  lamp,  and  found  even  a  candle  sufficient  to  render 
the  luminous  band  visible.  With  two  crossed  laths  I  roughly  meas- 
ured the  angle  subtended  by  the  radius  of  the  circle,  and  found  it  to 
be  practically  the  angle  which  had  riveted  the  attention  of  Descartes 
— namely,  41°.  This  and  other  facts  led  me  to  suspect  that  the  halo 
was  a  circular  rainbow.  A  week  subsequently,  the  air  being  in  a  simi- 
lar misty  condition,  the  luminous  circle  was  well  seen  from  another 
door,  the  lamp  which  produced  it  standing  on  a  table  behind  me. 

It  is  not,  however,  necessary  to  go  to  the  Alps  to  witness  this  singu- 
lar phenomenon.  Amid  the  heather  of  Hind  Head  I  have  had  erected 
a  hut,  to  which  I  escape  when  my  brain  needs  rest  or  my  muscles  lack 
vigor.  The  hut  has  two  doors,  one  opening  to  the  north  and  the  other 
to  the  south,  and  in  it  we  have  been  able  to  occupy  ourselves  pleasantly 
and  profitably  during  the  recent  misty  weather.  Removing  the  shade 
from  a  small  petroleum-lamp,  and  placing  the  lamp  behind  me,  as  I 
stood  in  either  doorway,  the  luminous  circles  surrounding  my  shadow 
on  different  nights  were  very  remarkable.  Sometimes  they  were  best 
to  the  north,  and  sometimes  the  reverse,  the  difference  depending  for 
the  most  part  on  the  direction  of  the  wind.  On  Christmas-night  the 
atmosphere  was  particularly  good-natured.  It  was  filled  with  true  fog, 
through  which,  however,  descended  palpably  an  extremely  fine  rain. 
Both  to  the  north  and  to  the  south  of  the  hut  the  luminous  circles 
were  on  this  occasion  specially  bright  and  well-defined.  They  were, 
as  I  have  said,  swept  through  the  fog  far  beyond  its  illuminated  area, 
and  it  was  the  darkness  against  which  they  were  projected  which  ena- 
bled them  to  shed  so  much  apparent  light.  The  "  effective  rays,"  there- 
fore, which  entered  the  eye  in  this  observation  gave  direction,  but  not 
distance,  so  that  the  circles  appeared  to  come  from  a  portion  of  the 
atmosphere  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  their  production.  When 
the  lamp  was  taken  out  into  the  fog,  the  illumination  of  the  medium 
almost  obliterated  the  halo.  Once  educated,  the  eye  could  trace  it, 
but  it  was  toned  down  almost  to  vanishing.  There  is  some  advantage, 
therefore,  in  possessing  a  hut,  on  a  moor  or  on  a  mountain,  having 
doors  which  limit  the  area  of  fog  illuminated. 

I  have  now  to  refer  to  another  phenomenon  which  is  but  rarely 
seen,  and  which  I  had  an  opportunity  of  witnessing  on  Christmas-day. 
The  mist  and  drizzle  in  the  early  morning  had  been  very  dense  ;  a  walk 
before  breakfast  caused  my  somewhat  fluffy  pilot  dress  to  be  covered 
with  minute  water-globules,  which,  against  the  dark  background  under- 


666  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

neath,  suggested  the  bloom  of  a  plum.  As  the  day  advanced,  the 
southeastern  heaven  became  more  luminous,  and  the  pale  disk  of  the 
sun  was  at  length'  seen  struggling  through  drifting  clouds.  At  ten 
o'clock  the  sun  had  become  fairly  victorious,  the  heather  was  adorned 
by  pendent  drops,  while  certain  branching  grasses,  laden  with  liquid 
pearls,  presented,  in  the  sunlight,  an  appearance  of  exquisite  beauty. 
Walking  across  the  common  to  the  Portsmouth  road,  my  wife  and  I, 
on  reaching  it,  turned  our  faces  sunward.  The  smoke-like  fog  had 
vanished,  but  its  disappearance  was  accompanied,  or  perhaps  caused, 
by  the  coalescence  of  its  minuter  particles  into  little  globules,  visible 
where  they  caught  the  light  at  a  proper  angle,  but  not  otherwise. 
They  followed  every  eddy  of  the  air,  upward,  downward,  and  from 
side  to  side.  Their  extreme  mobility  was  well  calculated  to  suggest  a 
notion  prevalent  on  the  Continent,  that  the  particles  of  a  fog,  instead 
of  being  full  droplets,  are  really  little  bladders  or  vesicles.  Clouds 
are  supposed  to  owe  their  power  of  floatation  to  this  cause.  This 
vesicular  theory  never  struck  root  in  England  ;  nor  has  it,  I  apprehend, 
any  foundation  in  fact. 

As  I  stood  in  the  midst  of  these  eddying  specks,  so  visible  to  the 
eye,  yet  so  small  and  light  as  to  be  perfectly  impalpable  to  the  skin 
both  of  hands  and  face,  I  remarked,  "  These  particles  must  surely  yield 
a  bow  of  some  kind."  Turning  my  back  to  the  sun,  I  stooped  down  so 
as  to  keep  well  within  the  layer  of  particles,  which  I  supposed  to  be  a 
shallow  one,  and  looking  toward  the  "  Devil's  Punch-Bowl,"  saw  the 
anticipated  phenomenon.  A  bow  without  color  spanned  the  Punch- 
Bowl,  and,  though  white  and  pale,  was  well  defined  and  exhibited  an 
aspect  of  weird  grandeur.  Once  or  twice  I  fancied  a  faint  ruddiness 
could  be  discerned  on  its  outer  boundary.  The  stooping  was  not 
necessary,  and  as  we  walked  along  the  new  Portsmouth  road,  with  the 
Punch-Bowl  to  our  left,  the  white  arch  marched  along  with  us.  At  a 
certain  point  we  ascended  to  the  old  Portsmouth  road,  whence,  vrith  a 
flat  space  of  very  dark  heather  in  the  foreground,  we  watched  the  bow. 
The  sun  had  then  become  strong,  and  the  sky  above  us  blue,  nothing 
which  could  in  any  proper  sense  be  called  rain  existing  at  the  time  in 
the  atmosphere.  Suddenly  my  companion  exclaimed,  "  I  see  the  whole 
circle  meeting  at  my  feet !  "  At  the  same  moment  the  circle  became 
visible  to  me  also.  It  was  the  darkness  of  our  immediate  foreground 
that  enabled  us  to  see  the  pale,  luminous  band  projected  against  it. 
We  walked  round  Hind  Head  Common  with  the  bow  almost  always 
in  view.  Its  crown  sometimes  disappeared,  showing  that  the  minute 
globules  which  produced  it  did  not  extend  to  any  great  height  in  the 
atmosphere.  In  such  cases,  two  shining  buttresses  were  left  behind, 
which,  had  not  the  bow  been  previously  seen,  would  have  lacked  all 
significance.  In  some  of  the  combes,  or  valleys,  where  the  floating 
particles  had  collected  in  greater  numbers,  the  end  of  the  bow  plung- 
ing into  the  combe  emitted  a  light  of  more  than  the  usual  brightness. 


ON  RAINBOWS.  667 

During  our  walk  the  bow  was  broken  and  reformed  several  times,  and, 
had  it  not  been  for  our  previous  experience,  both  in  the  Alps  and  at 
Hind  Head,  it  might  well  have  escaped  attention.  What  this  white 
bow  lost  in  beauty  and  intensity,  as  compared  with  the  ordinary  col- 
ored bow,  was  more  than  atoned  for  by  its  weirdness  and  its  novelty 
to  both  observers. 

The  white  rainbow  {Varc  en  del  hlanc)  was  first  described  by  the 
Spaniard,  Don  Antonio  de  Ulloa,  Lieutenant  of  the  Company  of 
Gentlemen  Guards  of  the  Marine.  By  order  of  the  King  of  Spain, 
Don  Jorge  Juan  and  Ulloa  made  an  expedition  to  South  America,  an 
account  of  which  is  given  in  two  amply-illustrated  quarto  volumes  to 
be  found  in  the  library  of  the  Royal  Institution.  The  bow  was  ob- 
served from  the  summit  of  the  mountain  Pambamarca,  in  Peru.  The 
angle  subtended  by  its  radius  was  33°  30',  which  is  considerably  less 
than  the  angle  subtended  by  the  radius  of  the  ordinary  bow.  Between 
the  phenomenon  observed  by  us  on  Christmas-day,  and  that  described 
by  Ulloa,  there  are  some  points  of  difference.  In  his  case  fog  of  sufii- 
cient  density  existed  to  enable  the  shadows  of  him  and  his  six  com- 
panions to  be  seen,  each,  however,  only  by  the  person  whose  body  cast 
the  shadow,  while  around  the  head  of  each  were  observed  those  zones 
of  color  which  characterize  the  "specter  of  the  Brocken."  In  our  case 
no  shadows  were  to  be  seen,  for  there  was  no  fog-screen  on  which  they 
could  be  cast.  This  implies  also  the  absence  of  the  zones  of  color  ob- 
served by  Ulloa. 

The  white  rainbow  has  been  explained  in  various  ways.  A  learned 
Frenchman,  M.  Bravais,  who  has  written  much  on  the  optical  phe- 
nomena of  the  atmosphere,  and  who  can  claim  the  additional  recom- 
mendation of  being  a  distinguished  mountaineer,  has  sought  to  connect 
the  bow  with  the  vesicular  theory  to  which  I  have  just  referred.  This 
theory,  however,  is  more  than  doubtful,  and  it  is  not  necessary.*  The 
genius  of  Thomas  Young  throws  light  upon  this  subject  as  upon  so 
many  others.  He  showed  that  the  whiteness  of  the  bow  was  a  direct 
consequence  of  the  smallness  of  the  drops  which  produce  it.  In  fact, 
the  wafted  water-specks  seen  by  us  upon  Hind  Head  f  were  the  very 
kind  needed  for  the  production  of  the  phenomenon.  But  the  observa- 
tions of  Ulloa  place  his  white  bow  distinctly  within  the  arc  that  would 
be  occupied  by  the  ordinary  rainbow — that  is  to  say,  in  the  region  of 
supernumeraries  ;  and  by  the  action  of  the  supernumeraries  upon  each 
other  Ulloa's  bow  was  accounted  for  by  Thomas  Young.    The  smaller 

*  The  vesicular  theory  was  combated  very  ably  in  France  by  the  Abbe  Raillard,  who 
has  also  given  an  interesting  analysis  of  the  rainbow  at  the  end  of  his  translation  of  my 
"Notes  on  Light." 

f  Had  our  refuge  in  the  Alps  been  built  on  the  southern  side  of  the  valley  of  the 
Rhone,  so  as  to  enable  us  to  look  with  the  sun  behind  us  into  the  valley  and  across  it,  we 
should,  I  think,  have  frequently  seen  the  white  bow ;  whereas  on  the  opposite  mountain, 
slope,  which  faces  the  sun,  we  have  never  seen  it. 


668  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

the  drops  the  broader  are  the  zones  of  the  supernumerary  bows,  and 
Young  proved  by  calculation  that  when  the  drops  have  a  diameter 
^^  ToVc  ^^  ToW  o^  ^^  inch,  the  bands  overlap  each  other,  and  pro- 
duce white  light  by  their  mixture.  Unlike  the  geometric  bow,  the 
radius  of  the  white  bow  varies  within  certain  limits,  which  M.  Bravais 
shows  to  be  33°  30'  and  41°  46'  respectively.  In  the  latter  case  the 
white  bow  is  the  ordinary  bow  deprived  of  its  color  by  the  smallness 
of  the  drops.  In  all  the  other  cases  it  is  produced  by  the  action  of  the 
supernumeraries. 

The  physical  investigator  desires  not  only  to  observe  natural  phe- 
nomena but  to  recreate  them — to  bring  them,  that  is,  under  the  domin- 
ion of  experiment.  From  observation  we  learn  what  Nature  is  willing 
to  reveal.  In  experimenting  we  place  her  in  the  witness-box,  cross-ex- 
amine her,  and  extract  from  her  knowledge  in  excess  of  that  which 
would,  or  could,  be  spontaneously  given.  Accordingly,  on  my  return 
from  Switzerland  last  October,  I  sought  to  reproduce  in  the  laboratory 
the  effects  observed  among  the  mountains.  My  first  object,  therefore, 
was  to  obtain  artificially  a  mixture  of  fog  and  drizzle  like  that  ob- 
served from  the  door  of  our  cottage.  A  strong  cylindrical  copper 
boiler,  sixteen  inches  high  and  twelve  inches  in  diameter,  was  nearly 
filled  with  water,  and  heated  by  gas-flames  until  steam  of  twenty 
pounds  pressure  was  produced.  A  valve  at  the  top  of  the  boiler  was 
then  opened,  when  the  steam  issued  violently  into  the  atmosphere, 
carrying  droplets  of  water  mechanically  along  with  it,  and  condensing 
above  to  droplets  of  a  similar  kind.  A  fair  imitation  of  the  Alpine 
atmosphere  was  thus  produced.  After  a  few  tentative  experiments, 
the  luminous  circle  was  brought  into  view,  and,  having  once  got  hold 
of  it,  the  next  step  was  to  enhance  its  intensity.  Oil-lamps,  the  lime- 
light, and  the  naked  electric  light  were  tried  in  succession,  the  source 
of  rays  being  placed  in  one  room,  the  boiler  in  another,  while  the  ob- 
server stood,  with  his  back  to  the  light,  between  them.  It  is  not,  how- 
ever, necessary  to  dwell  upon  these  first  experiments,  surpassed  as  they 
were  by  the  arrangements  subsequently  adopted.  My  mode  of  pro- 
ceeding was  this  :  The  electric  light  being  placed  in  a  camera  with  a 
condensing  lens  in  front,  the  position  of  the  lens  was  so  fixed  as  to 
produce  a  beam  sufficiently  broad  to  clasp  the  whole  of  my  head,  and 
leave  an  aureole  of  light  around  it.  It  being  desirable  to  lessen  as 
much  as  possible  the  foreign  light  entering  the  eye,  the  beam  was 
received  upon  a  distant  black  surface,  and  it  was  easy  to  move  the 
head  until  its  shadow  occupied  the  center  of  the  illuminated  area.  To 
secure  the  best  effect  it  was  found  necessary  to  stand  close  to  the 
boiler,  so  as  to  be  immersed  in  the  fog  and  drizzle.  The  fog,  however, 
was  soon  discovered  to  be  a  mere  nuisance.  Instead  of  enhancing,  it 
blurred  the  effect,  and  I  therefore  sought  to  abolish  it.  Allowing  the 
steam  to  issue  for  a  few  seconds  from  the  boiler,  on  closing  the  valve, 
the  cloud  rapidly  melted  away,  leaving  behind  it  a  host  of  minute 


ON  RAINBOWS.  669 

liquid  spherules  floating  in  the  beam.  A  beautiful  circular  rainbow 
was  instantly  swept  through  the  air  in  front  of  the  observer.  The 
primary  bow  was  duly  attended  by  its  secondary,  with  the  colors,  as 
usual,  reversed.  The  opening  of  the  valve  for  a  single  second  causes 
the  bows  to  flash  forth.  Thus,  twenty  times  in  succession,  puffs  can 
be  allowed  to  issue  from  the  boiler,  every  puff  being  followed  by  this 
beautiful  meteor.  The  bows  produced  by  single  puffs  are  evanescent, 
because  the  little  globules  rapidly  disappear.  Greater  permanence 
is  secured  when  the  valve  is  left  open  for  an  interval  sufficient  to  dis- 
charge a  copious  amount  of  drizzle  into  the  air.* 

Many  other  appliances  for  producing  a  fine  rain  have  been  tried, 
but  a  reference  to  two  of  them  will  suffice.  The  rose  of  a  watering- 
pot  naturally  suggests  a  means  of  producing  a  shower  ;  and  on  the 
principle  of  the  rose  I  had  some  spray-producers  constructed.  In 
each  case  the  outer  surface  was  convex,  the  thin  convex  metal  plate 
being  pierced  by  orifices  too  small  to  be  seen  by  the  naked  eye. 
Small  as  they  are,  fillets  of  very  sensible  magnitude  issue  from  the 
orifices,  but  at  some  distance  below  the  spray-producer  the  fillets  shake 
themselves  asunder  and  form  a  fine  rain.  The  small  orifices  are  very 
liable  to  get  clogged  by  the  fine  particles  suspended  in  London  water. 
In  experiments  with  the  rose,  filtered  water  was,  therefore,  resorted 
to.  A  large  vessel  was  mounted  on  the  roof  of  the  Royal  Institution, 
from  the  bottom  of  which  descended  vertically  a  piece  of  compo- 
tubing,  an  inch  in  diameter  and  about  twenty  feet  long.  By  means  of 
proper  screw  fittings,  a  single  rose,  or,  when  it  is  desired  to  increase 
the  magnitude  or  density  of  the  shower,  a  group  of  two,  three,  or  four 
roses,  is  attached  to  the  end  of  the  compo-tube.  From  these,  on  the 
turning  on  of  a  cock,  the  rain  descends.  The  circular  bows  produced 
by  such  rain  are  far  richer  in  color  than  those  produced  by  the  smaller 
globules  of  the  condensed  steam.  To  see  the  effect  in  all  its  beauty 
and  completeness,  it  is  necessary  to  stand  well  within  the  shower,  not 
outside  of  it.  A  water-proof  coat  and  cap  are,  therefore,  needed,  to 
which  a  pair  of  goloshes  may  be  added  with  advantage.  A  person 
standing  outside  the  beam  may  see  bits  of  both  primary  and  second- 
ary in  the  places  fixed  by  their  respective  angles  ;  but  the  colors  are 
washy  and  unimpressive,  while  within  the  shower,  with  the  shadow  of 
the  head  occupying  its  proper  position  on  the  screen,  the  brilliancy  of 
the  effect  is  extraordinary.     The  primary  clothes  itself  in  the  richest 

*  It  is  perhaps  worth  noting  here,  that  when  the  camera  and  lens  are  used  the  beam 
which  sends  its  "  effective  rays  "  to  the  eye  may  not  be  more  than  a  foot  in  width,  while 
the  circular  bow  engendered  by  these  rays  may  be,  to  all  appearance,  fifteen  or  twenty 
feet  in  diameter.  In  such  a  beam,  indeed,  the  drops  which  produce  the  bow  must  be  very 
near  the  eye,  for  rays  from  the  more  distant  drops  would  not  reach  the  required  angle. 
The  apparent  distance  of  the  circular  bow  is  often  great,  in  comparison  with  that  of  the 
originating  drops.  Both  distance  and  diameter  may  be  made  to  undergo  yariations.  In 
the  rainbow  we  do  not  see  a  localized  object,  but  receive  a  luminous  impression,  which  is 
often  transferred  to  a  portion  of  the  field  of  view  far  removed  from  the  bow's  origin. 


670  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

tints,  while  the  secondary,  though  less  vivid,  shows  its  colors  in  sur- 
prising strength  and  purity. 

But  the  primary  bow  is  accompanied  by  appearances  calculated  to 
attract  and  rivet  attention  almost  more  than  the  bow  itself.  I  have 
already  mentioned  the  existence  of  effective  rays  over  and  above  those 
which  go  to  form  the  geometric  law.  They  fall  within  the  primary, 
and,  to  use  the  words  of  Thomas  Young,  "  would  exhibit  a  continued 
diffusion  of  fainter  light,  but  for  the  general  law  of  interference  which 
divides  the  light  into  concentric  rings."  One  could  almost  wish  for 
the  opportunity  of  showing  Young  how  literally  his  words  are  ful- 
filled, and  how  beautifully  his  theory  is  illustrated,  by  these  artificial 
circular  rainbows.  For  here  the  space  within  the  primaries  is  swept 
by  concentric  supernumerary  bands,  colored  like  the  rainbow,  and 
growing  gradually  narrower  as  they  retreat  from  the  primary.  These 
spurious  bows  as  they  are  sometimes  called,*  which  constitute  one  of 
the  most  splendid  illustrations  of  the  principle  of  interference,  are 
separated  from  each  other  by  zones  of  darkness,  where  the  light- 
waves, on  being  added  together,  destroy  each  other.  I  have  counted 
as  many  as  eight  of  these  beautiful  bands,  concentric  with  the  true  pri- 
mary. The  supernumeraries  are  formed  next  to  the  most  refrangible 
color  of  the  bow,  and  therefore  occur  within  the  primary  circle.  But, 
in  the  secondary  bow,  the  violet,  or  most  refrangible  color,  is  on  the 
outside  ;  and,  following  the  violet  of  the  secondary,  I  have  sometimes 
counted  as  many  as  five  spurious  bows.  Some  notion  may  be  formed 
of  the  intensity  of  the  primary,  when  the  secondary  is  able  to  produce 
effects  of  this  description. 

An  extremely  handy  spray -producer  is  that  employed  to  moisten 
the  air  in  the  Houses  of  Parliament.  A  fillet  of  water,  issuing  under 
strong  pressure  from  a  small  orifice,  impinges  on  a  little  disk,  placed 
at  a  distance  of  about  one  twentieth  of  an  inch  from  the  orifice.  On 
striking  the  disk,  the  water  spreads  laterally,  and  breaks  up  into  ex- 
ceedingly fine  spray.  Here,  also,  I  have  used  the  spray-producer  both 
singly  and  in  groups,  the  latter  arrangement  being  resorted  to  when 
showers  of  special  density  were  required.  In  regard  to  primaries, 
secondaries,  and  supernumeraries,  extremely  brilliant  effects  have  been 
obtained  with  this  form  of  spray-producer.  The  quantity  of  water 
called  upon  being  much  less  than  that  required  by  the  rose,  the  fillet- 
and-disk  instrument  produces  less  flooding  of  the  locality  where  the 
experiments  are  made.  In  this  latter  respect,  the  steam-spray  is  par- 
ticularly handy.  A  puff  of  two  seconds'  duration  sufiices  to  bring 
out  the  bows,  the  subsequent  shower  being  so  light  as  to  render  the 
use  of  water-proof  clothing  unnecessary.  In  other  cases,  the  incon- 
venience of  flooding  may  be  avoided  to  a  great  extent  by  turning  on 
the  spray  for  a  short  time  only,  and  then  cutting  off  the  supply  of 
water.  The  vision  of  the  bow  being,  however,  proportionate  to  the 
*  A  term,  I  confess,  not  to  my  liking. 


ON  BAINBOWS.  671 

duration  of  the  shower,  will,  when  the  shower  is  brief,  be  evanescent. 
Hence,  when  quiet  and  continued  contemplation  of  all  the  phenomena 
is  desired,  the  observer  must  make  up  his  mind  to  brave  the  rain.* 

In  one  important  particular  the  spray-producer  last  described  com- 
mends itself  to  our  attention.  With  it  we  can  operate  on  substances 
more  costly  than  water,  and  obtain  rainbows  from  liquids  of  the  most 
various  refractive  indices.  To  extend  the  field  of  experiment  in  this 
direction,  the  following  arrangement  has  been  devised  :  A  strong 
cylindrical  iron  bottle,  wholly  or  partly  filled  with  the  liquid  to  be 
experimented  on,  is  tightly  closed  by  a  brass  cap.  Through  the  cap 
passes  a  metal  tube,  soldered  air-tight  where  it  crosses  the  cap,  and 
ending  near  the  bottom  of  the  iron  bottle.  To  the  free  end  of  this 
tube  is  attached  the  spray-producer.  A  second  tube  passes  also  through 
the  cap,  but  ends  above  the  surface  of  the  liquid.  This  second  tube, 
which  is  long  and  flexible,  is  connected  with  a  larger  iron  bottle,  con- 
taining compressed  air.  Hoisting  the  small  bottle  to  a  convenient 
height,  the  tap  of  the  larger  bottle  is  carefully  opened,  the  air  passes 
through  the  flexible  tube  to  the  smaller  bottle,  exerts  its  pressure  upon 
the  surface  of  the  liquid  therein  contained,  drives  it  up  the  other 
tube,  and  causes  it  to  impinge  with  any  required  degree  of  force 
against  the  disk  of  the  spray-producer.  From  this  it  falls  in  a  fine 
rain.  A  great  many  liquids  have  been  tested  by  this  arrangement, 
and  very  remarkable  results  have  been  obtained.  I  will  confine  my- 
self here  to  a  reference  to  two  liquids,  which  commend  themselves  on 
account  of  their  cheapness  and  of  the  brilliancy  of  their  effects.  Spirit 
of  turpentine,  forced  from  the  iron  bottle,  and  caused  to  fall  in  a  fine 
shower,  produces  a  circular  bow  of  extraordinary  intensity  and  depth 
of  color.     With  parafline-oil  or  petroleum  a  similar  effect  is  obtained. 

Spectrum  analysis,  as  generally  understood,  occupies  itself  with 
atomic,  or  molecular,  action,  but  physical  spectrum  analysis  may  be 
brought  to  bear  upon  our  falling  showers.  I  asked  myself  whether  a 
composite  shower — that  is  to  say,  one  produced  by  the  mingled  spray 
of  two  or  more  liquids — could  not  be  analyzed  and  made  to  declare  its 
constituents  by  the  production  of  the  circular  rainbows  proper  to  the 
respective  liquids.  This  was  found  to  be  the  case.  In  the  ordinary 
rainbow  the  narrowest  color-band  is  produced  by  its  most  refrangible 
light.  In  general,  the  greater  the  refraction,  the  smaller  will  be  the 
bow.  Now,  as  spirit  of  turpentine  and  parafline  are  both  more  refrac- 
tive than  water,  I  thought  it  probable  that  in  a  mixed  shower  of  water 
and  parafline,  or  water  and  turpentine,  the  smaller  and  more  luminous 
circle  of  the  latter  ought  to  be  seen  within  the  larger  circle  of  the 
former.  The  result  was  exactly  in  accordance  with  this  anticipation. 
Beginning  with  water,  and  producing  its  two  bows,  and  then  allowing 
the  turpentine  to  shower  down  and  mingle  with  the  water,  within  the 

*  The  rays  which  form  the  artificial  bow  emerge,  as  might  be  expected,  polarized 
from  the  drops. 


672  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

« 
large  and  beautifully  colored  water-wheel,  the  more  richly  colored 

circle  of  the  turpentine  makes  its  appearance.  Or,  beginning  with 
turpentine,  and  forming  its  concentrated  iris  ;  on  turning  on  the 
water-spray,  though  to  the  eye  the  shower  seems  absolutely  homoge- 
neous, its  true  character  is  instantly  declared  by  the  flashing  out  of  the 
larger  concentric  aqueous  bow.  The  water  primary  is  accompanied  by 
its  secondary  close  at  hand.  Associated,  moreover,  with  all  the  bows, 
primary  and  secondary,  are  the  supernumeraries  which  belong  to  them  ; 
and  a  more  superb  experimental  illustration  of  optical  principles  it 
would  be  hardly  possible  to  witness.  It  is  not  the  less  impressive  be- 
cause extracted  from  the  simple  combination  of  a  beam  of  light  and  a 
shower  of  rain. 

In  the  *'  Philosophical  Transactions "  for  1 835,  the  late  Colonel 
Sykes  gave  a  vivid  description  of  a  circular  solar  rainbow,  observed 
by  him  in  India,  during  periods  when  fogs  and  mists  were  prevalent 
in  the  chasms  of  the  Ghats  of  the  Deccan  : 

It  was  during  such  periods  that  I  had  several  opportunities  of  witnessing  that 
singular  pheDomenon,  the  circular  rainbow,  which,  from  its  rareness,  is  spoken 
of  as  a  possible  occurrence  only.  The  stratum  of  fog  from  the  Konkun  on  some 
occasions  rose  somewhat  above  the  level  of  the  top  of  a  precipice  forming  the 
northwest  scarp  of  the  hill  fort  of  Hurreechundurghur,  from  two  to  three  thou- 
sand feet  perpendicular,  without  coming  over  upon  the  table-land.  I  was  placed 
at  the  edge  of  the  precipice  Just  without  the  limits  of  the  fog,  and  with  a  cloud- 
less sun  at  my  back  at  a  very  low  elevation.  Under  such  a  combination  of  fa- 
vorable circumstances,  the  circular  rainbow  appeared  quite  perfect,  of  the  most 
vivid  colors,  one  half  above  the  level  on  which  I  stood,  the  other  half  below  it. 
Shadows  in  distinct  outline  of  myself,  my  horse,  and  people  appeared  in  the  cen- 
ter of  the  circle  as  a  picture,  to  which  the  bow  formed  a  resplendent  frame.  My 
attendants  were  incredulous  that  the  figures  they  saw  under  such  extraordinary 
circumstances  could  be  their  own  shadows,  and  they  tossed  their  arms  and  lega 
about,  and  put  their  bodies  into  various  postures,  to  be  assured  of  the  fact  by 
the  corresponding  movements  of  the  objects  within  the  circle ;  and  it  was  some 
little  time  ere  the  superstitious  feeling  with  which  the  spectacle  was  viewed 
wore  ojff.  From  our  proximity  to  the  fog,  I  believe  the  diameter  of  the  circle  at 
no  time  exceeded  fifty  or  sixty  feet.  The  brilliant  circle  was  accompanied  by 
the  usual  outer  bow  in  fainter  colors. 

Mr.  E.  Colborne  Baber,  an  accomplished  and  intrepid  traveler,  has 
recently  enriched  the  "  Transactions  "  of  the  Royal  Geographical  So- 
ciety by  a  paper  of  rare  merit,  in  which  his  travels  in  Western  China 
are  described.  He  made  there  the  ascent  of  Mount  O — an  eminence 
of  great  celebrity.  Its  height  is  about  eleven  thousand  feet  above  the 
sea,  and  it  is  flanked  on  one  side  by  a  cliff  "  a  good  deal  more  than  a 
mile  in  height."  From  the  edge  of  this  cliff,  which  is  guarded  by 
posts  and  chains,  you  look  into  an  abyss,  and  if  fortune,  or  rather  the 
mists,  favor  you,  you  see  there  a  miracle,  which  is  thus  described  by 
Mr.  Baber ; 

iN'aturally  enough  it  is  with  some  trepidation  that  pilgrims  approach  this  fear- 


ON  RAINBOWS.  673 

some  brink,  but  they  are  drawn  to  it  by  the  hope  of  beholding  the  mysterious 
apparition  known  as  the  "Fo-Kuang,"  or  "Glory  of  Buddha,"  which  floats  in 
raid-air,  half-way  down.  So  many  eye-witnesses  had  told  me  of  this  wonder, 
that  I  could  not  doubt ;  but  I  gazed  long  and  steadfastly  into  the  gulf  without 
success,  and  came  away  disappointed,  but  not  incredulous.  It  was  described  to 
me  as  a  circle  of  brilliant  and  many-colored  radiance,  broken  on  the  outside  with 
quick  flashes  and  surrounding  a  central  disk  as  bright  as  the  sun,  but  more  beau- 
tiful. Devout  Buddhists  assert  that  it  is  an  emanation  from  the  aureole  of 
Buddha,  and  a  visible  sign  of  the  holiness  of  Mount  O. 

Impossible  as  it  may  be  deemed,  the  phenomenon  does  really  exist.  I  sup- 
pose no  better  evidence  could  be  desired  for  the  attestation  of  a  Buddhist  miracle 
than  that  of  a  Baptist  missionary,  unless,  indeed,  it  be,  as  in  this  case,  that  of 
two  Baptist  missionaries.  Two  gentlemen  of  that  persuasion  have  ascended  the 
mountain  sioce  my  visit,  and  have  seen  the  Glory  of  Buddha  several  times.  They 
relate  that  it  resembles  a  golden  sun-like  disk,  inclosed  in  a  ring  of  prismatic 
colors  more  closely  blended  than  in  the  rainbow.  .  .  .  The  missionaries  inform 
me  that  it  was  about  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  near  the  middle  of  August, 
when  they  saw  the  meteor,  and  that  it  was  only  visible  when  the  precipice  was 
more  or  less  clothed  in  mist.  It  appeared  to  lie  on  the  surface  of  the  mist,  and 
was  always  in  the  direction  of  a  line  drawn  from  the  sun  through  their  heads, 
as  is  certified  by  the  fact  that  the  shadow  of  their  heads  was  seen  on  the  meteor. 
They  could  get  their  heads  out  of  the  way,  so  to  speak,  by  stooping  down,  but 
are  not  sure  if  they  could  do  so  by  stepping  aside.  Each  spectator,  however, 
could  see  the  shadows  of  the  by-standers  as  well  as  his  own  projected  on  to  the 
appearance.  They  did  not  observe  any  rays  spreading  from  it.  The  central 
disk,  they  think,  is  a  reflected  image  of  the  sun,  and  the  inclosing  ring  is  a  rain- 
bow. The  ring  was  in  thickness  about  one  fourth  of  the  diameter  of  the  disk, 
and  distant  from  it  by  about  the  same  extent ;  but  the  recollection  of  one  inform- 
ant was  that  the  ring  touched  the  disk,  without  any  intervening  space.  The 
shadow  of  a  head,  when  thrown  upon  it,  covered  about  one  eighth  of  the  whole 
diameter  of  the  meteor.  The  rainbow  ring  was  not  quite  complete  in  its  lower 
part,  but  they  attribute  this  to  the  interposition  of  the  edge  of  the  precipice. 
They  see  no  reason  why  the  appearance  should  not  be  visible  at  night  when  the 
moon  is  brilliant  and  appositely  placed.  They  profess  themselves  to  have  been 
a  good  deal  surprised,  but  not  startled,  by  the  spectacle.  They  would  consider 
it  remarkable  rather  than  astonishing,  and  are  disposed  to  call  it  a  very  impres- 
sive phenomenon. 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  Mr.  Baber  failed  to  see  the  "  Glory,"  and 
that  we  in  consequence  miss  his  own  description  of  it.  There  seems 
a  slight  inadvertence  in  the  statement  that  the  head  could  be  got 
out  of  the  way  by  stooping  ;  for,  as  long  as  the  "  Glory  "  remained 
a  circle,  the  shadow  of  the  head  must  have  occupied  its  center. 
Stepping  aside  would  simply  displace  the  bow,  but  not  abolish  the 
shadow. 

Thus,  starting  from  the  first  faint  circle  seen  drawn  through  the 
thick  darkness  at  Alp  Lusgen,  we  have  steadily  followed  and  developed 
our  phenomenon,  and  ended  by  rendering  the  "  Glory  of  Buddha  "  a 
captive  of  the  laboratory.  The  result  might  be  taken  as  typical  of 
larger  things. 

VOL.  XXIV. — 43 


674  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


SCEEKCE   YEBSUS  THE  CLASSICS. 

By  C.  a.  EGGEET, 
pb0fes80b  in  the  state  univeesitt  of  iowa. 

AT  the  present  stage  of  the  discussion  as  to  the  value  of  the  train- 
ing in  the  Latin  and  Greek  languages  and  their  literature,  the 
testimony  of  Professor  Preyer,  of  the  University  of  Jena,  is  not  with- 
out importance.  Professor  Preyer  is  interested,  and  he  not  alone 
among  German  professors,  in  the  question  of  "  health  and  vigor  versus 
disease  and  weakness  "  of  the  German  youth.  In  an  article  "  On  the 
Preservation  of  Health, "  published  in  the  "  Deutsche  Rundschau,"  he 
made  the  following  pertinent  remarks  : 

"  The  preservation  of  health,  of  the  power  of  sight  and  muscle,  of 
the  readiness  of  the  mind  to  receive  impressions  from  nature  and  man, 
of  freshness  and  youthful  elasticity,  is  undoubtedly  of  much  more 
consequence  for  the  age  of  our  graduates  than  a  knowledge,  no  mat- 
ter how  thorough,  of  history  and  the  dead  languages.  A  first-class 
German  college  (gymnasium)  requires  at  present  the  reading  of  Sopho- 
cles, Homer,  Thucydides,  Demosthenes,  Plutarch,  Herodotus,  Xeno- 
phon,  Tacitus,  Horace,  CaBsar,  Cicero,  Livy,  Yirgil,  Sallust,  Ovid,  and  I 
find  among  its  text-books  Greek,  Latin,  and  Hebrew  grammars,  a  Latin 
phrase-book,  an  ecclesiastical  history,  and  several  other  books,  which, 
to  be  understood,  require  an  amount  of  brain-work  out  of  proportion  to 
the  results  obtained.  I  find  there  the  very  same  Latin  and  Greek  au- 
thors which  I  read  myself  at  school  some  twenty-four  to  twenty-eight 
years  ago.  The  present  stand-point  of  the  humanistic  gymnasia  is,  in 
spite  of  some  attempts  at  adaptation  to  the  new  time,  essentially  the 
mediaeval  one,  which  was  justifiable  several  centuries  ago,  because  there 
was  then  nothing  better  than  the  ancient  classics,  and  particularly  no 
exact  natural  science,  to  furnish  means  of  discipline.  At  present,  hoio- 
ever,  there  are  many  hooks  which,  both  as  regards  form  and  contents, 
are  better  fitted  for  the  instruction  of  young  people  than  the  authors 
enumerated.  Why  are  not  extracts  read  from  the  writings  of  Galilei, 
Descartes,  Newton,  Bacon,  Faraday,  Luther,  Harvey,  Frederick  the 
Great,  Leibnitz,  Kant,  Haller  ?  At  the  age  of  our  graduates  it  is,  be- 
sides, of  the  greatest  importance  that  there  be  less  reading  and  writ- 
ing, less  taxing  of  the  memory,  more  exercise  of  the  muscular  system. 
Not  learning,  but  health  and  character,  should  be  the  main  objects  in 
education  and  schooling,  and  therefore  the  education  of  the  senses 
should  be  emphasized.  Only  a  philologist  will  deny  that  grammar, 
with  its  many  exceptions,  is  rather  a  heavy  ballast  for  the  memory 
than  a  proper  means  for  the  training  of  the  logical  faculty.  The  stu- 
dent involuntarily  becomes  accustomed  to  admit  exceptions  also  in 
the  case  of  other  rules,  ethical  laws,  the  laws  of  nature,  and  in  matters 
of  his  own  experience.     The  elements  of  mechanics  and  chemistry — 


SCIENCE   VERSUS   THE   CLASSICS,  6ys 

these  are  objects  of  instruction  which  are  incomparably  more  adapted 
to  the  young  student  for  exercises  in  thinking,  while  having  the  addi- 
tional advantage  of  appealing  directly  to  the  senses.  The  most  deli- 
cate test  of  correct  thinking  is  furnished  by  the  experiment.  The  most 
natural  way  to  make  the  intellect  independent  is  through  the  occupation 
with  the  exact  sciences,  physics  and  chemistry,  with  elementary  experi- 
ments forming  a  transition  from  play  to  the  seriousness  of  reality  ; 
but  not  through  traiislations  of  the  speeches,  long  since  deprived  of  all 
vital  interest,  of  Greek  or  Roman  lawyers,  or  of  the  phraseology  of 
dead  languages  with  their  intricate  syntax  and  superfluous  particles. 

"  I  seize  every  opportunity  to  censure  this  unnatural  condition,  and 
I  blame  it  in  this  connection  because  it  injures  health.  ...  I  regret 
vividly  that  precisely  in  Germany,  the  home  of  physiology,  the  coun- 
try in  which  it  is  honored  the  most,  where  the  greatest  means  are 
placed  at  its  disposal  and  laboratories  resembling  palaces  are  built  for 
it,  that  here  where  the  number  of  its  learned  adherents  is  the  largest, 
the  science  is  least  known  among  the  people  at  large.  .  .  .  Every  edu- 
cated person  has  been  compelled  in  his  youth  to  learn  a  lot  of  details 
— for  instance,  of  Greek  mythology,  the  history  of  the  Church,  of  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments,  grammar,  etc. — which  in  later  years  never 
again  entered  into  the  circle  of  his  ideas,  and  only  burdened  his  mem- 
ory without  the  least  advantage  for  his  intellectual  development,  and 
his  mental  and  moral  education.  As  to  the  inner  condition  of  his 
own  body,  the  connection  of  the  heart's  beating  with  the  breathing 
process,  of  the  process  of  alimentation  with  the  production  of  animal 
heat,  and  as  to  what  is  meant  by  muscles,  nerves,  ganglia,  and  how 
the  gradual  transformation  of  the  tissues  goes  on  in  youth  and  old 
age — ^that  is  not  taught,  though  there  would  be  time  enough  for  it,  if 
less  attention  was  paid  to  unnecessary  matters." 

If  we  contrast  with  these  remarks  of  a  scholar  and  scientist,  who 
evidently  knows  whereof  he  speaks,  the  utterances  of  a  lawyer  like  Lord 
Coleridge,  or  of  a  dealer  in  aesthetics  like  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  we  are 
struck  with  the  absolute  pertinence  of  the  former,  and  the  thin  gener- 
ality of  the  latter.  "  Sweetness  and  light  "  come  with  health,  physical 
and  mental ;  logical  acumen  comes  from  an  accurate  knowledge  of 
things  brought  to  the  test  of  rigid  experiment.  Felicity  of  expression, 
or  perfect  harmony  between  the  thought  and  its  outward  dress,  is 
not  limited  to  Greek  and  Latin  writers,  but  is  as  general  as  literature 
itself.  And  if  the  progress  from  general  knowledge  of  disconnected 
events  to  special  knowledge  of  phenomena  connected  by  invisible 
and  yet  omnipresent  law  everywhere  marks  the  advance  of  human 
thought,  why,  then,  should  the  intelligent  study  of  the  latter  be  a 
less  efficient  guide  to  "  sweetness  and  light,"  or  to  the  "  highest  edu- 
cation," than  the  study  of  literatures  that  dealt  for  the  most  part 
with  problems  which  possess  only  slight  interest,  or  none  at  all,  for 
the  best  thinkers  of  to-day  ? 


676  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

THE  JUEY  SYSTEM. 

By  HENEY  H.  WILSON. 

THIS  is  an  age  in  which  ancestral  faiths,  traditional  customs,  and 
primitive  institutions  alike,  are  receiving  the  attacks  of  icono- 
clasts. These  attacks  are  always  vigorous,  usually  just,  frequently 
learned,  but  sometimes  hasty  and  ill-considered.  There  was  a  time 
when  institutions  which  had  become  quite  useless  were  still  continued 
and  revered  simply  because  they  were  ancient.  In  our  day  there  is 
danger  that  institutions  whose  origin,  growth,  and  practical  utility  are 
little  understood  may  be  swept  away  amid  the  general  assault,  merely 
because  they  bear  the  marks  of  age.  Institutions  are  not  the  inven- 
tions of  individuals,  but  are  the  outgrowth  of  the  general  sentiments 
and  impulses  of  the  time  and  place  of  their  origin.  Every  institution, 
however  absurd  or  worthless  it  may  seem  to  us,  must,  at  one  time, 
have  supplied  the  actual  wants  of  a  part  of  the  human  race.  It  is, 
therefore,  but  reasonable  to  presume  that  every  institution  which  we 
have  inherited  contains  some  principle  that  may  still  be  useful.  Be- 
fore assuming  to  pass  judgment  upon  the  merits  or  demerits  of  the  jury 
as  an  element  of  our  judicial  system,  it  may,  therefore,  be  well  to 
inquire  into  its  distinguishing  features,  and  to  ascertain,  as  far  as  may 
be,  the  origin  of  its  several  characteristics.  Most  prominent  among 
the  peculiar  features  of  the  modern  jury  are — 1.  That  they  are  called 
from  the  vicinage,  or  from  a  limited  territory,  over  which  the  court  in 
which  they  sit  has  jurisdiction.  2.  That  they  possess  no  previous 
knowledge  of  the  merits  of  the  case  which  they  are  impaneled  to  try. 
3.  That  they  consist  of  a  definite  number  previously  determined,  usu- 
ally twelve.  4.  That  unanimity  or  consent  of  all  is  necessary  to  render 
a  verdict.  5.  That  they  are  chosen  by  lot  from  a  certain  number  of 
qualified  citizens  previously  selected.  Of  these  in  their  order  let  us 
inquire  the  origin,  growth,  and  present  utility. 

1.  When,  in  its  earliest  stages,  the  jury  was  composed  of  the  wit- 
nesses who  knew  more  or  less  about  the  facts  in  dispute,  it  was  natural 
and  indeed  necessary  to  call  them  from  the  vicinity  where  the  transac- 
tion occurred.  This  reason  becomes  the  more  apparent,  when  it  is  re- 
membered that  the  ordinary  commercial  transactions  among  our  rude 
ancestors  were  accompanied  with  great  ceremony  and  publicity.  For 
example,  if  a  man  wished  to  go  abroad  to  buy  a  horse,  he  must  first 
announce  his  intention  to  do  so  to  his  neighbors,  and  upon  his  return 
he  must  give  all  the  circumstances  of  the  purchase,  that  the  requisite 
number  of  witnesses,  or  men  who  knew  the  facts,  could  be  had  to 
form  a  jury,  should  his  title  ever  be  questioned.  Should  he  fail  to 
observe  these  precautions,  he  was  presumed  to  have  stolen  the  horse, 
or  to  have  obtained  it  in  some  unlawful  way.*  While,  in  this  com- 
*  Forsyth,  "  Trial  by  Jury,"  p.  71. 


THE  JURY  SYSTEM.  677 

mercial  age,  when  business  extends  over  such  wide  territories,  and 
when  commercial  transactions  are  usually  evidenced  more  or  less  by- 
written  instruments,  a  debtor  may  be  sued  wherever  he  can  be  found, 
except  in  a  few  special  cases,  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  crimes  which, 
from  the  nature  of  the  case,  are  evidenced  usually  and  almost  wholly 
by  living  witnesses,  must  still  be  tried  in  the  vicinage  or  county 
where  they  were  committed.  While  most  civil  actions  may  now  be 
brought  wherever  the  defendant  may  be  found,  yet  the  jury  must  be>^ 
called  from  the  vicinity  of  the  forum  in  which  they  are  tried.  In  the 
early  history  of  the  jury,  vicinage  meant  simply  the  immediate  neigh- 
borhood, while  the  same  term  is  now  used  to  denote  the  whole  terri- 
tory over  which  the  court  has  jurisdiction.  Calling  the  jury  from  the 
vicinage  would  seem  to  have  the  advantage  of  strengthening  local 
self-government.  Litigants  usually  have  the  assurance  that  their 
rights  are  to  be  determined,  not  by  strangers  who  may  be  used  to 
different  customs  and  habits  of  life,  but  by  their  neighbors,  upon 
whose  rights  they  in  turn  may  be  called  upon  to  adjudicate.  And 
this  feature  of  the  jury  has  the  further  advantage  that,  while  the 
jurors  know  nothing  about  the  facts  of  the  particular  case,  yet  the 
parties  have  the  benefit  of  whatever  good  repute  they  may  sustain 
among  their  neighbors.  So,  while  the  reasons  that  gave  rise  to  this 
restriction  in  calling  a  jury  no  longer  exist,  yet,  when  reasonable  pro- 
visions are  made  for  a  change  of  venue  in  cases  of  violent  popular 
feeling,  there  are  some  advantages  derived  from  it,  and  there  seems 
to  be  no  good  reason  for  a  change. 

2.  We  are  next  to  consider  the  jury  with  reference  to  their  pre- 
vious knowledge  of  the  facts  in  dispute.  As  before  intimated,  in  the 
early  stages  of  the  system  the  jurors  were  called  because  they  knew 
more  or  less  about  the  facts  in  the  case,  and  if,  upon  examination,  it 
should  be  found  that  any  one  who  was  called  was  entirely  ignorant  of 
the  facts  to  be  tried,  he  was  excluded,  and  another  was  called  in  his 
stead.*  This  process  was  continued  until  all  those  who  could  add 
nothing  to  the  jury's  knowledge  of  the  case  were  excused,  and  the 
requisite  number  of  those  possessing  such  information  were  found. 
They  were  then  sworn  to  render  a  true  verdict,  not  upon  the  evidence 
produced  in  court,  but  upon  the  knowledge  they  themselves  possessed, 
or  upon  the  words  of  their  fathers.f  This  explains  the  seeming 
anomaly  of  attaint  for  a  false  verdict.  Should  either  party  be  dis- 
satisfied with  the  verdict,  he  could  demand  a  jury  of  double  the  usual 
number,  to  try  the  truthfulness  of  the  former  verdict.J  This  was 
simply  trying  the  whole  panel  for  perjury  because  they  possessed  the 
requisite  knowledge,  and  had  sworn  that  they  would  render  a  true 
verdict  upon  that  knowledge. 

It  often  happened  that  controversies  would  arise  when  twelve  men 

*  Forsyth,  "  Trial  by  Jury,"  p.  105.      f  Stubbs,  "  Constitutional  History,"  vol.  i,  p.  616. 
X  Forsyth,  "  Trial  by  Jury,"  p.  149. 


678  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

could  not  be  found  who  possessed  the  information  necessary,  and  so, 
to  those  who  knew  the  facts,  were  added  others  who  joined  in  the  ver- 
dict, relying  on  the  knowledge  and  good  faith  of  their  fellow- jurors. 
From  this  the  step  was  short  and  easily  taken  to  that  stage  where  wit- 
nesses not  on  the  panel  were  called  to  give  testimony  concerning  facts 
within  their  knowledge.*  Here  we  find  a  jury,  composed  of  informed 
and  uninformed  jurors,  all  joining  in  a  common  verdict.f  Those  who 
knew  the  facts  in  issue  were,  however,  finally  separated  from  those 
who  did  not,  X  and  while  the  former  gradually  assumed  the  character 
of  the  modern  witnesses  who  simply  detail  the  facts  under  the  sanc- 
tion of  an  oath,  the  latter  became  the  modern  jury  essentially  as  we 
now  have  it — that  is,  triers  of  facts  upon  evidence  produced  by  others. 
So,  while  we  challenge  a  juror  because  he  knows  too  much  about  the 
facts  to  be  tried,  our  ancestors  objected  to  him  because  he  did  not 
know  enough  about  them.  Perhaps  no  other  feature  of  the  whole  sys- 
tem of  trial  by  jury  has  called  forth  so  much  adverse  criticism  as  this. 
It  is  justly  said  that  to  rigorously  enforce  this  rule  in  an  age  of  news- 
papers and  telegraph  would  exclude  every  intelligent  citizen  from 
juries  called  to  try  cases  of  any  considerable  notoriety.  To  meet  the 
demands  of  our  changing  civilization,  most  if  not  all  the  States  of  the 
Union  have,  by  statute,  relaxed  this  once  universal  rule  of  the  com- 
mon law.  An  opinion  founded  on  rumor  or  newspaper-reading  will 
not  now  exclude  a  juror,  and  several  of  the  States  have  gone  to  the 
doubtful  length  of  authorizing  the  presiding  judge  to  permit  a  juror 
to  sit  even  though  he  have  a  decided  opinion  as  to  the  merits  of  the 
case,  provided  he  will  swear  that,  notwithstanding  such  opinion,  he 
believes  he  can  render  a  fair  and  impartial  verdict.  It  would  be  mere 
mockery  to  submit  facts  to  a  man  who  would  not  agree  to  determine 
them  fairly  and  impartially  ;  and  if  there  be  any  place  in  which  this 
rule  is  rigidly  enforced  it  ought  not  to  be  urged  against  the  whole 
system,  when  it  can  be  remedied  so  easily  without  detracting  at  all 
from  what  is  of  real  value  in  it.  The  reasonable  application  of  the 
rule  excluding  from  the  jury  those  who  have  formed  opinions  upon 
ex-parte  statements  of  the  facts  to  be  tried,  certainly  tends  to  insure  a 
true  verdict.  No  evidence  should  be  laid  before  those  who  are  to 
weigh  it,  except  that  which  can  be  subjected  to  the  crucial  test  of  cross- 
examination.  The  frequent  instances  of  a  smooth,  plausible,  persua- 
sive narrative  in  chief  being  totally  contradicted  by  a  shrewd  cross- 
examination  of  the  same  witness  shows  how  unreliable  would  be  any 
decision  made  by  either  judge  or  jury  upon  statements  heard  out  of 
court. 

3.  As  to  the  origin  of  the  number  requisite  to  form  a  jury,  it  is 
impossible  now  to  say  anything  definite.     The  number  twelve  of  which 

*  Bigelow's  "  History  of  Procedure  in  England,"  p.  336. 

f  Forsyth,  "  Trial  by  Jury,"  p.  128. 

X  Stubbs,  "  Constitutional  History,"  vol.  i,  p.  620. 


THE  JURY  SYSTEM.  679 

the  jury  is  composed  in  all  probability  came  from  the  accustomed 
number  of  compurgators  whom  the  plaintiff  or  defendant  brought  into 
court  in  early  times,  before  the  jury  was  known,  to  vouch  for  his  ve- 
racity.* This  being  the  quantum  of  proof  required  to  render  a  party's 
testimony  credible,  it  was  natural  that  the  same  quantum  of  proof — 
that  is,  the  verdict  of  twelve  jurors  possessing  the  necessary  informa- 
tion— should  be  required  to  establish  the  existence  or  non-existence  of 
the  alleged  facts.  Thus  determining  the  number  of  jurors  necessary 
to  render  a  verdict  was  simply  fixing  the  amount  of  proof  necessary  to 
establish  a  fact  if  disputed.  When  jurors  gradually  ceased  to  be  wit- 
nesses the  number  twelve  was  still  retained,  probably  because  there 
was  no  particular  reason  for  changing  it.  Why  there  should  have 
been  twelve  compurgators,  why  that  was  fixed  upon  as  the  quantum 
of  proof  necessary,  it  is  impossible  to  say  with  any  degree  of  certainty. 
Various  reasons  have  been  given  by  various  antiquaries,  none  of  which 
seem  to  have  much  more  than  speculation  to  support  them. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  origin  of  the  number  twelve,  the  rea- 
sons which  gave  rise  to  it  have  doubtless  long  ceased  to  exist,  yet  it 
may  be  difficult  to  point  out  why  it  should  be  changed.  Should  a 
majority  be  able  to  return  a  verdict,  it  would  be  an  advantage  to  have 
the  jury  composed  of  some  odd  number,  but  so  long  as  the  law  re- 
quiring unanimity  remains,  or  should  two  thirds  or  three  fourths  be 
allowed  to  render  a  verdict,  there  seems  no  sufficient  reason  for  chang- 
ing the  number.  Should  any  change  in  this  respect  be  made,  it  would 
seem  expedient  to  make  the  number  of  jurors  in  some  degree  corre- 
spond to  the  importance  of  the  issues  to  be  tried. 

4.  The  fourth  characteristic  feature  of  the  jury  which  I  shall  con- 
sider is  the  requirement  of  unanimity  in  the  verdict.  This,  like  the 
number,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  ancient  jury  was  composed  of  wit- 
nesses. Twelve  lawful  men  must  declare  upon  oath  the  existence  of  a 
fact  before  a  verdict  could  be  rendered.  But,  should  they  disagree, 
others  were  added  until  twelve  out  of  the  whole  number  were  of  one 
mind,  which  process  was  called  afforcing  the  jury.  This  process  re- 
sulted in  allowing  a  bare  majority  to  render  a  verdict  whenever  that 
majority  consisted  of  twelve,  f  From  this  it  is  clear  that  it  was  the 
quantum  of  proof  required,  and  not  the  probability  of  correctness  aris- 
ing from  unanimity,  that  gave  rise  to  the  rule  that  twelve  men  must 
consent  to  the  verdict.  Since  jurors  are  no  longer  witnesses,  the  rule 
has  survived  the  circumstances  that  gave  it  birth. 

Laws  affecting  millions  of  people  are  enacted  by  a  mere  majority 
and  are  equally  binding  on  all  ;  courts  of  last  resort  frequently  decide 
by  a  bare  majority  as  to  the  validity  or  proper  application  of  those 
laws  ;  and  it  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  understand  why  the  unanimous 
verdict  of  twelve  men  is  necessary  to  establish  the  existence  of  the 
facts  to  which  such  laws  apply.  When  we  remember  how  differently 
*  Forsyth,  "  Trial  by  Jury,"  p.  62.         f  Stubbs,  "  Constitutional  History,"  vol.  i,  p.  616. 


68o  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

men  are  impressed  by  the  occurrence  of  things  that  transpire  before 
their  eyes,  how  impossible  it  is  for  us  always  to  agree  upon  the  most 
ordinary  affairs  of  life,  when  we  remember  that  the  jury  is  called  only 
because  two  men,  who  are  the  litigants,  can  not  agree,  we  will  see  the 
absurdity  of  putting  twelve  men  into  the  jury-box  to  hear  the  most 
contradictory  evidence  of  a  particular  fact,  and  then  say  that  they 
must  all  agree  !  In  many  cases  this  agreement,  when  reached,  is  only 
apparent,  and  occasionally  a  false  verdict  is  doubtless  procured  by  the 
tenacity  of  some  determined  juryman.  And  still  more  frequently  are 
juries  discharged  because  they  can  not  agree,  and  the  parties  and  the 
public  are  subjected  to  the  expense  of  another  trial. 

To  give  moderate  room  for  honest  difference  of  opinion,  to  disarm 
occasional  prejudice  and  render  corruption  fruitless,  I  think  in  all  civil 
causes  three  fourths  of  the  jury  ought  to  be  able  to  return  a  verdict. 
It  has  been  urged  that  the  rule  requiring  unanimity  is  necessary  to 
insure  that  every  juror  shall  be  heard  and  the  grounds  of  his  opinion 
considered.  Indeed,  this  has  been  defended  as  the  only  redeeming 
feature  of  the  whole  system  of  trial  by  jury.  If,  after  hearing  all  the 
evidence  adduced,  after  counsel  have  exhausted  their  powers  in  pre- 
senting their  respective  sides  of  the  case,  after  the  presiding  judge 
has  pointed  out  the  issues  to  be  determined  and  laid  down  the  rules  of 
law  applicable  to  them — I  say,  if,  after  all  this,  nine  out  of  the  twelve 
are  agreed  and  are  ready  to  render  a  verdict  without  the  advice  of  the 
other  three,  it  is  very  probable  that  the  preponderance  of  evidence  is 
on  their  side.  In  Nevada  the  three-fourths  rule  in  civil  cases  has  been 
in  successful  operation  nearly  twenty  years,  and  bench,  bar,  and  people 
alike,  seem  to  be  well  satisfied  with  the  result.  Although  this  provis- 
ion is  in  their  State  Constitution,*  yet  the  Legislature  by  a  two-thirds 
vote  might  introduce  the  rule  of  unanimity.  That  no  attempt  has 
been  made  to  do  so  speaks  volumes  for  the  practical  workings  of  the 
three-fourths  rule.  While  I  think  that  three  fourths  may  safely  be 
allowed  to  return  a  verdict  in  civil  causes,  I  am  inclined  to  believe 
that  in  criminal  causes  considerations  of  humanity  demand,  and  the 
State  can  afford  to  grant  every  individual,  such  a  strong  presumption 
of  innocence  that  only  a  unanimous  verdict  of  twelve  of  his  peers  shall 
be  able  to  overcome  it.  In  civil  causes,  where  a  preponderance  of 
evidence  entitles  either  party  to  a  verdict,  it  is  illogical  to  require  una- 
nimity, but  in  criminal  cases,  where  the  defendant  must  be  proved 
guilty  beyond  a  reasonable  doubt,  it  would  be  absurd  to  say  that  he 
may  be  convicted  while  a  single  voice  from  the  jury-box  is  heard  pro- 
testing that  he  is  innocent.  Should  it  be  impossible  for  a  jury  in  a 
criminal  case  to  agree,  they  are  discharged,  and  the  defendant  is  put 
on  trial  again  before  another  jury.  So  justice  can  be  defeated  only 
by  the  unanimous  consent  of  twelve  sworn  men  of  the  neighborhood, 
and,  if  justice  may  sometimes  be  delayed  and  extra  expense  incurred 
*  Constitution  of  Nevada,  Article  I,  section  3. 


THE  JURY  SYSTEM.  681 

by  the  disagreement  of  a  jury,  the  State  can  afford  to  wait,  and  no  ex- 
pense should  be  balanced  against  the  possibility  of  innocence.  So  I 
think  that  justice  will  be  best  insured  by  retaining  the  rule  requiring 
unanimity  in  criminal  cases,  and  in  all  civil  causes  permitting  three 
fourths  to  render  a  verdict. 

5.  The  fact  that  jurymen  are  chosen  by  lot  has  been  the  subject  of 
no  little  ridicule,  and  yet  I  think  no  other  method  would,  on  the  whole, 
prove  as  satisfactory.  When  juries  were  composed  of  those  who 
knew  the  facts  in  dispute,  the  panel  must  have  been  drawn  from  a 
limited  number,  and  often  the  whole  number  of  witnesses  were  not 
sufficient  to  make  a  complete  panel.  At  that  time,  knowledge  of  the 
matter  in  controversy  determined  who  should  be  called  to  sit  as  jurors  ; 
but,  when  the  jury  became  a  tribunal  for  the  trial  of  facts  upon  the 
testimony  of  others,  the  jurors  were  called  from  the  whole  number  of 
citizens  possessing  the  requisite  qualifications.  In  most  of  the  States 
of  the  Union  the  qualifications  of  a  juror  are  the  same  as  those  of  a 
voter,  and  the  panel  is  chosen  by  lot.  In  this  way  the  personal  ele- 
ment is,  if  not  eliminated,  at  least  restrained,  and  the  impersonal  ele- 
ment— blind  chance — that  knows  neither  friend  nor  foe,  decides  who 
shall  be  the  arbitrators.  In  popular  election  Justice  may  be  defeated, 
but  Fortune  always  gives  her  an  even  chance. 

Having  described  some  of  the  leading  characteristics  of  the  mod- 
ern jury,  I  shall  now  consider  some  of  its  advantages — first,  as  a  judi- 
cial tribunal ;  and,  secondly,  as  a  political  institution.  No  one  now 
questions  the  utility  of  the  separation  of  the  legislative  or  law-mak- 
ing power  from  the  judicial  or  law-interpreting  power.  No  less  im- 
portant is  the  separation  of  the  power  that  decides  upon  the  facts 
from  the  power  that  applies  the  law  to  the  facts  when  so  determined. 
The  former  is  the  province  of  the  jury,  and  the  latter  that  of  the 
judge.  It  is  the  duty,  and  the  whole  duty,  of  the  jury  to  determine 
whether  certain  facts  do  or  do  not  exist.  It  is  sometimes  said  that  in 
criminal  cases  the  jury  are  the  judges  of  the  law  as  well  as  the  fact. 
This  misapprehension  arises,  I  think,  from  the  nature  and  effect  of  the 
verdict  rendered  in  such  cases.  On  all  issues  joined  in  criminal  cases 
the  jury  may  bring  in  a  general  verdict  of  "guilty"  or  "not  guilty," 
and,  if  the  latter,  the  defendant  can  not  be  tried  again,  no  matter  how 
erroneous  the  verdict  may  be.  And  this,  too,  is  the  result,  even  though 
the  verdict  be  contrary  to  the  express  instruction  of  the  court.  The 
jury  are,  however,  bound  to  follow  the  instructions  of  the  court  in  all 
matters  of  law,  and  if  they  do  not  they  are  false  to  their  trust,  how- 
ever remediless  the  state  may  be.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  jury 
return  a  special  verdict,  that  is,  that  certain  facts  do  exist,  the  court 
is  bound  either  to  act  upon  those  facts  as  true,  or  set  the  verdict  aside 
and  submit  the  facts  to  another  jury.  Now,  suppose  the  judge  should 
usurp  the  power  of  the  jury,  and  should,  notwithstanding  the  verdict, 
declare  the  alleged  facts  untrue,  or  decide  that  the  facts  though  true 


682  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

do  not  constitute  a  crime,  although  by  express  statute  they  do,  and 
suppose  the  judge  so  deciding,  however  erroneously,  should  discharge 
the  defendant,  would  not  the  result  be  the  same,  and  the  state  equally 
remediless  ?  To  this  it  will  hardly  be  answered  that  judges  can  always 
be  depended  upon  to  do  their  duty,  while  jurors  can  not.  The  truth 
is,  that  the  sole  duty  of  the  jury  is  to  find  the  facts,  and  that  of  the 
judge  to  apply  the  law,  and  when  either  does  more,  except  in  those 
cases  where  the  judge  tries  both,  it  is  a  usurpation  of  power. 

Bearing  in  mind  the  fact  that  the  only  work  of  the  jury  is  to  de- 
termine the  truth  or  falsity  of  certain  alleged  facts,  let  us  inquii-e 
whether  or  not  and  how  well  it  is  adapted  to  this  purpose.  It  is  w^ell 
known  that  technical  training  in  any  branch  of  learning  has  a  peculiar 
influence  on  the  mind.  The  mind  by  such  training  develops  certain 
idiosyncrasies,  and  nothing  is  more  common  than  to  see  an  eminent 
specialist  whose  judgment  is  quite  untrustworthy  out  of  his  specialty. 
A  mind  so  trained  usually  adopts  certain  more  or  less  artificial  tests  of 
truth,  to  which  every  proposition  is  submitted  with  a  predetermination 
as  to  the  relative  weight  of  certain  classes  of  evidence.  Kothing  is 
more  boundless  than  the  variety  of  facts  that  may  be  submitted  for 
judicial  determination,  and  these  facts  do  not  usually  belong  to  any 
specialty,  but  arise  out  of  the  ordinary  transactions  of  all  men.  No 
trade  or  profession  can  claim  a  monopoly  of  facts,  and  I  am  of  the 
opinion  that  twelve  men,  coming  to  the  work  unbiased  and  untram- 
meled  by  any  technical  rules  or  artificial  tests,  are  more  likely  to  arrive 
at  the  truth  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life  than  any  one,  or  indeed  any 
number  of  specialists. 

Perhaps  the  most  frequent  error  alleged  in  appeals  to  the  superior 
courts  is  that  the  verdict  of  the  jury  is  against  the  weight  of  evidence, 
which  is  the  nature  of  an  appeal  from  the  verdict  of  the  jury  on  the 
facts,  and  yet  it  is  safe  to  say  that  not  one  case  in  fifty  is  reversed  on 
that  ground.  And,  for  every  case  reversed  because  the  jury  were 
wrong,  more  than  a  score  are  reversed  for  some  error  committed  by 
the  presiding  judge  in  matters  of  law.  lam  aware  that  it  is  often 
said  that  only  those  who  have  the  bad  side  of  cases  want  to  try  them 
to  a  jury.  This  statement  has  little  or  no  foundation  in  fact.  Re- 
cently one  of  the  foremost  jurists  of  this  country,  who  certainly  is 
not  overmuch  attached  to  the  jury  system,  said  :  "I  am  also  forced 
to  admit,  however,  that  even  in  civil  cases  my  experience  as  a  judge 
has  been  much  more  favorable  to  jury  trials  than  it  was  as  a  practi- 
tioner. And  I  am  bound  to  say  that  an  intelligent  and  unprejudiced 
jury,  when  such  can  be  obtained,  who  are  instructed  in  the  law  with 
such  clearness,  precision,  and  brevity  as  will  present  their  duty  in  bold 
relief,  are  rarely  mistaken  in  regard  to  the  facts  which  they  are  called 
upon  to  find."*     I  think  experience  has  shown  what  reason  would 

*  Judge  Miller's  address  before  the  New  York  Bar  Association,  "  Albany  Law  Jour- 
nal," vol.  xviii,  p.  409. 


THE  JURY  SYSTEM,  683 

suggest,  that  the  jury,  with  the  modifications  I  have  pointed  out,  is 
well  adapted  for  its  special  work — the  finding  of  facts. 

But  even  stronger  are  the  reasons  for  retaining  the  jury  as  a  po- 
litical institution.  Some  one  has  tersely  said  that  it  is  not  so  neces- 
sary that  the  people  get  justice  as  that  they  should  think  they  do. 
While  this  is,  perhaps,  putting  it  a  little  too  strongly,  yet  there  is 
much  truth  in  it.  Judges  are  usually  chosen  from  a  rank  far  above 
the  mass  of  litigants,  and  the  latter  doubtless  often  feel  that  they  are 
appealing  for  justice  to  one  who  has  but  little  in  common  with  the 
class  to  which  they  belong.  And  at  this  time,  when  there  is  a  strong 
tendency  to  lengthen  the  tenure  of  judicial  offices,  it  would  be  dan- 
gerous to  cut  off  the  popular  branch  of  our  judicature.  The  question 
that  most  threatens  this  country  at  present  is  the  question  of  capital 
and  labor.  The  tyranny  that  menaces  us  is  not  the  tyranny  of  kings, 
but  that  of  corporate  capital.  Whether  the  bench  is  really  corrupted 
by  the  vast  moneyed  interests  of  the  country  is  not  material  to  the 
issue,  if  there  is  a  deep-rooted  suspicion  of  it  in  the  minds  of  the 
people.  Most  men  would  feel  safer,  in  a  contest  with  one  of  these 
modern  leviathans,  to  submit  the  facts  in  dispute  to  twelve  men  called 
from  the  vicinage,  but  what  twelve  no  one  could  point  out  until  the 
litigants  had  made  the  last  challenge  and  the  jury  is  in  the  custody  of 
a  sworn  officer  and  beyond  the  reach  of  corrupting  influences.  Juries 
are  doubtless  sometimes  corrupt,  and  sometimes  go  wrong  by  mistake, 
but  the  verdict  of  a  jury,  however  erroneous,  affects  only  one  case, 
and  neither  establishes  a  bad  precedent  nor  materially  lessens  our  con- 
fidence in  the  system.  The  verdict  deciding  only  the  facts  of  the  par- 
ticular case  has  no  influence  upon  the  rights  of  any  but  the  parties  to 
that  suit,  and  it  is  altogether  improbable  that  the  same  twelve  men 
will  ever  be  called  upon  to  sit  together  to  try  another  case.  So,  how- 
ever erroneous  may  be  the  verdict,  and  although  every  one  may  con- 
cede that  it  is  wrong,  no  serious  consequences  follow,  and  the  litigants 
in  the  next  case  proceed  with  the  usual  confidence  in  the  justice  of 
their  fellow-men.  It  is  only  those  who  have  a  bad  cause,  or  have  lost 
confidence  in  mankind,  that  fear  the  jury.  But  how  is  it  with  the 
judges  ?  Instead  of  their  power  ending  with  a  single  case,  in  the  Fed- 
eral courts  and  in  seven  States  of  the  Union  they  hold  their  offices 
during  life,  and  in  the  others  for  a  term  ranging  from  six  to  twenty- 
one  years  ;  and  our  present  cumbrous  method  of  impeachment,  which 
can  be  effectual  for  nothing  less  than  a  "  high  crime  or  misdemeanor," 
affords  but  slight  protection  against  ignorance,  tyranny,  or  even  cor- 
ruption on  the  bench.  If  through  ignorance  or  prejudice  a  judge  has 
arrived  at  a  wrong  conclusion  in  one  case,  and  from  that  conclusion 
there  is  no  appeal,  how  can  he  be  trusted  in  the  next.  And,  still  more, 
if  he  has  yielded  to  the  corrupting  influences  of  power,  or,  what  is 
practically  the  same  thing,  if  the  people  believe  he  has  so  yielded,  in 
one  case,  who  but  the  powerful  can  trust  him  afterward  ?     Ignorance 


684  ^^^  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

or  corruption  in  a  jury  may  affect  a  particular  case,  but  ignorance  or 
corruption  of  a  judge  affects  the  whole  system  upon  which  depend  the 
rights  of  all.  If  a  corrupt  jury  taints  the  waters  for  a  moment,  to 
become  pure  again  the  next,  a  corrupt  judge  poisons  at  its  head  the 
fountain  from  which  all  must  drink.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the 
corrupting  influences  of  corporations  upon  our  courts  is  greatly  exag- 
gerated, but  it  would  be  idle  to  underrate  the  strength  of  public  opin- 
ion on  this  subject.  When  so  many  suspect  the  purity  of  the  bench, 
we  should  consider  well  before  we  eliminate  the  popular  element  from 
our  courts  of  justice.  Let  us  do  nothing  to  exclude  in  fact  or  alienate 
in  feeling  the  people  from  one  of  our  most  important  institutions  lest 
the  evil  spirit  should  whisper  in  the  ear  of  poverty  the  all-too-powerful 
argument  of  Romeo  : 

"  Art  thou  so  bare,  and  full  of  wretchedness, 
And  f ear'st  to  die  ?  famine  is  in  thy  cheeks, 
Need  and  oppression  starveth  in  thy  eyes. 
Contempt  and  beggary  hang  upon  thy  back, 
The  world  is  not  thy  friend,  nor  the  world's  law ; 
The  world  affords  no  law  to  make  thee  rich ; 
Then  be  not  poor,  but  break  it  and  take  this." 

What  do  the  opponents  of  the  jury  offer  in  its  stead  ?  The  only 
substitute  that  has  yet  been  proposed  is  an  increase  of  judges  and  trial 
to  the  court  in  all  cases.  We  have  already  seen  that  one  of  the  most 
useful  features  of  the  system  of  trial  by  jury  is  the  separation  of  the 
power  that  tries  the  facts  from  that  which  decides  the  law.  A  ques- 
tion of  fact  is  tried  upon  evidence,  in  the  weighing  and  considering  of 
which  the  mind  should  be  trammeled  by  no  artificial  tests  or  technical 
rules.  On  the  other  hand,  to  determine  questions  of  law  requires  long 
experience  and  accurate  knowledge  of  rules  and  principles  evolved 
from  the  common  experience  of  mankind.  The  judge  must  be  learned 
in  the  common  law  scattered  through  thousands  of  volumes  of  reported 
cases,  as  well  as  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  statutory  and  consti- 
tutional law  of  the  land.  A  finding  of  fact  in  one  case  can  not,  from 
the  nature  of  the  circumstances,  be  any  aid  in  determining  another 
set  of  facts  upon  different  evidence  in  another  case,  and  hence  a  find- 
ing of  fact,  or  a  verdict  of  a  jury,  can  have  no  authority  as  a  prece- 
dent. On  the  other  hand,  a  determination  of  a  principle  of  law  is 
final  not  only  in  that  particular  case,  but  in  all  similar  cases  in  that 
jurisdiction — thus  a  court  of  last  resort,  in  deciding  a  single  case,  may 
settle  a  principle  of  law  upon  which  scores  of  other  cases  depend. 
Now,  it  is  this  separation  of  the  trial  of  the  law  and  the  facts — func- 
tions essentially  different  in  their  nature  and  requiring  entirely  differ- 
ent kinds  of  training  and  preparation — that  has  enabled  our  courts  to 
build  up,  develop,  and  unify  our  system  of  jurisprudence.  This  divis- 
ion of  labor,  which  has  had  much  to  do  in  producing  the  certainty, 
completeness,  and  symmetry  of  our  law,  would  be  wholly  lost  by  the 


THE  JURY  SYSTEM.  685 

proposed  change.  It  is  suggested  that,  instead  of  a  jury  of  twelve 
untrained  men,  three  or  five  judges  experienced  in  the  law  should  de- 
termine both  the  law  and  the  fact,  and  that  such  decision  be  final.  This 
would  certainly  have  the  virtue  of  producing  speedy  justice,  if  justice 
at  all.  But  what  would  be  the  result  ?  Let  us  suppose  a  case.  The 
Legislature  passes  a  law  which  the  judicial  tribunal  of  one  county 
holds  to  be  unconstitutional,  while  that  of  another  county  declares  it 
constitutional,  and  in  two  other  counties  it  is  construed  to  mean  two 
quite  different  things,  and  so  on  through  fifty  counties,  each  of  which 
has  an  independent,  distinct,  and  final  judicature.  We  see  at  a  glance 
that  there  must  be  one  supreme  judicature  whose  jurisdiction  is  con- 
terminous with  that  of  the  Legislature,  whose  will  it  interprets.  The 
confusion  now  existing  between  the  thirty-eight  States  in  this  regard 
is  the  source  of  much  regret,  and  might  have  been  fatal  to  the  exist- 
ence of  the  Union  had  it  not  been  for  the  Federal  Supreme  Court, 
whose  silent  but  constant  influence  gradually  overcame  the  violence  of 
contending  factions.  Then,  by  whatever  tribunal  cases  are  first  tried, 
we  must  always  have  one  Supreme  or  Appellate  Court,  and  it  is  fair  to 
presume  that  about  as  many  cases  would  find  their  way  into  the  higher 
courts,  if  first  tried  to  the  court,  as  if  tried  by  a  jury.  And  the  pro- 
posed system  would  have  the  further  disadvantage  that,  the  higher  a 
case  were  carried  through  the  successive  tribunals,  the  less  would  be 
the  probability  of  a  correct  determination  of  the  facts.  While  the  ap- 
pellate tribunals  are  usually  best  qualified  to  settle  a  question  of  law, 
they  are,  from  their  technical  training  and  tendency  to  generalize,  least 
qualified  to  determine  a  question  of  fact.  Nor  can  we  reasonably  ex- 
pect a  reduction  in  expense  by  employing  high-salaried  specialists  to 
do  that  which  the  ordinary  laymen  can  do  much  better. 

It  is  suggested,  however,  that  justice  would  more  certainly  be 
meted  out  to  litigants  if  the  whole  subject  of  controversy  were  in  the 
hands  of  a  few  experienced  men.  Might  not  the  same  be  said  of  the  leg- 
islative branch  of  our  Government  ?  A  score  of  well-trained  lawyers 
could  doubtless  enact  a  more  consistent  and  probably  a  better  code 
of  laws  than  any  of  our  heterogeneous  Legislatures,  yet  this  would 
-scarcely  induce  the  people  to  make  the  change.  Indeed,  the  strongest, 
cheapest,  and  best  government  is  an  absolute  despotism  in  the  hands 
of  a  strong,  wise,  good  man.  But  the  character  of  an  institution 
ought  to  be  estimated  by  its  effects  on  the  people,  and  that  is  on  the 
whole  the  best  which  produces  the  best  results.  It  is  not  only  what 
people  are  called  upon  to  actually  do,  but  also  the  possibilities  that  lie 
before  them,  that  affects  their  character.  The  occasional  deposit  of  a 
ballot  is  not  of  itself  much  of  a  public  education,  but  the  possibilities 
and  responsibilities  that  the  elective  franchise  brings  with  it  can 
scarcely  be  overestimated  in  their  influence  on  the  character  of  a  peo- 
ple. Much  the  same  is  the  influence  of  the  popular  branch  of  our 
system  of  judicature.     While  the  direct  influence  of  sitting  occasion- 


686  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

ally  as  a  juror  ought  not  to  be  underestimated,  yet  I  think  still  greater 
good  conies  from  the  increased  responsibility  of  the  people  at  large. 
There  will  be  fewer  criminals  when  every  citizen  feels  that  he  is  in 
some  sense  a  conservator  of  the  peace.  The  direct  educatiog  influ- 
ence of  trial  by  jury  has  often  been  remarked  by  those  who  have 
studied  the  influences  that  mold  the  character  of  nations.  Bentham, 
who  certainly  will  not  be  charged  with  venerating  anything  be- 
cause it  is  old,  in  speaking  of  the  jury  as  a  public  educator  says  : 
"  Every  judicatory,  of  which  a  jury  forms  a  part,  is  a  school  of  jus- 
tice ;  without  the  name,  it  is  so  in  effect.  In  it  the  part  of  master  is 
performed  by  the  judge  ;  the  part  of  scholars  by  the  jurymen  ;  and 
what  takes  place,  takes  place  in  a  company  more  or  less  numerous 
of  spectators.  The  representation  there  given  is  given  by  a  variety 
of  actors,  appearing  in  so  many  different  parts."  *  I  believe  that  the 
people  will  not  willingly  give  up  an  institution  to  which  they  owe 
so  much  of  their  self-reliance  and  ability  to  govern  themselves  until 
stronger  reasons  than  any  yet  suggested  are  presented. 


THE  CHEMISTEY  OF  COOIffiKY. 

By  W.  MATTIEU  WILLIAMS. 
XXIV. 

SINCE  the  publication  of  my  last  paper,  I  have  learned  the  proper 
name  of  the  Swiss  compound  there  described  as  fondevin,  accord- 
ing to  my  recollection  of  its  pronunciation  in  Switzerland.  In  an  old 
edition  of  Mrs.  RundelPs  "  Domestic  Cookery,"  it  is  described  as  fondu. 
A  similar  dish  is  described  in  that  useful  book  "  Cre-Fydd's  Family 
Fare,"  under  the  name  of  cheese  souffle  or  fondu.  I  had  looked  for  it 
in  more  pretentious  works,  especially  in  the  most  pretentious  and  the 
most  disappointing  one  I  have  yet  been  tempted  to  purchase,  viz.,  the 
twenty-seventh  edition  of  Francatelli's  "Modern  Cook,"  a  work 
which  I  can  not  recommend  to  anybody  who  has  less  than  £20,000  a 
year  and  a  corresponding  luxury  of  liver. 

Amid  all  the  culinary  monstrosities  of  these  "  high-class  "  manuals, 
I  fail  to  find  anything  concerning  the  cookery  of  cheese  that  is  worth 
the  attention  of  my  readers.  Francatelli  has,  under  the  name  of  "  Eggs 
a  la  Swisse,"  a  sort  of  fondu,  but  decidedly  inferior  to  the  common 
fondu  of  the  humble  Swiss  osteria,  as  he  lays  the  eggs  upon  slices  of 
cheese,  and  prescribes  especially  that  the  yolks  shall  not  be  broken  ; 
omits  the  milk,  but  substitutes  (for  high-class  extravagance'  sake,  I 
suppose)  "  a  gill  of  double  cream,"  to  be  poured  over  the  top.     Thus 

*  Bentham's  works,  vol.  ii,  p.  125. 


THE   CHEMISTRY  OF  COOKERY.  6^7 

the  cheese  is  not  intermingled  with  the  Qgg,  lest  it  should  spoil  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  unbroken  yolks,  its  casein  is  made  leathery  instead  of 
being  dissolved,  and  the  substitution  of  sixpenny  worth  of  double 
cream  for  a  halfpenny  worth  of  milk  supplies  the  high-class  victim 
with  fivepence  halfpenny  worth  of  biliary  derangement. 

In  Gouffe's  "Royal  Cookery-Book"  (the  Household  Edition  of 
which  contains  a  great  deal  that  is  really  useful  to  an  English  house- 
wife) I  find  a  better  recipe  under  the  name  of  cheese  souffles.  He  says  : 
"  Put  two  and  one  fourth  ounces  of  flour  in  a  stewpan,  with  one  and 
a  half  pint  of  milk  ;  season  with  salt  and  pepper  ;  stew  over  the  fire 
till  boiling,  and,  should  there  be  any  lumps,  strain  the  souffle  paste 
through  a  tammy-cloth  ;  add  seven  ounces  of  grated  Parmesan  cheese, 
and  seven  yolks  of  eggs  ;  whip  the  whites  till  they  are  firm,  and  add 
them  to  the  mixture  ;  fill  some  paper  cases  with  it,  and  bake  in  the 
oven  for  fifteen  minutes." 

Cre-Fydd  says  :  "  Grate  six  ounces  of  rich  cheese  (Parmesan  is  the 
best)  ;  put  it  into  an  enameled  saucepan,  with  a  teaspoonful  of  flour 
of  mustard,  a  saltspoonful  of  white  pepper,  a  grain  of  cayenne,  the 
sixth  part  of  a  nutmeg,  grated,  two  ounces  of  butter,  two  tablespoon- 
fuls  of  baked  flour,  and  a  gill  of  new  milk  ;  stir  it  over  a  slow  fire  till  it 
becomes  like  smooth,  thick  cream  (but  it  must  not  boil)  ;  add  the 
well-beaten  yolks  of  six  eggs,  beat  for  ten  minutes,  then  add  the  whites 
of  the  eggs  beaten  to  a  stiff  froth  ;  put  the  mixture  into  a  tin  or  a  card- 
board mold,  and  bake  in  a  quick  oven  for  twenty  minutes.  Serve  im- 
mediately." 

Here  is  a  true  cookery  of  cheese  by  solution,  and  the  result  is  an 
excellent  dish.  But  there  is  some  unnecesary  complication  and  kitchen 
pedantry  involved.     The  following  is  my  own  simplified  recipe  : 

Take  one  fourth  of  a  pound  of  grated  cheese  ;  add  it  to  a  gill  of 
milk  in  which  is  dissolved  as  much  powdered  bicarbonate  of  potash  as 
will  stand  upon  a  threepenny-piece  ;  mustard,  pepper,  etc.,  as  prescribed 
above  by  Cre-Fydd.*  Heat  this  carefully  until  the  cheese  is  com- 
pletely dissolved.  Then  beat  up  three  eggs,  yolk  and  whites  together, 
and  add  them  to  this  solution  of  cheese,  stirring  the  whole.  Now  take 
a  shallow  metal  or  earthenware  dish  or  tray  that  will  bear  heating  ; 
put  a  little  butter  on  this,  aud  heat  the  butter  till  it  frizzles.  Then 
pour  the  mixture  into  this,  and  bake  or  fry  it  until  it  is  nearly  solidified. 

A  cheaper  dish  may  be  made  by  increasing  the  proportion  of  cheese 
— say,  six  to  eight  ounces  to  three  eggs,  or  only  one  Qgg  to  a  quarter 
pound  of  cheese  for  a  hard-working  man  with  powerful  digestion. 

The  chief  difficulty  in  preparing  this  dish  conveniently  is  that  of 

*  Before  the  Adulteration  Act  was  passed,  mustard-flour  was  usually  mixed  with  well- 
dried  wheaten-flour,  whereby  the  redundant  oil  was  absorbed,  and  the  mixture  was  a  dry 
powder.  Now  it  is  different,  being  pure  powdered  mustard-seed,  and  usually  rather 
damp.  It  not  only  lies  closer,  but  is  much  stronger.  Therefore,  in  following  any  recipe 
of  old  cookery-books,  only  about  half  the  stated  quantity  should  be  used. 


688  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

obtaining  suitable  vessels  for  the  final  frying  or  baking,  as  each  por- 
tion should  be  poured  into,  and  fried  or  baked  in,  a  separate  dish,  so 
that  each  may,  as  in  Switzerland,  have  his  own  fondu  complete,  and 
eat  it  from  the  dish  as  it  comes  from  the  fire.  As  demand  creates 
supply,  our  ironmongers,  etc.,  will  soon  learn  to  meet  this  demand  if 
it  arises.  I  am  about  writing  to  Messrs.  Griffiths  &  Browett,  of  Bir- 
mingham, large  manufacturers  of  what  is  technically  called  "hollow- 
ware  " — i.  e.,  vessels  of  all  kinds  knocked  up  from  a  single  piece  of 
metal  without  any  soldering — and  have  little  doubt  that  they  will 
speedily  produce  suitable  fondu  dishes  according  to  my  specification, 
and  supply  them  to  the  shopkeepers. 

The  bicarbonate  of  potash  is  an  original  novelty  that  will  possibly 
alarm  some  of  my  non-chemical  readers.  I  advocate  its  use  for  two 
reasons  :  First,  it  effects  a  better  solution  of  the  casein  by  neutraliz- 
ing the  free  lactic  acid  that  inevitably  exists  in  milk  supplied  to  towns, 
and  any  free  acid  that  may  remain  in  the  cheese.  At  a  farm-house 
where  the  milk  is  just  drawn  from  the  cow  it  is  unnecessary  for  this 
purpose,  as  such  new  milk  is  itself  slightly  alkaline.  My  second  reason 
is  physiological,  and  of  greater  weight.  Salts  of  potash  are  necessary 
constituents  of  human  food.  They  exist  in  all  kinds  of  wholesome 
vegetables  and  fruits,  and  in  the  juices  of  fresh  meat,  but  they  are 
wanting  in  cheese^  having,  on  account  of  their  great  solubility,  been 
left  behind  in  the  whey. 

This  absence  of  potash  appears  to  me  to  be  the  one  serious  objec- 
tion to  the  free  use  of  cheese-diet.  The  Swiss  peasant  escapes  the 
mischief  by  his  abundant  salads,  which  eaten  raw  contain  all  their 
potash  salts,  instead  of  leaving  the  greater  part  in  the  saucepan,  as  do 
cabbages,  etc.,  when  cooked  in  boiling  water.  In  Norway,  where 
salads  are  scarce,  the  bonder  and  his  housemen  have  at  times  sufiered 
greatly  from  scurvy,  especially  in  the  far  north,  and  would  be  severely 
victimized  but  for  special  remedies  that  they  use  (the  mottebeer,  cran- 
berry, etc.,  grown  and  preserved  especially  for  the  purpose.  The  Lap- 
landers make  a  broth  of  scurvy-grass  and  similar  herbs).  Mr.  Lang 
attributes  their  recent  immunity  from  scurvy,  which  was  once  a  sore 
plague  among  them,  to  the  introduction  of  the  potato. 

Scurvy  on  board  ship  results  from  eating  salt  meat,  the  potash  of 
which  has  escaped  by  exosmosis  into  the  brine  or  pickle.  The  sailor 
now  escapes  it  by  drinking  citrate  of  potash  in  the  form  of  lime-juice, 
and  by  alternating  salt-junk  with  rations  of  tinned  meats. 

I  once  lived  for  six  days  on  bread  and  cheese  only,  tasting  no  other 
food.  I  had,  in  company  with  C.  M.  Clayton,  son  of  the  Senator  of 
Delaware  (who  negotiated  the  Clayton-Bulwer  Treaty),  taken  a  pas- 
sage from  Malta  to  Athens  in  a  little  schooner,  and  expecting  a  three 
days'  journey  we  took  no  other  rations  than  a  lump  of  Cheshire  cheese 
and  a  supply  of  bread.  Bad  weather  doubled  the  expected  length  of 
our  journey. 


THE   CHEMISTRY  OF  COOKERY,  689 

We  were  both  young,  and,  proud  of  our  hardihood  in  bearing  pri- 
vations, were  stanch  disciples  of  Diogenes  ;  but  on  the  last  day  we 
succumbed,  and  bartered  the  remainder  of  our  bread  and  cheese  for 
some  of  the  boiled  horse-beans  and  cabbage-broth  of  the  forecastle. 
The  cheese,  highly  relished  at  first,  had  become  positively  nauseous, 
and  our  craving  for  the  vegetable  broth  was  absurd,  considering  the 
full  view  we  had  of  its  constituents,  and  of  the  dirtiness  of  its  cooks. 

I  attribute  this  to  the  lack  of  potash  salts  in  the  cheese  and  bread. 
It  was  similar  to  the  craving  for  common  salt  by  cattle  that  lack  ne- 
cessary chlorides  in  their  food.  I  am  satisfied  that  cheese  can  never 
take  the  place  in  an  economic  dietary  otherwise  justified  by  its  nutri- 
tious composition,  unless  this  deficiency  of  potash  is  somehow  sup- 
plied. My  device  of  using  it  with  milk  as  a  solvent  supplies  it  in  a 
simple  and  natural  manner. 

XXV. 

My  first  acquaintance  with  the  rational  cookery  of  cheese  was  in 
the  autumn  of  1842,  when  I  dined  with  the  monks  of  St.  Bernard. 
Being  the  only  guest,  I  was  the  first  to  be  supplied  with  soup,  and 
then  came  a  dish  of  grated  cheese.  Being  young  and  bashful,  I  was 
ashamed  to  display  my  ignorance  by  asking  what  I  was  to  do  with 
the  cheese,  but  made  a  bold  dash,  nevertheless,  and  sprinkled  some 
of  it  into  my  soup.  I  then  learned  that  my  guess  was  quite  correct  ; 
the  prior  and  the  monks  did  the  same. 

On  walking  on  to  Italy  I  learned  that  there  such  use  of  cheese  is 
universal.  Minestra  without  Parmesan  would  there  be  regarded  as 
we  in  England  should  regard  muffins  and  crumpets  without  butter. 
During  the  forty  years  that  have  elapsed  since  my  first  sojourn  in 
Italy  my  sympathies  are  continually  lacerated  when  I  contemplate  the 
melancholy  spectacle  of  human  beings  eating  thin  soup  without  any 
grated  cheese. 

Not  only  in  soups,  but  in  many  other  dishes,  it  is  similarly  used. 
As  an  example,  I  may  name  "  Risotto  h  la  Milanese,"  a  delicious, 
wholesome,  and  economical  dish — a  sort  of  stew  composed  of  rice  and 
the  giblets  of  fowls,  usually  charged  about  twopence  to  threepence 
per  portion  at  Italian  restaurants.  This  is  always  served  with  grated 
Parmesan.  The  same  with  the  many  varieties  of  paste,  of  which  maca- 
roni and  vermicelli  are  the  best  known  in  this  country. 

In  all  these  the  cheese  is  sprinkled  over,  and  then  stirred  into  the 
soup,  etc.,  while  it  is  hot.  The  cheese  being  finely  divided  is  fused 
at  once,  and,  being  fused  in  liquid,  is  thus  delicately  cooked.  This  is 
quite  different  from  the  "  macaroni  cheese  "  commonly  prepared  in 
England  by  depositing  macaroni  in  a  pie-dish,  and  then  covering  it 
with  a  stratum  of  grated  cheese,  and  placing  this  in  an  oven  or  before 
a  fire  until  the  cheese  is  desiccated,  browned,  and  converted  into  a 
horny,  caseous  form  of  carbon  that  would  induce  chronic  dyspepsia  in 
the  stomach  of  a  wild-boar  if  he  fed  upon  it  for  a  week. 

TOL.  XXIT. — 44 


690  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

In  all  preparations  of  Italian  pastes,  risottos,  purees,  etc.,  the  cheese 
is  intimately  mixed  throughout,  and  softened  and  diffused  thereby  in 
the  manner  above  described. 

The  Italians  themselves  imagine  that  only  their  own  Parmesan 
cheese  is  fit  for  this  purpose,  and  have  infected  many  Englishmen  with 
the  same  idea.  Thus  it  happens  that  fancy  prices  are  paid  in  this 
country  for  that  particular  cheese,  which  is  of  the  same  class  as  the 
cheese  known  in  our  midland  counties  as  "  skim  dick,"  and  sold  there 
at  about  f ourpence  per  pound,  or  given  by  the  farmers  to  their  laborers. 
It  is  cheese  "  that  has  sent  its  butter  to  market,"  being  made  from 
the  skim-milk  which  remains  in  the  dairy  after  the  pigs  have  been 
fully  supplied. 

I  have  used  this  kind  of  cheese  as  a  substitute  for  Parmesan,  and 
I  find  it  quite  satisfactory,  though  it  has  not  exactly  the  same  fine 
flavor  as  the  best  qualities  of  Parmesan,  but  is  equal  to  that  commonly 
used  by  the  Italian  millions.  The  only  fault  of  our  ordinary  whole- 
milk  English  and  American  cheeses  is  that  they  are  too  rich,  and  can 
not  be  so  finely  grated  on  account  of  their  more  unctuous  structure, 
due  to  the  cream  they  contain. 

I  note  that  in  the  recipes  of  high-class  cookery-books,  w^here  Par- 
mesan is  prescribed,  cream  is  commonly  added.  Sensible  English 
cooks,  who  use  Cheshire,  Cheddar,  or  good  American  cheese,  are 
practically  including  the  Parmesan  and  the  cream  in  natural  combina- 
tion. By  allowing  these  cheeses  to  dry,  or  by  setting  aside  the  outer 
part  of  the  cheese  for  the  purpose,  the  difficulty  of  grating  is  over- 
come. 

I  have  now  to  communicate  another  result  of  my  cheese-cooking 
researches,  viz.,  a  new  dish — cheese-porridge — or,  I  may  say,  a  new 
class  of  dishes — cheese-porridges.  They  are  not  intended  for  epicures, 
not  for  swine  who  only  live  to  eat,  but  for  men  and  women  who  eat 
in  order  to  live  and  work.  These  combinations  of  cheese  are  more 
especially  fitted  for  those  whose  work  is  muscular,  and  who  work  in 
the  open  air.  Sedentary  brain-workers  like  myself  should  use  them 
carefully,  lest  they  suffer  from  over-nutrition,  which  is  but  a  few  de- 
grees worse  than  partial  starvation. 

Typical  cheese-porridge  is  ordinary  oatmeal-porridge  made  in  the 
nsual  manner,  but  to  which  grated  cheese  is  added,  either  while  in  the 
cookery-pot  or  after  it  is  taken  out,  and  yet  as  hot  as  possible.  It 
should  be  sprinkled  gradually  and  well  stirred  in. 

Another  kind  of  cheese-porridge  or  cheese-pudding  is  made  by 
adding  cheese  to  haJced  potatoes — the  potatoes  to  be  taken  out  of  their 
skins  and  well  mashed  while  the  grated  cheese  is  sprinkled  and  inter- 
mingled. A  little  milk  may  or  may  not  be  added,  according  to  taste 
and  convenience.  This  is  better  suited  for  those  whose  occupations 
are  sedentary,  potatoes  being  less  nutritious  and  more  easily  digested 
than  oatmeal.     They  are  chiefly  composed  of  starch,  which  is  a  heat- 


THE  CHEMISTRY  OF  COOKERY.  691 

giver  or  fattener,  while  the  cheese  is  highly  nitrogenous,  and  sup- 
plies the  elements  in  which  the  potato  is  deficient,  the  two  together 
forming  a  fair  approach  to  the  theoretically  demanded  balance  of 
constituents. 

I  say  haJced  potatoes  rather  than  boiled,  and  perhaps  should  explain 
my  reasons,  though  in  doing  so  I  anticipate  what  I  intended  to  say 
when  on  the^subject  of  vegetable  food. 

Raw  potatoes  contain  potash  salts  which  are  easily  soluble  in  water. 
I  find  that  when  the  potato  is  boiled  some  of  the  potash  comes  out 
into  the  water,  and  thus  the  vegetable  is  robbed  of  a  very  valuable 
constituent.  The  baked  potato  contains  all  its  original  saline  constit- 
uents which,  as  I  have  already  stated,  are  specially  demanded  as  an 
addition  to  cheese-food. 

Hasty-pudding  made,  as  usual,  of  wheat-flour,  may  be  converted 
from  an  insipid  to  a  savory  and  highly  nutritious  porridge  by  the  ad- 
dition of  cheese  in  like  manner. 

The  same  with  boiled  rice,  whether  whole  or  ground,  also  sago, 
tapioca,  and  other  forms  of  edible  starch.  Supposing  whole  rice  is 
used,  and  I  think  this  the  best,  the  cheese  may  be  sprinkled  among 
the  grains  of  rice  and  well  stirred  or  mashed  up  with  them.  The 
addition  of  a  little  brown  gravy  to  this  gives  us  an  Italian  risotto. 

Peas-pudding  is  not  improved  by  cheese.  The  chemistry  of  this 
will  come  out  when  I  explain  the  composition  of  peas,  beans,  etc. 

I  might  enumerate  other  methods  of  cooking  cheese  by  thus  adding 
it  in  a  finely  divided  state  to  other  kinds  of  food,  but  if  I  were  to  ex- 
press my  own  convictions  on  the  subject  I  should  stir  up  prejudice  by 
naming  some  mixtures  which  some  people  would  denounce.  As  an  ex- 
ample I  may  refer  to  a  dish  which  I  invented  more  than  twenty  years 
ago — viz.,  fish  and  cheese  pudding,  made  by  taking  the  remains  from 
a  dish  of  boiled  codfish,  haddock,  or  other  white  fish,  mashing  it  with 
bread-crumbs,  grated  cheese,  and  ketchup,  then  warming  in  an  oven 
and  serving  after  the  usual  manner  of  scalloped  fish.  Any  remains 
of  oyster-sauce  may  be  advantageously  included. 

I  find  this  delicious,  but  others  may  not.  I  frequently  add  grated 
cheese  to  boiled  fish  as  ordinarily  served,  and  have  lately  made  a  fish 
sauce  by  dissolving  grated  cheese  in  milk  with  the  aid  of  a  little  bi- 
carbonate of  potash.  I  suggest  these  cheese  mixtures  to  others  with 
some  misgiving  as  regards  palatability,  after  learning  the  revelations 
of  Darwin  on  the  persistence  of  heredity.  It  is  quite  possible  that, 
being  a  compound  of  the  Swiss  Mattieu  with  the  Welsh  Williams, 
cheese  on  both  sides,  I  may  inherit  an  abnormal  fondness  for  this 
staple  food  of  the  mountaineers. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  so  far  as  the  mere  palate  is  concerned,  I  have 
full  confidence  in  the  chemistry  of  all  my  advocacy  of  cheese  and  its 
cookery.  Rendered  digestible  by  simple  and  suitable  cookery,  and 
added,  with  a  little  potash  salt,  to  farinaceous  food  of  all  kinds,  it 


692  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

affords  exactly  what  is  required  to  supply  a  theoretically  complete 
and  a  most  economical  dietary,  without  the  aid  of  any  other  kind  of 
animal  food.  The  potash  salts  may  be  advantageously  supplied  by  a 
liberal  second  course  of  fruit  or  salad. — Knowledge. 


SCIEIS^CE  AND  SAFETY  AT  SEA. 

By  KICHAED  A.  PEOCTOE. 

IN  the  autumn  of  1879  the  steamship  Arizona,  five  thousand  tons, 
at  that  time  the  swiftest  ocean-going  steamship  in  existence,  was 
urging  her  way,  at  the  rate  of  some  fifteen  knots  an  hour,  on  the 
homeward  course  from  New  York,  whence  she  had  sailed  but  a  day  or 
two  before.  It  was  night,  and  there  was  a  light  haze,  but  of  danger 
from  collision  with  a  passing  ship  there  was  little  or  none.  The  cap- 
tain and  crew  knew  of  no  special  reason  for  watchfulness,  and  the 
passengers  were  altogether  free  from  anxiety.  Indeed,  it  so  chanced 
that  at  a  time  when,  in  reality,  the  most  imminent  danger  threatened 
every  soul  on  board,  many  of  the  saloon-passengers  were  engaged  in 
purchasing  at  auction  the  numbers  for  the  next  day's  run — runs  below 
three  hundred  and  fifty  knots  being  sold  at  a  very  low  rate  indeed. 
Suddenly  a  crash  was  heard,  the  ship's  swift  progress  was  stopped, 
and  a  few  minutes  later  every  one  knew  that  the  Arizona  had  run  dead 
upon  an  enormous  iceberg,  the  spires  and  pinnacles  of  which  could  be 
seen  hanging  almost  over  the  ship,  and  gleaming  threateningly  in  the 
rays  of  her  mast-head  light.  But  the  risk  that  threatened  her  living 
freight  was  not  that  of  being  crushed  by  falling  ice.  The  bows  of  the 
Arizona  were  seen  to  be  slowly  sinking,  and  presently  there  was  a 
well-marked  lurch  to  starboard.  The  fore  compartment  and  a  smaller 
side  compartment  were  filling.  It  was  an  anxious  time  for  all  on 
board.  Many  an  eye  was  turned  toward  the  boats,  and  the  more  ex- 
perienced thought  of  the  weary  miles  which  separated  them  from  the 
nearest  land,  and  of  the  poor  chance  that  a  passing  steamer  might  pick 
up  the  Arizona's  boats  at  sea.  Fortunately,  the  builders  of  the  Ari- 
zona had  done  their  work  faithfully  and  well.  Like  another  ship  of 
the  same  line  which  had  been  exposed  to  the  same  risk,  save  that  her 
speed  was  less,  and  therefore  the  danger  of  the  shock  diminished,  the 
Arizona,  though  crippled,  was  not  sunk.  She  bore  up  for  St.  John's, 
and  her  passengers  were  taken  on  later  by  another  steamer. 

The  danger  which  nearly  caused  the  loss  of  the  Arizona — collision 
with  an  iceberg — is  one  to  which  steamships,  and  especially  swift 
steamships,  are  exposed  in  exceptional  degree.  Like  this  danger,  also, 
it  is  one  which  renders  the  duty  of  careful  watching,  especially  in  the 
night  and  in  times  of  haze  or  fog,  a  most  anxious  and  important  care. 


SCIENCE  AND    SAFETY  AT  SEA,  693 

But,  unlike  the  risk  from  collision  with  another  ship,  the  risk  from  col- 
lision with  icebergs  can  not  be  diminished  by  any  system  of  side- 
lights or  head-lights  or  stern-lights,  except  in  just  such  degree  (un- 
fortunately slight)  as  a  powerful  light  at  the  foremast-head,  aided  by 
strong  side-lights  or  bow-lights,  may  serve  to  render  the  gleam  of  the 
treacherous  ice  discernible  somewhat  farther  ahead.  But  to  a  steam- 
ship running  at  the  rate  of  fourteen  or  fifteen  knots  an  hour,  even  in 
the  clearest  weather,  at  night,  the  distance  athwart  which  a  low-lying 
iceberg  can  be  seen,  even  by  the  best  eyes,  is  but  short.  She  runs 
over  it  before  there  is  time  for  the  watch  to  make  their  warning  heard, 
and  for  the  engineers  to  stop  and  reverse  their  engines. 

But  science,  besides  extending  our  senses,  provides  us  with  senses 
other  than  those  we  possess  naturally.  The  photographic  eyes  of  sci- 
ence see  in  the  thousandth  part  of  a  second  what  our  eyes,  because  in 
so  short  a  time  they  can  receive  no  distinct  impression  at  all,  are  un- 
able to  see.  They  may,  on  the  other  hand,  rest  on  some  faintly  lumi- 
nous object  for  hours,  seeing  more  and  more  each  moment,  where  ours 
would  see  no  more — perhaps  even  less — after  the  first  minute  than  they 
had  seen  in  the  first  second.  The  spectroscopic  eyes  of  science  can 
analyze  for  us  the  substance  of  self-luminous  vapors  or  of  vapors  ab- 
sorbing light,  or  of  liquids,  etc.,  where  the  natural  eyes  have  no  such 
power  of  analysis.  The  sense  of  feeling,  or  rather  the  sense  for  heat, 
which  Reid  originally  and  properly  distinguished  as  a  sixth  sense  (not 
to  be  confounded,  as  our  modern  classification  of  the  senses  incorrect- 
ly confounds  it,  with  the  sense  of  touch),  is  one  which  is  very  limited 
in  its  natural  range.  But  science  can  give  us  eyes  for  heat  as  keen  and 
as  widely  ranging  as  the  eyes  which  she  gives  us  for  light.  It  was  no 
idle  dream  of  Edison's,  but  a  thought  which  one  day  will  be  fraught 
with  useful  results,  that  science  may  hereafter  recognize  a  star  by  its 
heat,  which  the  most  powerful  telescope  yet  made  fails  to  show  by  its 
light.  Since  that  was  said,  the  younger  Draper  (whose  loss  followed 
so  quickly  and  so  sadly  for  science  on  that  of  his  lamented  father)  has 
produced  photographic  plates  showing  stars  which  can  not  be  seen 
through  the  telescope  by  which  those  photographs  were  taken.  As 
yet  the  delicate  heat-measurers  devised  by  science  have  not  been  ap- 
plied to  astronomical  research  with  any  important  results.  But  Edi- 
son's and  Langley's  heat-measurers  have  been  used  even  in  this  way, 
and  the  very  failure  which  attended  the  employment  of  Edison's  heat- 
measurer  (the  tasimeter,  or,  literally,  the  strain-measurer,  described 
shortly  before  in  the  "  Times  ")  during  the  eclipse  of  1878  shows  how 
delicate  is  the  heat-estimating  sense  of  science.  When  the  light  of 
the  corona — which  has  no  heat  that  the  thermometer,  or  even  that 
far  more  delicate  heat-measurer,  the  thermopile,  will  recognize — fell 
on  the  face  of  the  tasimeter,  the  index  which  Edison  supposed  likely 
to  move  just  perceptibly  actually  flew  beyond  the  index-plate.  Thus, 
though  the  heat  of  the  corona  could  not  be  measured,  the  extreme 


694  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

delicacy  of  the  tasimeter  was  demonstrated  unmistakably.  Langley's 
heat-measurer  is  scarcely  less  sensitive,  and  probably  more  manage- 
able. But  in  point  of  fact  each  instrument  is  more  sensitive  than  the 
heat-sense  of  science  is  required  to  be,  to  do  the  work  I  have  now  to 
indicate  ;  and  an  instrument  can  readily  be  constructed  which  shall  be, 
in  the  right  degree,  less  sensitive  than  they  are,  though  it  might  be 
difficult  at  present  to  invent  any  that  should  be  more  senstive. 

The  sense  of  sight  is  not  the  only  sense  affected  as  an  iceberg  is 
approached.  There  is  a  sensible  lowering  of  temperature.  But  to 
the  natural  heat-sense  this  cooling  is  not  so  obvious  or  so  readily  and 
quickly  appreciated  that  it  could  be  trusted  instead  of  the  outlook  of 
the  watch.  The  heat-sense  of  science,  however,  is  so  much  keener 
that  it  could  indicate  the  presence  of  an  iceberg  at  a  distance  far 
beyond  that  over  which  the  keenest  eye  could  detect  an  iceberg  at 
night ;  perhaps  even  an  isolated  iceberg  could  be  detected  when  far 
beyond  the  range  of  ordinary  eye-sight  in  the  day-time.  Not  only 
so,  but  an  instrument  like  the  thermopile,  or  the  more  delicate  heat- 
measurers  of  Edison  and  Langley,  can  readily  be  made  to  give  auto- 
matic notice  of  its  sensations  (so  to  speak).  As  those  who  have  heard 
Professor  Tyndall's  lectures  any  time  during  the  last  twenty  years 
know,  the  index  of  a  scientific  heat-measurer  moves  freely  in  response 
either  to  gain  or  loss  of  heat,  or,  as  we  should  ordinarily  say,  in  re- 
sponse either  to  heat  or  cold.  An  index  which  thus  moves  can  be 
made,  as  by  closing  or  breaking  electrical  contact,  or  in  other  ways, 
to  give  very  effective  indication  of  the  neighborhood  of  danger.  It 
would  be  easy  to  devise  half  a  dozen  ways  in  which  a  heat-indicator 
(which  is  of  necessity  a  cold-indicator),  suitably  placed  in  the  bows 
of  a  ship,  could  note,  as  it  were,  the  presence  of  an  iceberg  fully  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  away,  and  speak  of  its  sensations  much  more  loudly 
and  effectively  than  the  watch  can  proclaim  the  sight  of  an  iceberg 
when  much  nearer  at  hand.  The  movement  of  the  index  could  set  a 
fog-horn  lustily  announcing  the  approach  of  danger  ;  could  illuminate 
the  ship,  if  need  be,  by  setting  at  work  the  forces  necessary  for  in- 
stantaneous electric  lighting  ;  could  signal  the  engineers  to  stop  and 
reverse  the  engines,  or  even  stop  and  reverse  the  engines  automati- 
cally. Whether  so  much  would  be  necessary — whether  those  among 
lost  Atlantic  steamships  which  have  been  destroyed,  as  many  have 
been,  by  striking  upon  icebergs,  could  only  have  been  saved  by  such 
rapid  automatic  measures  as  these — ^may  or  may  not  be  the  case  ;  but 
that  the  use  of  the  infinitely  keen  perception  which  the  sense-organs 
of  science  possess  for  heat  and  cold  would  be  a  feasible  way  of  ob- 
taining much  earlier  and  much  more  effective  notice  of  danger  from 
icebergs  than  the  best  watch  can  give,  no  one  who  knows  the  powers 
of  science  in  this  direction  can  doubt. — London  Times. 


SKETCH  OF   ORMSBY  MACKNIOHT  MITCHEL.     695 


SKETCH  OF  OEMSBY  MACKNIGHT  MITCHEL. 

WITH  the  year  1842  practically  commences  the  history  of  astro- 
nomical science  in  America.  In  that  year,  Oemsby  Macknight 
MiTCHEL,  a  young  graduate  of  West  Point,  and  Professor  of  Mathe- 
matics at  Cincinnati,  having  met  with  success  in  lecturing  before  his 
classes,  was  invited  to  give  a  course  in  the  college  hall.  So  successful 
was  he  in  this  course,  and  so  great  was  the  interest  that  he  awakened 
in  the  subject,  that  he  resolved  to  turn  it  to  account,  and  enlist  his 
hearers  in  the  work  of  building  an  observatory.  As  the  wealthier 
cities  of  the  Eastern  States  had  not  yet  moved  in  the  direction,  his 
plan  was  regarded  by  many  as  impracticable,  but,  after  vigorous  per- 
sonal application,  he  succeeded  in  obtaining  sufficient  subscriptions  to 
warrant  a  commencement  of  the  work.  The  enterprise  took  shape  by 
the  organization  of  the  Cincinnati  Astronomical  Society.  Professor 
Mitchel  had  no  observatory  to  model  from,  no  practical  knowledge  of 
astronomy,  and  no  instrument-makers  from  whom  to  purchase  instru- 
ments or  object-glasses.  All  this  must  be  taught  in  older  countries, 
and  he  resolved  to  go  to  Europe  to  this  end.  In  order  to  husband 
his  resources,  he  proceeded  first  to  Washington,  in  the  hope  that  he 
might  be  given  some  mission  from  the  State  Department,  the  remu- 
neration for  which  would  pay  his  expenses.  Mr.  Webster,  then  Secre- 
tary of  State,  informed  him  that  his  request  was  impossible,  and 
nearly  everybody,  including  President  Tyler,  was  inclined  to  sneer  at 
him  as  an  impractical  enthusiast.  There  was  one  notable  exception 
— John  Quincy  Adams  spoke  words  of  kindness  and  encouragement. 
His  application  failed,  and  he  proceeded  on  his  journey,  crossing 
the  ocean  in  a  sailing-vessel.  Upon  arriving  in  England,  he  looked 
for  an  object-glass,  but  found  none  worthy  of  his  attention.  From 
England  he  proceeded  to  Paris,  and  called  upon  M.  Arago  at  the  ob- 
servatory there,  who  received  him  kindly  ;  but,  not  finding  what  he 
desired  in  France,  he  proceeded  to  Germany,  where  he  found  a  fine 
glass  in  the  Frauenhofer  works  at  Munich,  which  he  purchased.  Re- 
turning to  England,  he  entered  as  a  student  in  the  Royal  Observatory 
at  Greenwich,  and  for  some  months  devoted  himself  to  the  study  of 
practical  astronomy.  Upon  his  return  to  America,  he  applied  himself 
vigorously  to  the  work  of  getting  his  observatory  building  ready  for 
the  reception  of  the  equatorial  telescope  that  he  had  ordered  in  Mu- 
nich. He  desired  to  secure  the  services  of  Mr.  John  Quincy  Adams 
to  deliver  the  oration  at  the  laying  of  the  corner-stone,  and  went  to 
Niagara,  where  he  learned  Mr.  Adams  was  sojourning  at  the  time, 
to  induce  him  to  go  to  Cincinnati  for  that  purpose.  Notwithstanding 
the  opposition  of  Mr.  Adams's  family,  on  account  of  his  advanced  age 
and  infirmity,  and  the  difficulties  attending  so  long  a  journey  in  a 
stage-coach,  so  great  was  the  ex-President's  interest  in  the  matter,  and 


696  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

so  certain  did  he  feel  it  to  be  his  duty,  that  he  consented.  On  No- 
vember 9,  1842,  he  delivered  the  address. 

The  time  required  to  mount  the  glass,  financial  depression,  and 
various  discouragements  prevented  the  completion  of  the  building  and 
the  arrival  of  the  telescope  till  the  spring  of  1845,  vrhen  Professor 
Mitchel  commenced  his  duties.  He  occupied  himself  in  the  ordinary 
routine  of  astronomical  work.  He  paid  considerable  attention  to  per- 
fecting instruments  for  attaining  greater  delicacy  of  observation.  He 
claimed  to  be  the  first  (though  he  found  a  rival  to  dispute  this  honor 
with  him)  to  make  a  clock  record  its  beats,  thus  obtaining  a  graphical 
and  more  minute  measurement  of  time. 

The  pioneer  of  American  observatories  was  not  destined  to  be 
long-lived.  Before  many  years  rolled  round,  the  smoke  from  the 
growing  city  at  the  base  of  the  hill  on  which  it  stood  rendered  ob- 
servations impossible.  Its  immediate  successor,  containing  its  instru- 
ments, is  located  some  five  or  six  miles  from  the  original  site,  and 
other  observatories,  built  afterward,  occupy  many  a  hill-top  through- 
out America. 

At  the  time  the  observatory  was  finished,  an  accident  occurred 
which  at  first  seemed  very  unfortunate  for  Professor  Mitchel,  but 
which  in  the  end  served  to  call  out  the  full  extent  of  his  practical  pow- 
ers. The  building  of  the  college,  from  which  he  drew  his  only  means 
of  support,  took  fire  and  burned  to  the  ground.  The  observatory  was 
without  endowment,  and  he  had  engaged  to  be  its  director  for  ten 
years  without  compensation,  relying  for  support  on  his  college  profess- 
orship. He  determined  to  enter  the  field  as  a  professional  lecturer  on 
astronomy.  With  characteristic  boldness  he  proceeded  to  Boston,  be- 
lieving that  if  he  could  succeed  in  that  critical  city,  where  the  arts  and 
sciences  had  been  so  thoroughly  cultivated,  and  which  numbered 
among  its  own  citizens  so  many  men  of  high  scientific  attainment,  he 
could  succeed  elsewhere.  He  met  with  perfect  success,  and  thus  com- 
menced that  series  of  brilliant  efforts  in  every  city  in  the  United 
States  which  lasted  for  fifteen  years. 

He  published,  in  1848,  "  Planetary  and  Stellar  Worlds"  ;  in  1860, 
"  Popular  Astronomy "  ;  he  also  published,  from  1846  to  1848,  the 
"  Sidereal  Messenger,"  a  periodical ;  and  after  his  death  a  fragment, 
entitled  "Astronomy  of  the  Bible,"  was  given  to  the  public.  These 
works,  though  the  progress  of  science  and  of  thought  has  left  them 
now  far  behind,  are  still  read  by  some  who  can  discern  in  them  the 
ardent  poetic  nature  of  their  author.  But  his  great  work  in  science 
was  in  exciting  an  interest,  wherever  he  appeared  in  person,  to  talk 
of  the  wonders  of  the  heavens.  He  never  attempted  to  amuse  an 
audience,  and  never  dropped  below  the  dignity  of  the  sublime  subject 
of  which  he  spoke.  When  flights  of  eloquence  came  to  him,  they 
seemed  to  meet  him  from  among  the  lofty  realms  to  which  he  as- 
cended.    Thither  he  carried  his  hearers,  not  by  diagrams,  not  by 


SKETCH  OF   OEMS  BY  MACKNIGHT  MITCHEL,     697 

actual  pictorial  representations,  but  by  language  alone.  He  possessed 
the  power  of  magnetism  to  a  remarkable  degree.  He  could  at  once 
gain  the  sympathy  of  his  audience,  and  always  held  it  till  he  had 
ceased  to  speak.  To  him,  far  more  than  to  any  other  man,  is  due 
the  interest  that  grew  up  in  astronomical  science  in  America  between 
the  years  1842  and  1860,  for  there  was  scarcely  a  town  or  city  in  the 
United  States  in  which  he  did  not  speak  during  that  period. 

In  1859  he  delivered  a  course  of  lectures  in  the  Academy  of  Music 
in  New  York  for  the  benefit  of  an  observatory  that  it  was  proposed 
to  erect  in  Central  Park.  The  last  lecture  of  this  course  was  the  last 
he  ever  delivered.  It  was  a  fitting  close  to  a  brilliant  work.  The 
Academy  was  crowded  almost  to  the  ceiling.  On  the  platform  were 
seated  many  of  the  most  prominent  men  in  New  York.  As  he  led 
his  audience  out  into  space,  to  planet  and  sua  and  system,  it  became 
powerfully  moved.  When  he  closed,  the  ordinary  methods  of  ap- 
plause seemed  inadequate.  His  hearers  rose  from  their  seats  and 
cheered — an  act  not  uncommon  at  meetings  of  a  political  nature,  but 
probably  without  precedent  at  an  astronomical  lecture. 

In  1860  Professor  Mitchel  was  called  to  the  directorship  of  the 
Dudley  Observatory  at  Albany,  the  building  of  which  he  had  himself 
designed. 

At  the  opening  of  the  late  civil  war,  Professor  Mitchel  felt  called 
upon  to  turn  the  military  education  he  had  received  to  the  account  of 
the  Government  that  had  given  it.  He  was  appointed  a  brigadier- 
general  of  volunteers.  At  the  time  of  his  appointment,  Cincinnati — 
his  former  home — was  threatened  by  the  Confederates,  and  he  was 
sent  to  defend  it.  After  fortifying  the  city,  he  desired  to  occupy 
East  Tennessee.  By  order  of  the  Secretary  of  War,  he  organized  a 
force  for  the  purpose  ;  but  it  was  necessary  to  move  through  a  depart- 
ment commanded  by  another  general.  That  general  would  not  con- 
sent, and  the  expedition  had  to  be  abandoned. 

In  April,  1862,  he  found  himself  in  command  of  a  division  of 
General  Buell's  army  (detached  from  the  main  column,  then  proceed- 
ing on  the  route  to  Corinth),  and  directed  to  observe  the  country 
south  of  him.  Without  orders,  he  proceeded  by  forced  marches  to 
Huntsville,  Alabama,  surprised  and  captured  that  part  of  the  railroad 
and  territory  lying  between  Stevenson  and  Decatur,  with  seventeen 
locomotives  and  eighty  cars,  and  held  the  territory  he  had  been  ordered 
to  observe.  For  this  service  President  Lincoln  promoted  him  to  be 
major-general.  He  asked  for  troops  with  which  to  march  through 
Georgia,  but  Mr.  Lincoln  replied  that  all  available  forces  had  been 
given  to  General  McClellan  and  General  Halleck.  He  then  asked  to 
be  transferred  to  a  more  active  field,  but  Mr.  Lincoln  directed  him  to 
remain  for  future  operations  in  the  territory  where  his  "  military  genius 
had  eifected  so  much."  Upon  General  Buell's  arrival  with  the  rest  of 
the  Army  of  the  Ohio  at  Huntsville,  in  July,  1862,  General  Mitchel 


698  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

urged  an  immediate  advance  into  East  Tennessee.  General  Buell  de- 
layed, and  General  Mitchel  asked  to  be  relieved.  It  was  not,  how- 
ever, till  the  President  determined  to  use  him  in  a  special  service  that 
he  ordered  him  to  report  at  Washington. 

Mr.  Lincoln  proposed  to  send  an  army  down  the  Mississippi  under 
his  command.  He  selected  the  force  and  wrote  the  order ;  but  just 
at  that  time  concluded  to  appoint  General  Halleck  his  military  ad- 
viser. When  General  Halleck  arrived  at  Washington  he  declined  to 
appoint  General  Mitchel  to  this  command.  For  two  months  he  was 
unemployed,  and  in  September,  1862,  was  sent,  by  General  Halleck's 
order,  to  the  then  quiescent  Department  of  the  South,  in  South  Caro- 
lina. Here  he  died  of  yellow  fever  on  the  30th  of  October,  1862. 
His  term  of  military  service  was  fourteen  months.  During  this  time 
he  found  but  one  opportunity  to  act  upon  his  own  uncontrolled  judg- 
ment. 

Professor  Mitchel  was  born  in  Union  County,  Kentucky,  August 
28,  1810.  At  twelve  years  of  age,  having  acquired  a  tolerably  fair 
knowledge  of  Latin  and  Greek  and  the  elements  of  mathematics,  he 
became  a  clerk  in  Miami,  Ohio,  but  afterward  removed  to  Lebanon, 
in  the  same  State  where  he  had  been  educated.  He  entered  the  Mili- 
tary Academy  at  West  Point  in  June,  1825,  having  himself  earned 
the  money  with  which  he  was  enabled  to  reach  the  school.  After 
being  graduated  in  1829,  he  became  acting  Assistant  Professor  of 
Mathematics  in  the  Academy,  and  served  in  that  capacity  for  two 
years.  He  then  removed  to  Cincinnati,  where  he  practiced  law  till 
1834,  when  he  became  Professor  of  Mathematics,  Philosophy,  and 
Astronomy,  in  Cincinnati  College,  a  position  in  which  he  remained 
for  ten  years,  or  till  the  college-building  was  burned. 

Of  the  more  important  features  of  his  work  at  the  observatory, 
"  Nature  "  says,  in  an  article  on  "  Observatories  in  the  United  States  " 
(July  9,  1874) :  "  At  the  request  of  Professor  Bache,  the  telegraph 
company  connected  the  observatory  with  their  stations  for  determin- 
ing longitude,  Cincinnati  being  then  a  central  point  in  such  work. 
The  astronomer  royal,  under  whose  instruction  Mitchel  had  passed 
three  months  in  1842,  urged,  in  an  encouraging  letter,  that  *the  first 
application  of  his  meridional  instruments  should  be  for  the  exact  de- 
termination of  his  geographical  latitude  and  longitude,  and  that  his 
observing  energies  should  be  given  to  the  large  equatorial.'  With 
this  advice,  he  directed  his  attention  largely  to  the  remeasurement  of 
Struve's  double  stars  south  of  the  equator. 

"  Airy  and  Lamont  had  invited  him  to  make  minute  observations 
of  the  satellites  of  Saturn,  since  in  the  latitude  of  Cincinnati  the 
planet  is  observed  at  a  more  favorable  altitude  than  at  Pulkova, 
twenty  degrees  farther  north.  To  these,  and  chiefly  *  to  the  physical 
association  of  the  double,  triple,  and  multiple  stars,'  he  gave  his  close 
attention.     He  made  interesting]:  discoveries  in  the  course  of  this  re- 


SKETCH  OF   OEMS  BY  MAC  KNIGHT  MITCH  EL,     6gg 

view.  *  Stars  which  Struve  had  marked  as  oblong  were  divided  and 
measured ;  others  marked  double  were  found  to  be  triple.'  He  pro- 
posed a  new  method  for  observing,  and  new  machinery  for  recording 
north  polar  distances  or  declinations.  Professor  Peirce  reported  favor- 
ably on  this  method  at  the  meeting  of  the  American  Association  in 
1851,  and  Professor  Bache,  as  Superintendent  of  the  Coast  Survey, 
indorsed  their  approval  in  his  report  for  that  year,  presenting  also  a 
full  account  of  work  done  by  the  new  method  in  observations  made 
by  the  enthusiastic  astronomer  and  his  patient  wife,  who  assisted  him 
through  all.  It  was  claimed  that  the  results  rivaled  the  best  work 
done  at  Pulkova.  Mitchel  was  the  first  'to  prepare  a  circuit  inter- 
rupter with  an  eight-day  clock,  and  to  use  it  to  graduate  the  running 
fillet  of  paper ' ;  and  to  invent  and  use  the  revolving-disk  chronograph 
for  recording  the  dates  of  star-signals.  Professors  Bache  and  Walker 
had  declined  to  adopt  the  first  of  these  improvements  in  astronomical 
appliances,  through  an  apprehension  of  injury  to  the  astronomical 
clock.  Mitchel's  work  proved  the  apprehension  to  be  groundless.  His 
revolving  disk  is  an  invaluable  invention. 

*'  To  the  perfection  of  such  methods  and  instruments,  together  with 
the  routine  work  of  observation,  he  gave  all  the  energies  not  of  ne- 
cessity employed  in  outside  labors  devolving  on  him  for  his  support. 
Unhappily  these,  at  an  early  date,  became  almost  absorbing.  For 
the  Astronomical  Society,  having  secured  their  observatory  and  their 
director,  had  failed  to  secure  a  basis  for  its  support." 

Of  his  lectures,  "  Xature  "  remarks  that  he  stirred  up  an  enthusi- 
asm by  them  "  which  quickened  the  movements  resulting  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  some  of  the  first  observatories  of  this  day  in  the  United 
States." 

General  Mitchel  always  acted  with  the  incentive  of  genius  rather 
than  talent,  if  such  a  distinction  exists.  Hence  his  proposals  were 
often  regarded  as  impracticable.  Their  practicability  depended  upon 
his  energy,  resource,  and  magnetism.  Without  these,  they  would 
have  been  mere  visionary  schemes. 

His  simplicity  and  purity  of  character,  his  earnest  patriotism  and 
military  foresight,  are  all  minutely  recorded  in  his  correspondence.  It 
is  expected  that  the  record  will  some  day  pass — one  of  its  many  chap- 
ters— ^into  the  voluminous  history  of  the  rebellion. 


700 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


COBRESPONDENCE 


MOSQUITOES  AND  MAIAEIA. 

Meisrs.  Editors : 

HO  shall  decide  when  doctors  dis- 
agree ?  "  Not  long  since  was  put 
forth  the  theory  that  the  "  bite  "  of  the  mos- 
quito is  a  genuine  antidote  for  malaria,  and 
one  of  the  arguments  used  to  sustain  the 
assertion  was  that  Xature  provides  reme- 
dies alongside  all  forms  of  disease,  and 
that,  wherever  malaria  abounded,  mosqui- 
toes  did  much  more  abound,  and  were  busily 
engaged,  to  the  best  of  their  ability,  in  in- 
jecting a  tonic  under  the  skin  of  poor  ague- 
stricken  humanity,  which  would  effectually 
cure  the  disease  if  the  humane  work  of  the 
winged  surgeons  was  not  interfered  with ; 
and  now  comes  Professor  King,  in  the  Sep- 
tember number  of  your  Journal,  with  the 
startling  claim  that  the  mosquito  is  the  very 
cause  of  malarial  diseases ! — and  the  prob- 
lem. Shall  we  encourage  or  kill  the  insect  ? 
is  still  unsolved. 

Having  had  some  experience  with  these 
much-denounced  insects  in  the  woods  and 
by  the  inland  lakes  in  the  northern  part  of 
the  Lower  Peninsula  of  Michigan,  and  on 
and  beside  the  lagoons  of  Southern  Florida 
and  even  in  the  hotel  sleeping-rooms  in  many 
parts  of  the  land,  I  feel  compelled  to  differ 
with  Professor  King  in  some  of  his  alleged 
"  facts,"  and  I  fear  some  of  my  statements 
will  at  least  throw  a  doubt  over  the  supposed 
"  established  facts  "  of  the  professor. 

The  professor  argues  that  a  locality 
abounds  in  mosquitoes,  and  that  malaria  is 
found  to  prevail  in  the  same  locality,  and 
therefore  it  is  quite  probable  that  the  ma- 
larial diseases  there  are  produced  by  the 
mosquitoes. 

Suppose  we  assume  that  it  is  quite  as 
probable  that  the  condition  of  heat,  moist- 
ure, soil,  and  vegetation,  merely  makes  the 
locality  a  spot  favorable  to  the  generation 
of  both  mosquitoes  and  malaria,  without 
any  connecting  relation  one  with  the  other. 
Suppose,  again,  we  find  localities  where  the 
mosquito,  during  a  part  of  the  year,  is,  by 
the  power  of  numbers  and  fierceness  of  at- 
tack, almost  king  of  the  woods,  and  yet 
there  is  no  malaria  to  be  feared  or  found. 

I  have  been  in  several  localities  on  Indian 
River  and  Mosquito  Lagoon,  on  the  south- 
east coast  of  Florida,  where  I  would  not  like 
to  have'  been  on  the  outside  of  my  netting, 
under  the  little  shelter-cabin  of  our  sail- 
boat, but  I  have  never  seen  more  numerous 
and,  in  localities,  more  voracious  mosquitoes 
than  in  our  northern  forests  in  Michigan. 
The  efforts  on  the  part  of  these  insects  to 
produce  malarial  disease,  in  some  form,  if 


this  is  their  mission,  were  never  more  per- 
sistent than  there.  I  have  from  the  best 
authority  the  fact  that  it  is  no  very  uncom- 
mon thing  for  hardy  woodsmen,  in  the 
spring  months,  to  be  driven  from  their  work 
in  the  forest  by  the  mosquitoes  and  black 
flics ;  but  the  general  rule  is,  in  the  milder 
attacks,  for  the  choppers  to  become  so  ac- 
customed to  the  mosquitoes,  day  and  night, 
as  to  pay  little  attention  to  them,  they  "  let 
'cm  bite,"  only  disturbing  them  when,  by 
an  unusual  attack,  they  overstep  the  rea- 
sonable demands  for  blood.  Many  of  these 
men  have  come  under  my  personal  observa- 
tion during  a  residence  of  from  two  to  six 
weeks  each  year  for  seven  years  at  our  sum- 
mer resort  on  Grand  Lake,  three  miles  back 
from  Lake  Huron.  As  I  knew  them  to  be 
working  day  after  day  in  the  low  cedar  lands, 
often  in  wet  swamps,  and  drinking  the 
swamp  water  where  they  could  find  a  pool 
under  some  old  moss-bed,  and  often  sleep- 
ing in  rude  log  or  board  shanties  in  the 
same  locality,  I  have  often  asked  them  if 
they  did  not  get  the  ague,  or  "  chills  "  and 
fever.  The  answer  was  always,  "Never." 
I  have  seen  many  little  children,  from  the 
babe  up,  with  naked  legs,  feet,  arms,  and 
no  head-covering  but  the  hair,  absolutely 
covered  more  with  mosquito-bites  than  gar- 
ments, all  through  the  season,  but  I  have 
never  known  a  case  of  malarial  disease  in 
any  form  among  them.  In  view  of  these 
observations,  I  must  conclude  the  case  is 
hardly  made  out  that  mosquitoes  produce 
malarial  diseases,  although  in  many  locali- 
ties the  two  are  co-existent. 

The  professor  says  it  is  a  fact  of  com- 
mon observation  that  mosquitoes  are  more 
numerous  in  the  late  summer  months.  T  am 
not  sure  of  other  localities,  but  in  Upper 
Michigan,  at  our  resort,  and  all  through 
Northern  Michigan,  the  fact  is  exactly  the 
reverse.  We  usually  require  nettings  dur- 
ing July.  About  the  1st  of  August  the 
mosquitoes  begin  to  disappear,  and  we  can 
sleep  without  nettings;  but,  during  May, 
June,  and  July,  if  they  created  malarial  dis- 
eases, there  would  be  lively  shakes  among 
the  settlers,  where  malarial  diseases  are  now 
unknown,  or  of  extremely  rare  occurrence. 

I  do  not  know  but  the  sea-coast  mos- 
quito is  a  more  wicked  fellow,  but  our  North 
Michigan  mosquitoes,  I  believe,  are  engaged 
in  better  work  than  creating  malaria.  In 
fact,  I  am  not  sure  but  that  the  "  bites  "  of 
mosquitoes,  in  the  cases  of  our  northern 
cedar-cutters,  and  their  freedom  from  dis- 
ease in  great  exposure  furnish  the  "anti- 
dote" for  the  malarial   tendency  of  the 


CORRESP  ONDENCE, 


701 


swamp  air  and  swamp  water,  and  furnish 
an  argument  for  the  antidote  theory  rather 
than  otherwise. 

We  can  hardly  accord  to  Professor  King 
the  soundness  of  his  argument,  that  be- 
cause miasma  and  mosquitoes  prevail  at 
night,  therefore  the  mosquito  is  the  author 
of  miasma.  Does  the  mosquito  produce  the 
miasma  in  the  air,  or  create  the  disease  by 
his  "  bite  "  ?  Suppose  we  say  bats  fly  only 
at -night,  and  dew  falls  only  at  night,  there- 
fore the  bats  create  the  dew  ? 

The  night  air  may  be  congenial  to  both 
malaria  and  mosquitoes,  as  it  may  be  to 
both  bats  and  dew,  without  any  further  rela- 
tionship. If  Professor  King  will  spend  a 
week  or  a  month  in  May  or  June  in  our 
northern  cedar-lands,  I  will  warrant  him 
more  mosquito-bites  to  the  square  inch  of 
exposed  person  than  there  are  pounds  of  at- 
mospheric pressure  on  the  same  surface,  and 
I  will  also  guarantee  him  safety  from  all  ma- 
larial disease.  F.  R.  Stebbiks. 
Adbian,  MiCHiGAif,  October  8,  1883. 


A  EEPLY  TO  EDITORIAL  STATEMENTS. 
Messrs.  Editors : 

In  your  editorial  comments  on  the  clas- 
sical question,  you  refer  to  Germany  as  fa- 
vorable to  the  old  education  on  account  of 
royalty  and  the  Bismarckian  regime;  you 
also  quote  from  "  Science  "  a  condemnation 
of  German  scientific  writers.  Allow  me,  in 
the  briefest  manner,  to  set  you  right  on  these 
two  points.  Whatever  you  may  think  of 
Bismarck,  you  should,  in  the  present  discus- 
sion, at  least  state  that  Bismarck  does  not 
favor  Greek,  but  thinks  it  is  only  studied 
for  a  make-believe  of  mental  superiority ; 
also  that  he  has  emphatically  stated  that 
the  state  must  take  its  civil  officers  wherever 
they  can  be  found,  efficiency  being  the  only 
test,  not  the  approval,  etc.,  of  the  university ; 
and,  thirdly,  you  should  bear  in  mind  that 
Bismarck  is  no  favorite  with  the  Berlin  Uni- 
versity, the  latter  being  much  more  of  your 
opinion  as  to  the  "  regime  "  now  existing 
in  Prussia  than  of  an  opinion  favorable  to 
Bismarck. 

While  I  share  your  views  as  to  the  aris- 
tocratic tendencies  that  take  shelter  under 
the  Latin-Greek  education,  I  yet  believe  that 
respect  for  royalty  in  Germany  is  fostered 
mainly  by  the  common  school,  while  the 
universities  are  decidedly  democratic  in  their 
influence. 

As  regards  the  lack  of  clearness  and 
order  formerly  so  common  in  German  scien- 
tific writers,  I  beg  to  call  your  attention  to 
the  many  excellent  scientific  writers  that 
Germany  can  now  point  to,  when  a  com- 
parison with  other  countries  is  instituted. 
I  believe  a  somewhat  careful  investigation 
would  startle  those  who  accept  the  common 
dogma  that  German  scientific  writers  are 
obscure  and  deficient  in  order.     Schleiden, 


the  botanist,  Carl  Yogt,  Du  Bois-Reymond» 
Virchow,  Haeckel,  are  only  a  few  of  the 
best-known  German  scientists  who  excel  in 
order  and  clearness,  and  in  the  graces  of 
style.  No  modern  literature  has  scientific 
works  superior  in  order,  clearness,  and  style, 
to  those  of  George  Forster  and  Jacob  Mole- 
schott,  and  yet  the  former  excelled,  and  the 
latter  still  excels,  in  scientific  work.  In  a 
country  like  Germany,  where  so  many  write, 
bad  writing  is  apt  to  be  more  readily  no- 
ticed. As  for  the  absence  of  important 
generalizations  by  German  scientists,  I  think 
this  subject  should  be  treated  separately. 
Kepler's  grand  generalizations  were  written 
in  Latin ;  Leibnitz  published  many  of  his 
in  French;  there  are  other  authors  distin- 
guished for  important  generalizations,  who, 
if  they  can  not  compare  with  Darwin,  yet 
occupy  a  high  rank — for  instance,  Dr.  J.  R. 
Mayer,  who  first  formulated  the  great  law 
of  heat-equivalents,  and  hence  of  the  con- 
servation of  force. 

I  should  be  glad  to  find  that  your  sense 
of  justice  is  strong  enough  to  make  the  cor- 
rections your  statements  and  the  extract  re- 
quire. C.  A.  E. 
Iowa  Crrr,  December  26, 1883. 

Our  sense  of  justice  is  perhaps  not  very 
strong,  but  it  is  put  to  no  strain  by  publish- 
ing the  foregoing.  We  referred  to  the 
"  Bismarckian  regime  "  only  as  a  name  for 
the  present  phase  of  the  administration 
of  the  German  Government,  and  our  argu- 
ment could  not  depend  upon  any  man's  per- 
sonal views,  because  it  rested  upon  the 
broad  declaration  of  the  university  authori- 
ties that  the  ascendency  of  the  classics  must 
be  maintained  for  church  and  state  reasons. 
It  is  interesting  to  know  that  Bismarck  re- 
gards Greek  as  a  humbug,  but  he  would 
probably  be  the  last  man  to  deny  that 
shams  may  have  their  political  uses. 

The  quotation  from  "  Science  "  was  made, 
not  because  we  approved  or  considered  per- 
tinent all  that  it  said,  but  because  it  testi- 
fied decisively  to  the  neglected  condition  of 
the  native  speech  on  the  part  of  a  people 
long  given  over  to  the  worship  of  classical 
ideals.  Our  correspondent  recognizes  "  the 
lack  of  clearness  and  order  formerly  so  com- 
mon in  German  scientific  writers."  He, 
however,  enumerates  several  recent  writers 
that  are  not  open  to  this  charge.  But  are 
not  those  exceptions  to  a  general  practice  ? 
and  would  it  not  have  been  somewhat  more 
to  the  point  to  inform  us  whether  or  not 
these  writers  were  assiduous  cultivators  of 
the  classics  ? — Ed. 


702 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


EDITOR'S    TABLE. 


COLLEGIATE  IXFLTJElirCE  UPOy  TEE 
LOWER  EDUCATION. 

THERE  is  one  aspect  of  the  broad 
classical  controversy  of  momentous 
importance,  but  which  has  been  much 
neglected  in  the  general  discussion  of 
the  subject.  "We  refer  to  the  relation  of 
our  collegiate  system  to  the  system  of 
education  in  the  schools  of  lower  grade. 
It  is  only  by  scrutinizing  this  relation 
that  we  can  really  appreciate  the  extent 
of  the  practical  antagonism  between  the 
classical  and  the  scientific  systems  ot 
study,  and  recognize  how  completely 
the  colleges  are  all  on  one  side  in  this 
issue. 

"We  are  abundantly  assured  that, 
whatever  may  have  been  the  case  in  the 
past,  there  is  now  no  ground  of  com- 
plaint that  the  dead  languages  usurp 
too  much  attention,  while  the  sciences 
are  correspondingly  neglected.  The  cur- 
riculums  are'  appealed  to  to  show  that 
classical  studies  are  no  longer  in  the 
way  of  science,  which  is  every  year  re- 
ceiving increasing  attention  in  these 
institutions.  New  laboratories,  observa- 
tories, and  museums,  are  pointed  at  to 
show  the  augmenting  facilities  of  sci- 
entific study,  and  we  are  told  that,  by 
the  growing  optional  system,  the  stu- 
dent is  more  and  more  allowed  a  choice 
of  subjects  when  he  enters  college,  which 
enables  him,  if  he  likes,  to  give  a  larger 
portion  if  not  his  entire  time  to  science. 

But  all  this  does  not  mean  so  much 
as  it  appears  to  mean.  "We  are  not  for 
a  moment  to  regard  the  influence  of  the 
colleges  as  limited  to  the  students  who 
come  under  their  direct  control.  They 
exert  a  varied  and  powerful  influence 
upon  the  secondary  schools,  upon  the 
methods  of  early  teaching,  and  upon 
both  the  youthful  and  adult  mind  of 
the  community  at  large,  which  is  over- 
whelmingly in  behalf  of  the  classics,  and 


solid  against  science.  They  not  only  de- 
termine the  prior  studies  of  the  great 
numbers  who  enter  college,  but  th^ 
set  the  standards  of  education  for  mul- 
titudes who  never  pass  to  the  higher 
institutions.  They  sustain  and  they  en- 
force an  ideal  of  culture  which  shapes 
the  policy  and  fixes  the  character  of 
the  whole  system  of  instruction  that 
deals  with  the  common  education  of 
the  people.  The  alleged  hberality  im- 
plied by  the  optional  system  is  mis- 
leading, if  it  is  taken  to  imply  any  real 
liberty  of  the  student  to  choose  his 
studies  untrammeled  by  college  require- 
ments, for  not  the  slightest  option  is 
allowed  as  between  the  dead  languages 
and  the  sciences  in  that  prior  period 
when  the  youthful  mind  receives  its 
bent  in  the  lower  or  preparatory  schools. 
The  relaxation  of  classical  demands  after 
admission  to  college,  so  far  from  indi- 
cating a  diminished  exaction  of  dead- 
language  studies,  is  accompanied  by  an 
increasing  stringency  of  requirement  in 
these  subjects  before  college  is  entered. 
"With  increasing  option  in  college  the 
standardof  preparation  is  raised,  which 
means  that  more  Greek  and  Latin  is 
forced  upon  the  preparatory  schools. 
The  point  of  strain  is  shifted,  but  this 
is  done  in  such  a  way  as  greatly  to 
aggravate  the  evils  of  classical  study. 
The  worst  influence  of  the  colleges  upon 
general  education,  as  we  have  often 
maintained,  is  their  reactive  effect  upon 
the  preparatory  schools,  and  the  whole 
secondary  system  of  instruction  to  which 
the  youthful  mind  of  the  country  is 
subjected.  By  their  demands  upon  these 
institutions,  the  colleges  lend  their  in- 
fluence to  maintain  throughout  the  com- 
munity an  ideal  of  culture  that  is  pre- 
dominantly and  in  effect  exclusively 
classical.  Modem  studies  have  no  status, 
no  recognition  in  the  preparatory  stage 


EDITOR'S   TABLE. 


703 


of  those  who  propose  to  obtain  a  so- 
called  liberal  education.  The  alleged 
concessions  to  the  spirit  of  progress 
are  therefore  illusive.  The  concessions 
made  to  science  after  entrance  into  col- 
lege are  not  allowed  in  the  period  of  ear- 
ly study  when  they  would  be  far  more 
valuable.  Nothing  substantial  is  con- 
ceded to  science  when  our  colleges  keep 
their  classical  standards  of  admission 
so  high  that  all  the  time  of  pupils  is 
consumed  in  Latin  and  Greek  prepara- 
tion. No  concession  is  made  to  science 
when  proficiency  in  scientific  studies 
gained  at  school  is  not  allowed  to  count 
in  entering  college.  No  such  concession 
is  made  by  a  collegiate  system  that  does 
not  provide  by  imperative  requirement 
for  some  thorough  grounding  in  scien- 
tific branches  in  the  preliminary  schools, 
and  which  does  not  allow  solid  profi- 
ciency of  scientific  attainment  to  open 
the  way  to  the  highest  college  honors. 

But  the  radical  antagonism  of  our 
colleges  to  educational  progress  through 
their  reactive  influence  upon  the  lower 
school  system  is  only  to  be  fully  appre- 
ciated when  we  understand  in  what 
that  progress  consists.  In  its  philoso- 
phy, traditional  education  is  very  much 
where  it  was  a  hundred  years  ago,  but 
it  is  undeniable  that  many  important 
principles  have  been  reached  which  are 
of  the  greatest  moment  as  guides  to 
better  educational  practice.  A  century 
of  science  is  not  to  go  for  nothing  in 
the  treatment  of  this  subject.  There 
are  relations  among  the  great  divisions 
of  modern  knowledge  which  are  fun- 
damental in  laying  down  courses  of 
study.  There  is  an  order  in  the  devel- 
opment of  the  human  faculties  which 
is  fundamental  to  the  art  of  rational 
and  successful  teaching.  There  is  an 
ideal  of  the  highest  purpose  in  cultivat- 
ing the  intellect — the  investigation  of 
the  truth  of  nature  by  various  processes 
— which  has  been  developed  by  the  ad- 
vance of  science.  Systematic  and  com- 
prehensive efforts  have  been  made  to 
reduce  this  new  ideal  to  practice  in 


the  lower  sphere  of  education.  Efforts 
have  been  made  to  teach  first  the  things 
which  belong  first  in  the  course  of 
mental  unfolding,  to  bring  the  young 
mind  into  closer  relations  with  the 
facts  of  experience,  to  cultivate  more 
thoroughly  the  all-important  habit  of 
observation,  and  to  provide  for  the 
training  of  the  active  and  inventive 
powers  by  simplified  experiment  and 
various  manipulations,  and  finally  to 
make  the  operations  of  study  exercises 
in  investigation  and  in  original  and  in- 
dependent thought  upon  subjects  with- 
in the  common  sphere  of  intelligence, 
and  adapted  to  educate  the  judgment. 
It  is  no  longer  a  question  that  these 
supreme  objects  can  be  secured  to  very 
considerable  degree  by  proper  methods 
of  dealing  with  the  minds  of  youth, 
and  great  progress  has  been  made  in 
recent  times  in  working  out  the  prac- 
tical methods  by  which  they  are  at- 
tained. But  the  whole  movement  be- 
longs to  the  lower  schools,  and  the 
whole  influence  of  our  college  system 
upon  those  schools  is  not  to  help  but 
to  hinder  it.  In  illustration  and  con- 
firmation of  this  view,  we  quote  some 
remarks  made  by  Dr.  Barnard,  Presi- 
dent of  Columbia  College,  at  the  dinner 
given  in  New  York  to  Professor  Tyn- 
dall  in  1873 : 

I  say,  then,  that  our  long-established  and 
time-honored  system  of  liberal  education — 
and  when  I  speak  of  the  system,  I  mean  the 
whole  system,  embracing  not  only  the  col- 
leges, but  the  tributary  schools  of  lower  grade 
as  well — does  not  tend  to  form  original  in- 
vestigators of  Nature's  truths ;  and  the  reason 
that  it  does  not  is,  that  it  inverts  the  natural 
order  of  proceeding  in  the  business  of  mental 
culture,  and  fails  to  stimulate  in  season  the 
powers  of  observation.  And  when  I  say  this, 
I  must  not  be  charged  with  treason  to  my 
craft — at  least  not  with  treason  spoken  for 
the  first  time  here,  for  I  have  uttered  the  same 
sentiment  more  than  once  before  in  the  sol- 
emn assemblies  of  the  craft  itself. 

I  suppose,  Mr.  President,  at  a  very  early 
period  of  your  life  you  may  have  devoted, 
like  so  many  other  juvenile  citizens,  a  portion 
of  your  otherwise  unemployed  time  to  experi- 
ments in  horticulture.    In  planting  legumi- 


704 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


nous  seeds  you  could  not  have  failed  to  ob- 
serve that  the  young  plants  come  up  with 
their  cotyledons  on  their  heads.  If,  in  pon- 
dering this  phenomenon,  you  arrived  at  the 
same  conclusion  that  I  did,  you  must  have 
believed  that  Nature  had  made  a  mistake, 
and  so  have  pulled  up  your  plants  and  re- 
planted them  upside-down.  Men  and  women 
are  but  children  of  a  larger  growth.  They 
see  the  tender  intellect  shooting  up  in  like 
manner,  with  the  perceptive  faculties  all  alive 
at  top ;  and  they,  too,  seem  to  think  that 
Nature  has  made  a  mistake,  and  so  they  treat 
the  mind  as  the  child  treats  his  bean-plant, 
and  turn  it  upside-down  to  make  it  grow  bet- 
ter. They  bury  the  promising  young  buds 
deep  in  a  musty  mold  formed  of  the  decay  of 
centuries,  under  the  delusion  that  out  of  such 
debris  they  may  gather  some  wholesome  nour- 
ishment ;  when  we  know  all  that  they  want 
is  the  light  and  warmth  of  the  sun  to  stimu- 
late them,  and  the  free  air  of  heaven  in  which 
to  unfold  themselves.  What  heartless  cruelty 
pursues  the  little  child-martyr  every  day  and 
all  the  day  long,  at  home  or  at  school  alike ; 
in  this  place  bidden  to  miad  his  book  and 
not  to  look  out  of  the  window — in  that,  told 
to  hold  his  tongue  and  to  remember  that  chil- 
dren must  not  ask  questions  !  .  .  . 

Among  the  great  promoters  of  scientific 
progress,  how  large  is  the  number  who  may, 
in  strict  propriety,  be  said  to  have  educated 
themselves.  Take,  for  illustration,  such  fa- 
miliar names  as  those  of  William  Herschel, 
and  Franklin,  and  Eumford,  and  Eitten- 
house,  and  Davy,  and  Faraday,  and  Henry. 
Is  it  not  evident  that  Nature  herself,  to  those 
who  will  follow  her  teachings,  is  a  better 
guide  to  the  study  of  her  own  phenomena 
than  all  the  training  of  our  schools  ?  And  is 
not  this  because  Nature  invariably  begins 
with  the  training  of  the  observing  faculties  ? 
Is  it  not  because  the  ample  page  which  she 
spreads  out  before  the  learner  is  written  all 
over,  not  with  words,  but  with  substantial 
realities  ?  Is  it  not  because  her  lessons  reach 
beyond  the  simple  understanding  and  im- 
press the  immediate  intuition?  That  what 
she  furnishes  is  something  better  than  barren 
information  passively  received — it  is  positive 
knowledge  actively  gathered  ? 

If,  then,  in  the  future  we  would  fit  man 
properly  to  cultivate  Nature,  and  not  leave 
scientific  research,  as,  to  a  great  extent,  we 
have  done  heretofore,  to  the  hazard  of  chance, 
we  must  cultivate  her  own  processes.  Our 
earliest  teachings  must  be  thinsrs,  and  not 
words.  The  objects  first  presented  to  the 
tender  mind  must  be  such  as  address  the 
senses,  and  such  as  it  can  grasp.    Store  it 


first  abundantly  with  the  material  of  thought, 
and  the  process  of  thinking  will  be  sponta- 
neous and  easy. 

This  is  not  to  depreciate  the  value  of  oth- 
er subjects,  or  of  other  modes  of  culture.  It 
is  only  to  refer  them  to  their  proper  place. 
Grammar,  philology,  logic,  human  histor}-, 
belles-lettres,  philosophy— all  these  things  will 
be  seized  with  avidity  and  pursued  with  pleas- 
ure by  a  mind  judiciously  prepared  to  receive 
them.  On  this  point  we  shall  do  well  to  learn , 
and  beheve  we  are  beginning  to  learn  some- 
thing, from  contemporary  peoples  upon  the 
Continent  of  Europe. 

Object-teaching  is  beginning  to  be  intro- 
duced, if  only  sparingly,  into  our  primary 
schools.  It  should  be  so  introduced  universal- 
ly. And  in  all  our  schools,  but  especially  in 
those  in  which  the  foundation  is  laid  of  what 
is  called  a  liberal  education,  the  knowledge 
of  visible  things  should  be  made  to  precede 
the  study  of  the  artificial  structure  of  lan- 
guage and  the  intricacies  of  grammatical  rules 
and  forms. 

The  knowledge  of  visible  things — I  repeat 
these  words  that  I  may  emphasize  them,  and, 
when  I  repeat  them,  observe  that  I  mean 
Jcnowledge  of  visible  things,  and  not  informa- 
tion about  them — knowledge  acquired  by  the 
learner's  own  conscious  efibrts,  not  crammed 
into  his  mind  in  set  forms  of  words  out  ot 
books. 

But  how  do  onr  colleges  stand  as  a 
body  in  regard  to  these  explicit  require- 
ments of  educational  progress  ?  Their 
whole  power  is  exerted  to  defeat  them. 
They  force  Latin  and  Greek  upon  all  the 
preparatory  schools ;  they  make  gram- 
mar and  verbal  studies,  which  should 
belong  later  in  the  course,  imperative  in 
early  years ;  they  supplement  the  clas- 
sics by  mathematics,  and  give  the  go-by 
to  all  the  natural  sciences.  There  is  not 
the  slightest  provision  in  the  studies  in- 
troductory to  college  for  any  cultiva- 
tion of  the  mind  by  immediate  inter- 
course with  the  facts  of  nature.  We 
have  before  us  "  A  Comparative  View  of 
the  Requisitions  for  Admission  to  Rep- 
resentative American  Colleges,  correct 
to  1880-'81,"  printed  in  the  prospectus 
of  the  Berkeley  School  of  New  York 
city.  Latin,  Greek,  and  mathematics 
are  of  course  the  staple  studies,  and  the 
amount  of  requirement  in  these  sub- 


EDITOR'S   TABLE, 


705 


jects  is  given  in  detail.  Under  the 
bead  of  miscellaneous  are  included  such 
further  subjects  as  the  several  institu- 
tions bold  important  for  admission  to 
college.  The  common  element  here  is 
English  grammar,  but  neither  Yale, 
Princeton,  Columbia,  Brown,  Dart- 
mouth, Williams,  Amherst,  Trinitj, 
Michigan  University,  Yassar,  Smith, 
nor  Johns  Hopkins,  requires  a  shred  of 
scientific  preparation  of  any  kind,  un- 
less school-geography  is  allowed  to  pass 
for  science.  Harvard  requires  some 
acquaintance  with  physics  and  either 
chemistry  or  botany,  and  Cornell  in- 
cludes physiology  among  the  prepara- 
tory studies.  By  all  these  leading  and 
influential  collegiate  institutions,  which 
arrogate  to  themselves  the  prerogative 
of  conferring  a  "liberal  education," 
the  study  of  Nature  is  absolutely  left 
out  in  the  early  period  of  study,  and 
nothing  worthy  of  the  name  of  science 
is  recognized  or  required,  when  the 
foundations  of  intellectual  character 
are  being  laid.  There  is  one  everlast- 
ing grind  in  grammar — Greek  gram- 
mar, Latin  grammar,  English  grammar 
— until  the  mental  habits  are  formed  by 
verbal  studies ;  and  then  when  the  stu- 
dent enters  college  he  is  offered  some 
restricted  liberty  of  taking  up  scientific 
subjects. 

Undoubtedly,  the  great  issue  of  sci- 
ence against  the  classics  is  made  up 
and  to  be  met  here.  The  continuance 
of  the  system  of  discrimination  against 
modern  knowledge,  and  in  favor  of 
dead  languages,  is  not  to  be  tolerated. 
The  college  premiums  on  old  studies 
condemned  by  the  common  sense  of 
mankind,  and  doubly  damaging  in  early 
youth,  must  be  withdrawn.  Those  in- 
stitutions can  not  too  soon  take  meas- 
*ures  to  get  out  of  the  way  of  the  im- 
provement of  the  lower  schools.  It  is 
becoming  more  and  more  obvious,  as 
shown  by  the  current  discussion  of  the 
subject,  that  there  is  urgent  necessity 
for  a  readjustment  of  the  relations  of 
the  higher  and  lower  systems  of  in- 
voL.  XXIV. — 45 


struction,  and  in  evidence  of  this  we 
quote  the  following  instructive  pas- 
sages from  an  excellent  article  by  Mr.  E. 
E.  Bowker,  in  the  "  Princeton  Eeview  " 
for  January,  on  "The  College  of  To- 
day": 

This  brings  us  face  to  face  with  the  at  pres- 
ent difficult  problem  of  the  relations  of  the 
college  to  the  general  education  out  of  which 
its  curriculum  must  proceed.  It  is  noticeable 
that  while  there  has  been  much  activity  in 
the  improvement  of  the  higher  education,  and 
much  progress,  following  the  suggestions  of 
Froebel  and  Pestalozzi,  in  primary  education, 
the  immediate  education  remains  much  where 
it  was,  and  blocks  the  road  in  the  middle.  Our 
common  schools  are  still  "  grammar-schools," 
although,  as  has  been  noted,  educators  are  in 
agreement  that  "grammar,"  as  such,  is  the 
one  thing  that  should  not  be  taught  until  the 
very  highest  grades  are  reached.  And  the 
colleges  can  not  do  their  proper  work,  nor  can 
an  approximately  correct  curriculum  be  put 
into  practice,  until  many  features  of  the 
middle  schools  are  not  only  reformed  but 
revolutionized.  The  scheme  of  the  proper 
education,  following  the  child  from  its  first 
lessons,  should  be  developed  in  view  of  two 
chief  conditions:  the  order  in  which  the 
natural  development  of  the  mind  fits  it  for 
the  reception  of  successive  studies ;  and  the 
practical  fact  that,  since  the  number  to  be  edu- 
cated decreases  each  year  beyond  the  early 
years,  the  essential  subjects  must  be  pre- 
sented early  in  the  course.  Happily,  these 
two  conditions  largely  coincide.  The  pres- 
ent curriculum  of  the  middle  schools  has  de- 
veloped from  the  practical  recognition  of  this 
last  condition,  in  ignorance  of  the  first,  but 
through  much  misconception  as  to  which  are 
essential  subjects.  It  is,  of  course,  important 
that  every  child  should  be  taught  to  speak, 
to  write,  to  read,  to  figure,  correctly ;  but  it 
is  now  known  that  the  child  learns  correct 
speech,  for  instance,  chiefly  through  its  observ- 
ing faculties,  by  imitation,  and  not  through 
its  reflective  faculties,  by  study  of  grammar. 
The  child  develops  through  the  what,  the  how, 
the  why — first  the  fact,  next  its  relations, 
lastly  its  causes;  and  yet  the  lower  schools 
will  be  teaching  the  laws  of  grammar,  and 
leaving  the  facts  of  nature,  as  the  elements 
of  botany,  for  which  the  child-mind  is  hun- 
gering and  thirsting,  to  the  advanced  student. 
The  college  professor  of  the  natural  sciences, 
for  instance,  should  find  the  foundations  laid 
for  him  when  the  student  enters  college, 
whereas  now  he  'must  begin  at  elementary 


7o6 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


facts.  A  correct  college  curriculum  is  scarce- 
ly possible  as  middle  education  stands  now. 
Eecognizing,  then,  the  fact  that  the  order  in 
which  the  mind  can  best  learn  is  the  order 
in  which  it  can  best  be  taught,  it  becomes  of 
the  utmost  importance  that  the  college,  ad- 
mitting the  necessity  of  present  compromise, 
should  exert  its  full  influence  to  reorganize 
the  education  below. 

It  thus  appears  that  the  antagonism 
of  the  classical  institutions  to  the  pop- 
ular schools  in  their  real  purpose  is  of 
a  very  radical  kind.     Our  colleges,  by 
their  history  and  traditions,  are  aca- 
demic, scholastic,  and  literary  institu- 
tions, designed  at  least  theoretically  to 
form  a  learned  class ;  while  on  the  other 
hand  the  great  body  of  the  subordinate 
schools  is  devoted  to  the  general  edu- 
cation of  the  jieople,  which  should  be 
practical  and  useful,  based  upon  com- 
mon needs  and  a  preparation  for  the 
working  duties  of  life.     The  colleges 
by  their  policy  are  chiefly  solicitous  to 
make  the  lower  schools  tributary  to 
their  own  prosperity;  but  they  must 
take  larger  views  of  their  own  interests 
by  ceasing  their  indirect  resistance  to 
the  progress  of  education  in  the  lower 
schools,  and  by  efficiently  helping  it  for- 
ward.  In  an  enlarged  view,  as  Mr.  Bow- 
ker  well  remarks,  "  the  colleges  can  not 
do  their  proper  work, nor  can  an  approxi- 
mately correct  curriculum  be  put  into 
practice  until  many  features  of  the  mid- 
dle schools  are  not  only  reformed  but 
revolutionized."     But  this  revolution 
of  the  middle  schools  is  a  revolution 
that  must  begin  in  the  colleges  them- 
selves, by  which  their  exclusive  exac- 
tion of  a  classical  preparation  is  aban- 
doned, and  the  sciences  are  given  an 
equal  chance  with  the  dead  languages. 
The  classical  gentlemen  may  league  to- 
gether to  resist  this  change,  but  it  will 
be  of  little  avail ;  sooner  or  later  it  is 
sure  to  come.     We  observe  by  the  last 
report  of  the  President  and  Treasurer 
of  Harvard  College,  1882-'83,  that  this 
question  is  under  serious  consideration 
by  the  authorities  of  that  institution, 
and,  if  they  shall  see  fit  to  take  the  step 


now  so  urgently  demanded,  other  insti- 
tutions will  be  certain  to  follow. 

President  Eliot  says  (page  16) :  "  The 
College  Faculty  is  the  body  in  which 
almost  all  the  considerable  changes, 
made  during  the  past  sixteen  years  in 
the  educational  methods  of  Harvard 
College,  and  of  the  schools  which  reg- 
ularly feed  it,  have  been  first  studied  in 
detail,  and  then  wrought  into  practical 
shape ;  and  it  is  at  present  engaged,  not 
for  the  first  time,  in  the  discussion  of 
the  gravest  question  of  university  pol- 
icy which  has  arisen,  or  is  likely  to 
arise,  in  this  generation — namely,  the 
extent  to  which  option  among  the  dif- 
ferent subjects  should  be  allowed  in 
the  examination  for  admission  to  col- 
lege." 

LITERARY  NOTICES. 

Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist.     By  John 
FiSKE.    Boston :  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 

Pp.  379.     $2. 

Mr.  Fiske  has  laid  the  reading  public 
under  many  obligations  by  the  reissue  of 
these  more  recent  papers,  which  embody 
his  matured  views  on  a  wide  and  varied 
range  of  topics.  Nothing  need  be  said  in 
commendation  of  the  literary  work  of  a 
writer  who  has  been  long  recognized  as 
unrivaled  in  the  art  of  lucid,  effective,  and 
pleasing  exposition.  But  we  are  not  to 
forget  that  these  accomplishments  have 
been  put  to  the  noblest  service,  and  make 
him  the  most  admirable  interpreter  of  a 
new  epoch  in  the  advance  of  human  thought. 
Mr.  Fiske's  writings  belong  eminently  to  a 
transition  era  in  philosophic  and  scientific 
progress,  and  are  in  a  high  sense  authori- 
tative representations  of  it.  And  this  is 
much  to  say  of  any  one  man's  relation  to  a 
mental  movement  more  comprehensive  in 
its  bearings  upon  widely  received  opinion 
than  any  that  has  ever  before  taken  place.  ^ 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Mr.  Fiske's 
"Cosmic  Philosophy  "  must  rank  first  among 
the  few  masterpieces  of  expository  state- 
ment contributed  by  this  age  on  the  subject 
of  evolution.  It  is  the  book  for  the  people 
upon  this  subject.  It  is  not  only  an  emi- 
nently instructive  but  a  most  charming  work. 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


707 


The  author  handles  the  great  problems  in- 
volved with  originality  and  power,  and  at 
the  same  time  with  a  clearness,  a  felicity  of 
illustration,  and  a  fascination  of  style,  that 
give  the  work  an  unequaled  claim  upon 
popular  regard.  And  we  do  not  for  a  mo- 
ment mean  by  this  that  the  treatise  is  low- 
ered in  quality  to  adapt  it  to  uncultivated 
minds.  Its  peculiar  excellence  is,  that  while 
it  treats  of  abstract  and  difficult  questions, 
in  such  a  way  that  the  uninitiated  may  pur- 
sue the  discussions  with  satisfaction,  the 
most  adept  minds  will  also  be  profoundly 
interested.  "VVe  have  seen  a  school-boy  ab- 
sorbed in  the  work ;  and  Mr.  Charles  Dar- 
win, after  having  gone  slowly  and  carefully 
through  it,  wrote  to  the  author,  *'  I  never 
in  my  life  read  so  lucid  an  expositor — and 
therefore  thinker — as  you  are "  ;  and  he 
adds,  "  It  pleased  me  to  find  that  here  and 
there  I  had  arrived  from  my  own  crude 
thoughts  at  some  of  the  same  conclusions 
with  you,  though  I  could  seldom  or  never 
have  given  my  reasons  for  such  conclusions." 
The  testimony  of  Mr.  Darwin  is  corrobo- 
rated by  that  of  many  others,  the  effect  of 
which  is  to  accord  to  Mr.  Fiske  an  eminent 
and  enviable  place  among  those  who  have 
command  of  the  questions  that  are  now  oc- 
cupying the  most  earnest  attention  of  the 
thinking  world. 

These  considerations  are  important  in 
their  bearing  upon  our  estimate  of  the  pres- 
ent volume.  The  most  fertile  conception 
ever  launched  into  the  intellectual  sphere  is 
that  of  universal  evolution.  As  deep  as  the 
forces  of  nature,  it  is  as  broad  as  the  phe- 
nomena of  nature.  It  is  a  new  view  of  the 
movement  of  things,  a  new  interpretation  of 
their  most  comprehensive  relations.  There 
is  hardly  any  great  subject  that  escapes  its 
influence.  It  has  necessitated  a  recasting 
of  the  sciences,  and  a  thorough-going  re- 
organization of  knowledge.  So  productive 
and  all-influential  an  idea  can  be  but  par- 
tially dealt  with  in  the  most  systematic 
and  elaborate  treatises ;  outstanding  prob- 
lems still  remain  to  be  solved  and  new  ap- 
plications of  the  doctrine  worked  out.  Mr. 
Fiske  has  pursued  the  subject,  after  the  pub- 
lication of  his  elaborate  book  several  years 
ago,  in  various  aspects  and  in  new  direc- 
tions, developing  many  points  that  were 
there  but  briefly  touched  upon.     The  vol- 


ume before  us  consists  mainly  of  these  sup- 
plemental excursions  in  various  directions, 
but  all  animated  and  characterized  by  the 
fundamental  doctrine  to  which  his  first  work 
was  devoted.  We  recommend  it  to  all  stu- 
dents of  the  course  of  modern  thought  and 
the  critical  questions  of  the  time,  and  can 
give  our  readers  no  better  idea  of  the  vari- 
ety and  instructiveness  of  its  contents  than 
by  quoting  the  titles  of  the  subjects  treated. 
These  are : 

1.  Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  JIan. 
2.  The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.  3.  Our 
Aryan  Forefathers.  4.  What  we  learn  from 
Old  Aryan  Words.  5.  Was  there  a  Primitive 
Mother-Tongue?  6.  Sociology  and  Hero- 
Worship.  T.  Heroes  of  Industry.  8.  The 
Causes  of  Persecution.  9.  The  Origins  of 
Protestantism.  10.  The  True  Lesson  of 
Protestantism.  11.  Evolution  and  Religion. 
12.  The  Meaning  of  Infancy.  13.  A  Uni- 
verse of  Mind  Stuff.  14.  In  Memoriam. 
Charles  Darwin. 

INTEENATIONAL  SCIENTIFIC  SERIES. 
VOL.  XLVII. 

Fallacies.  A  View  of  Logic  rr.OM  the 
Practical  Side.  By  Alfred  Sidgwick, 
Berkeley  Fellow  of  Owens  College,  Man- 
chester. D.  Appleton  &  Co.  Pp.  375. 
Price,  Sl.VS. 

It  is  curious  that  the  subject,  which  is 
at  the  same  time  the  most  important,  the 
most  practical,  and  which  involves  questions 
of  the  deepest  intellectual  interest — that  is, 
the  science  and  art  of  correct  reasoning — 
should  somehow  have  come  to  be  regarded 
as  the  dullest  and  heaviest  of  all  subjects. 
No  doubt  this  repulsiveness  of  logic  is  very 
much  due  to  that  ancient  pedantic  formality 
which  was  imparted  to  it  in  scholastic  times 
and  has  continued  ever  since,  and  also  to 
the  fact  that  its  practical  objects  have  been 
forgotten  in  the  development  of  its  pro- 
cesses. University  drill  in  logic  has  become 
itself  the  end  without  much  reference  to  its 
reduction  to  utilitarian  practice.  Whatever 
may  be  the  cause  of  the  unattractiveness 
of  logic,  much  of  it  must  certainly  be  due  to 
prejudices  arising  from  its  imperfect  pres- 
entation. In  his  book  on  "  Fallacies,"  Pro- 
fessor Sidgwick  has  made  a  very  success- 
ful attempt  to  rescue  the  subject  from  its 
repellent  forms,  and  to  deal  with  it  in  a 
way  that  shall  be  interesting  to  the  general 


7o8 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


reader.  The  book  is,  therefore,  written  as 
much  as  possible  from  an  unprofessional 
point  of  view,  and  in  a  way  to  require  no 
previous  technical  training.  Although  any 
treatment  of  fallacies  must,  to  a  great  ex- 
tent, deal  with  methods  of  proof,  and  must, 
therefore,  demand  a  certain  amount  of  gen- 
eral logical  theory,  yet  by  trying  to  keep 
chiefly  in  view  the  practical  and  applicable 
side  of  the  science  of  logic,  and  subordi- 
nating all  else  to  this.  Professor  Sidgwick 
claims  to  have  been  able  to  neglect  the  dis- 
cussion of  much  debatable  matter,  and  to 
avoid  definite  adherence  to  a  school.  Mill 
and  Bain  are  chiefly  followed,  but  the  author 
has  attempted  to  utilize  their  most  impor- 
tant results  without  being  compelled  to  ac- 
cept the  whole  of  their  philosophy.  The  fol- 
lowing passages  from  Professor  Sidgwick's 
introductory  chapter  may  sei"ve  to  illustrate 
the  point  of  view  from  which  he  regards 
his  subject,  and  also  his  fresh  and  uncon- 
ventional manner  of  writing  upon  it : 

Logic  holds  what  may  well  be  called  an  uncom- 
fortable position  among  the  sciences.  According  to 
some  authorities,  it  can  not  be  properly  said  that  a 
body  of  accepted  logical  doctrines  exists ;  according 
to  others,  the  facts  and  laws  that  form  such  doc- 
trine are  so  completely  undeniable,  that  to  state 
them  is  hardly  to  convey  new  or  important  infor- 
mation. Hence,  if  a  ■writer  on  the  science  tries  to 
avoid  truism,  and  so  to  give  practical  importance 
to  his  statements,  there  is  danger  both  of  real  but 
crude  innovation,  and  also  of  over-simple  belief  in 
the  value  of  merely  verbal  alterations.  Moreover, 
at  its  best,  logic  has  many  persistent  enemies,  and 
by  no  means  all  of  them  are  in  the  wrong ;  so  that 
those  who  view  the  science  as  the  thief  or  burglar 
views  the  law,  find  themselves  apparently  supported 
and  kept  in  countenance  by  others  who  reaily  have 
the  right  to  -view  it  as  perhaps  the  artist  views  the 
rules  that  hamper  genius.  Through  its  deep  con- 
nection with  common  sense,  logic  is  often  a  source 
of  exasperation  to  philosophy  proper ;  while  com- 
mon sense,  on  the  other  hand,  is  apt  to  dread  or  dis- 
like it  as  unpractical  or  over-fond  of  casuistical  re- 
finements. Failing  thus  to  win  a  steady  footing,  it 
turns,  sometimes,  to  physical  science  for  a  field  of 
operations ;  but  physical  science  has  its  proper 
share  of  boldness,  and  often  leaves  the  cautious 
rcasoner  behind.  As  for  art — which  finds  even  com- 
mon sense  too  rigid— here  logic  is  liable  to  meet 
with  opposition  at  every  grade  ;  from  the  righteous 
inpaticnee  of  poetic  souls  that  are  genuinely  under 
grace,  doNvn  to  the  incoherent  anger  of  mere  boast- 
ful vagueness,  or  to  the  outcry  of  the  sentimental 
idler. 

In  the  midst  of  those  perplexities,  it  is  difficult 
to  choose  a  quite  satisfactory  course.  Some  excuses 
may,  however,  be  off'ered  for  the  hne  that  has  here 
been  taken ;  and,  fii-st,  I  would  plead,  as  against  the 


I  charge  of  irregularity  or  presumption,  the  fact  that 
I  have  wished  to  keep  s  single  purpose  in  view 
avoiding  all  questions  that  fail  to  bear  directly  upon 
it.  Usually  in  works  on  logic,  the  object  has  been 
to  say  something  valuable  upon  all  the  questions 
traditionally  treated  as  within  the  field  of  the  sci- 
ence, and,  in  attempting  this,  the  single,  practical 
purpose  is  apt  to  become  obscured.  It  is  only  in 
consequence  of  my  avoidance  of  side-issues  that 
any  appearance  of  novelty  in  the  treatment  has  fol- 
lowed. Moreover,  it  is  not  teaching,  but  suggestion 
that  is  chiefly  here  intended.  It  is  always  allow- 
able to  write  rather  in  the  co-operative  spirit  than 
the  didactic,  and  this  has  certainly  been  my  aim 
throughout.  And  the  same  apology  may  apply  to 
the  charge  of  forcing  verbal  changes  upon  the  read- 
er ;  the  novelties  of  statement  are  here  put  forward 
merely  as  possible  aids  in  keeping  our  single  pur- 
pose clear,  and,  in  fact,  I  found  them  almost  un- 
avoidable. 

As  regards  physical  science,  it  must  be  confessed 
that  logic  merely  follows  after  it,  systematizing 
methods  ah-eady  adopted  there,  and  found  to  lead 
to  good  results.  And  I  hold  that  to  combat  fallacy 
is  the  raison  d'etre  of  logic;  and  that  science, 
though  not  infallible,  is  more  free  from  discover- 
able fallacies  than  any  other  field  of  thought. 
Again,  while  experimental  methods  may  no  doubt 
be  capable  of  much  improvement,  it  seems  a  ten- 
able view  that  the  duty  should  bo  left  to  a  special 
and  very  advanced  department  of  inquiry.  There 
might,  perhaps,  be  formulated  a  system  of  adrice 
for  discovery  in  general— rules  and  hints  important 
even  to  the  leading  men  of  science.  But,  in  the 
mean  time,  logic  (as  usually  understood)  can  hardly 
help  containing  a  good  deal  of  elementary  matter, 
and  is  compelled  to  take  for  granted  in  the  learner 
a  power  of  making  very  elementary  mistakes.  It 
seems  that  the  best  scientific  discovery  must  always 
be  in  advance  of  inductive  logic,  in  much  the  samo 
way  as  the  best  emploj-ment  of  language  runs  in 
advance  of  grammar.  Still,  there  may  be  some  use 
in  trying  to  direct  and  help  those  who  are  not  al- 
ready scientific,  or  only  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the 
pursuit ;  nor  need  the  name  [of  logic  compel  logi- 
cians to  claim  a  dignity  beyond  their  power.  One 
can  not  fulfill  successfully  the  duties  of  lord  chan- 
cellor and  justice  of  the  peace  at  once. 


A  Natural  History  Reader.  For  School 
and  Ilome,  Compiled  and  arranged  by 
James  Johoxnot,  author  of  "  Principles 
and  Practice  of  Teaching,"  etc.  Kew 
York :  Pp.  414.  D.  Appleton  &  Co. 
Price,  $1.26. 

TnE  work  of  the  compiler  of  this  vol- 
ume has  been  executed  with  intelligence, 
taste,  and  good  practical  judgment,  and  he 
has  made  of  it  a  most  interesting  book  of 
natural  history  for  general  reading.  It  is 
an  excellent  sign  of  the  healthy  growth  of 
an  interest  in  science  when  works  of  this 
kind  are  called  for  and  introduced  into 
schools.     The  literature    of  science  must 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


709 


undoubtedly  precede  its  actual  and  more 
thorough  cultivation,  and  a  great  point  will 
have  been  gained  when  this  literature  se- 
eures  a  prominent  and  established  place  in 
the  schools.  It  is  a  concession  to  the  rights 
of  knowledge.  Hitherto  we  have  stopped 
with  rhetoric,  careless  of  the  contents  of 
thought,  and  in  subserviency  to  the  dogma 
that  style  and  expression  are  everything. 
Such  works  as  this  are  tributes  to  a  sounder 
view,  and  evidences  of  advancement  in  the 
right  direction.  On  this  subject  Professor 
Johonnot  well  remarks : 

"  Under  the  later  system,  the  truth  is  rec- 
ognized that  the  object  of  all  school  exer- 
cises  is  to  promote  mental  growth,  to  which 
end  ideas  and  thoughts  are  indispensable. 
"Words,  like  bank-notes,  are  regarded  not 
for  their  intrinsic  but  for  their  representa- 
tive value.  In  so  far  as  they  clearly  reveal 
the  gold  of  thought,  they  may  be  taken  for 
genuine  coin,  but,  failing  in  this,  they  are 
worthless  counterfeits.  The  kinds  of  ideas 
and  thoughts  are  also  a  matter  of  serious 
moment.  In  each  stage  of  the  mind's 
growth,  those  only  should  be  used  that  will 
command  the  attention  by  the  interest  ex- 
cited, that  will  stimulate  the  reflective  ac- 
tivities of  the  mind,  and  that  will  incite  to 
further  observation  and  investigation. 

"  With  these  objects  kept  clearly  in  view, 
reading  and  the  general  acquisition  of  lan- 
guage become  secondary  and  not  primary 
processes.  They  are  incident  to  the  general 
objects  of  instruction.  Reading-matter  is 
selected  upon  the  same  principles  as  stud- 
ies— that  which  will  interest,  stimulate,  and 
incite.  At  every  stage  of  growth  it  is  such 
as  will  best  serve  the  present  purposes  of 
the  mind,  and,  at  the  same  time,  promote 
the  next  step  in  advance.  The  pupil  reads 
because  he  is  anxious  to  know.  His  progress 
is  rapid,  because  he  is  interested.  His  man- 
ner of  reading  is  correct,  because  he  under- 
stands the  thought,  and  thought  controls  the 
expression." 

We  must  add  that  the  "  Xatural  History 
Reader "  is  an  attractive  and  a  handsome 
book.  It  is  beautifully  illustrated,  poems 
are  interspersed  with  the  prose  chapters, 
and  it  is  elegantly  printed.  Its  selections 
are  from  the  most  recent  writings  of  natu- 
ralists, and  the  information  they  convey  will 
be  found  fresh  and  up  to   the  times. 


Lectures  on  Painting.  Delivered  to  the 
Students  of  the  Royal  Academy.  By 
Edward  Armitage,  R.  A.  New  York  : 
G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.    Pp.  337.     81.75. 

Professor  Armitage  has  given  in  this 
book  a  selection  of  twelve  from  the  lectures 
delivered  by  hun  during  the  term  of  his  pro- 
fessorship in  the  Royal  Academy,  between 
1876  and  1882.  He  has  published  them  un- 
der the  impression  that  they  might  be  inter- 
esting to  other  students  than  those  of  the 
Royal  Academy,  "  and  possibly  even  to  those 
who  do  not  intend  to  follow  art  as  a  profes- 
sion, but  who  would  be  glad  to  have  a  little 
daylight  thrown  on  a  subject  which,  though 
much  written  and  lectured  about  of  late 
years,  does  not  seem  to  have  been  often 
treated  in  a  simple,  practical  manner."  The 
subjects  of  the  lectures  are,  "  Ancient  Cos- 
tume," "Byzantine  and  Romanesque  Art," 
"  The  Painters  of  the  Eighteenth  Century," 
"David  and  his  School,"  "The  Modern 
Schools  of  Europe,"  "  Drawing,"  "  Color," 
"Decorative  Painting,"  "Finish,"  "The 
Choice  of  a  Subject,"  "The  Composition 
of  Decorative  and  Historical  Pictures,"  and 
the  "  Composition  of  Incident  Pictures." 

Archivos  do  Mcseu  Xacional  do  Rio  de 
Janeiro  (Archives  of  the  National  Mu- 
seum of  Rio  de  Janeiro).  Dr.  Ladislao 
Netto,  General  Director.  Vol.  Ill,  1878, 
pp.  194,  with  Six  Plates;  Vol.  IV,  1879, 
pp.  154,  with  Six  Plates;  Vol.  V,  1880, 
pp.  470.  Rio  de  Janeiro :  Typographia 
Economica. 

The  "  Archives  "  are  a  quarterly  publica- 
tion of  papers  on  scientific  subjects  that 
properly  come  under  the  purview  of  the 
Museum.  The  present  volumes  include  the 
publications  for  the  second  half  of  1878, 
and  for  1879  and  1880.  In  the  third  vol- 
ume are  included  papers  on  the  venom  of 
the  rattlesnake,  by  Dr.  Lacerda;  on  the 
geology  of  the  diamond-bearing  region  of 
the  Province  of  Parana,  by  Orville  A.  Der- 
by; observations  on  geological  features  in 
the  Bay  of  Todos  os  Santos,  by  Mr.  Derby 
and  Richard  Rathbun ;  and  other  papers  of 
a  more  special  character.  The  fourth  vol- 
ume contains  a  number  of  anthropological 
and  linguistic  studies  on  the  natives  of  the 
country,  and  papers  on  subjects  of  entomol- 
ogy and  geology.  The  fifth  volume  is  given 
to   the   "Flora   Fluminensis,"  a  Flora,  in 


710 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


Latin,  of  the  Province  of  Rio,  composed  in 
the  last  century  by  Fr.  Jose  Marianno  da 
Conceigao  Velloso,  and  first  published  in 
1825. 

Tertiary  History  of  the  Grand  CaSon 
District,  By  Clarence  E.  Button, 
"Washington:  Government  Printing-Of- 
tice.  Pp.  264,  with  Forty-two  Plates, 
accompanied  by  an  Atlas  of  Twenty- 
three  Plates. 
The  Grand  Canon  of  the  Colorado  is  char- 
acterized by  some  of  the  most  wonderful 
rock-formations  and  the  most  gorgeous  yet 
desolate  scenery  to  be  found  anywhere  on 
the  earth.  Captain  Button  has  made  the 
study  and  the  description  of  it  a  labor  of 
love,  and  the  present  volume,  with  its  strik- 
ing illustrations  and  the  accompanying  atlas 
with  its  grand  panoramas  and  bird's-eye 
views,  many  of  them,  as  well  as  the  illus- 
trations in  the  volume,  colored  according  to 
nature,  constitute  one  of  the  most  welcome 
contributions  to  our  literature  and  knowl- 
edge which  the  United  States  Geological 
Survey  has  made.  Mr.  Button's  account  of 
the  geology,  formation,  characteristics,  and 
scenery  of  the  canon  takes  notice  of  every 
aspect  in  which  the  wonder  is  likely  to  be 
viewed.  Among  the  details  of  the  account, 
to  which  we  would  invite  attention,  are  the 
carved  niches  or  panels  in  the  red-wall  lime- 
stone, and  the  exquisite  tracery  of  the  round- 
ed and  inward  curves  and  projected  cusps 
of  the  walls,  which  are  represented  in  plates 
41  and  42  of  the  volume. 

Electricity  in  Theory  and  Practice  ;  or, 
the  Elements  op  Electrical  Engi- 
neering. By  Lieutenant  Bradley  A. 
FisKE,  U.  S.  N.  New  York :  B.  Van  Nos- 
trand.     1883.     Pp.  265.    Price,  $2.50. 

Whoever  will  carefully  read  Lieutenant 
Fiske's  lucid  exposition  will  have  no  ex 
cuse  for  persistence  in  the  hazy  notions 
concerning  the  relation  of  electrical  effects, 
and  the  power  requisite  to  produce  them, 
not  uncommon  among  even  the  intelli- 
gent and  educated  public.  Very  few  per- 
sons, perhaps,  are  in  the  position,  in  re- 
gard to  their  knowledge  of  electricity,  of 
the  man  who  Avanted  to  know  why  they 
should  have  a  steam-engine  and  a  dynamo- 
machine  to  make  an  incandescent  lamp  go, 
or  of  that  English  couple  who  purchased  a 
Swan  lamp  and  spent  much  time  trying  to 


light  it  with  a  match ;  but  the  ignorance  which 
abounds  on  the  subject  is  still  very  consid- 
erable. With  the  great  and  increasing  de- 
velopment of  the  practical  application  of 
electricity,  it  is  especially  desirable  that  the 
general  public,  both  in  its  character  of  in- 
vestor and  consumer,  should  have  definite 
and  clear  conceptions  of  the  fundamental 
principles  involved  in  these  applications. 
These  Lieutenant  Fiske  has  essayed  to  fur- 
nish in  the  present  volume. 

He  introduces  his  subject  with  an  ele- 
mentary consideration  of  magnetism,  which 
he  follows  with  a  chapter  upon  statical  elec- 
tricity. The  relation  of  work  and  potential, 
and  of  the  different  electrical  units  to  each 
other,  is  very  clearly  explained.  A  chapter 
is  devoted  to  the  laws  of  currents,  and  to 
primary  and  secondary  batteries.  In  speak- 
ing of  the  electric  light,  no  attempt  is  made, 
and  very  properly,  to  describe  different 
forms,  but  to  explain  the  essential  principles 
involved  in  this  class  of  apparatus.  The 
chapter  on  electrical  measurements  is  an  ad- 
mirable, concise  statement  of  the  subject,  as 
is  also  that  on  telegraphy  and  on  the  tele- 
phone. The  chapters  upon  electro-magnetic 
induction  and  upon  the  dynamo  are  excel- 
lent ;  but  upon  the  latter  Lieutenant  Fiske 
might  well  have  devoted  some  little  atten- 
tion to  the  designing  of  dynamos.  He 
states  in  his  preface  that  he  intended  his 
book  to  form  a  bridge  between  the  theory 
of  electricity  and  its  practical  application. 
There  is  probably  no  one  case  in  which  the 
practical  constructor  finds  more  difficulty, 
in  passing  from  theory  to  practice  than  in 
this  of  the  designing  of  dynamos.  He  may 
know  what  a  unit  magnet-pole  is  and  the 
magnetic  effect  of  a  unit-current,  but  he 
still  is  able  to  but  very  vaguely  see  his  way 
to  apply  this  knowledge  in  determining  the 
size  of  his  field-magnets,  the  amount  and 
size  of  wire  on  them,  and  the  like  propor- 
tions of  his  armature,  to  get  the  best  re- 
sults. Yery  few  machines,  we  imagine,  have 
been  built  so  largely  by  rule  of  thumb  as  the 
dynamo,  and  therefore  infoi-mation  of  this 
sort  could  not  fail  of  being  of  great  value. 

The  book  closes  with  a  chapter  upon  the 
electric  railway,  giving  a  general  view  of 
the  subject,  and  descriptions  of  the  systems 
carried  out  by  Siemens  Brothers,  and  that 
devised  by  Mr.  Edison  and  S,  D.  Field. 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


71 


The  Mounds  op  the  Mississippi  Valley, 

HISTORICALLY    CONSIDERED.      By    LUCIEN 

Carr,   Peabodv  Museum.     Cambridge, 

Mass.     Pp.  107. 

This  essay,  which  forms  a  part  of  the 
"Memoirs"   of    the   Kentucky    Geological 
Survey,  is  an  argument  in  favor  of  the  the- 
ory that  the  mound-builders  were  the  ances- 
tors of  the  present  Indians.     The  advocates 
of  the  theory  that  the  mounds  were  built 
by  some  other  race  rest  to  a  large  extent 
upon  the  assumptions  that  the  Indians  were 
not   sufficiently   advanced  to  execute   the 
works  that  have  been  examined ;  that  they 
were  not  agriculturists,  as  the  mound-build- 
ers must  have  been;   and  that  they  were 
not  subject  to  such  central  authority,  or 
controlled  by  any  such  impelling  motive,  as 
seems  to  have  been  necessary  for  the  con- 
struction  of  such   extensive  works.      Mr. 
Carr's  effort  is  to  controvert  these  assump- 
tions.    He  argues,  with  the  aid  of  many 
citations  from  historians,  chroniclers,  and 
travelers,  that  the  Indians  of  the  Mississippi 
Valley  lived  in  fixed  villages,  which  they 
were  in  the  habit   of   fortifying  by  pah- 
sades ;  that  they  raised  corn  in  large  quan- 
tities and  stored  it ;  tliBt  they  all  worshiped 
the  Bun,  as  the  mound-builders  are  supposed 
to  have  done;   and  that  works  similar  to 
those  of  the  mound-builders,  if  not  quite  as 
extensive,  are  known  to  have  been  erected 
by  Indians. 

A  Practical  Treatise  on  Materia  Medica 
AND   Therapeutics.     By  Roberts  Bar- 
tholow,  M.  a.,  M.  D.,  LL.  D.    Fifth  edi- 
tion, revised  and  enlarged.     New  York  : 
D.  Appleton  &  Co.     1884.     Pp.  738. 
The  appearance  of  a  new  edition  of  this 
well-known  work  so  soon  after  the  edition 
of  1881  is  due,  in  part,  as  the  author  tells 
us  in  his  preface,  to  the  recent  changes  in 
the  "  United  States  Pharmacopoeia."      Al- 
though the  work  has  been  adapted  to  the 
new  official  standard  in  general,  we  fail  to 
find  any  reference  to  the  changes  in  the 
morphia  strength  of  the  opium  preparations, 
and  the  doses  prescribed  are  the  same  as  in 
the  earlier  editions.     This  is  the  more  to  be 
regretted  since  the  new  Pharmacopoeia  does 
not  itself  give  any  doses. 

Many  additions  demanded  by  the  ad- 
vance of  science  have  been  made  in  the 
body  of  the  work,  so  that  nearly  one  hun- 


dred pages  in  all  have  been  added  to  the 
book,  making  it  a  complete  exponent  of  the 
present  state  of  knowledge  in  this  direc- 
tion. 

In  Part  I  the  routes  by  which  medicines 
are  introduced  into  the  organism  are  classi- 
fied and  briefly  described.     Under  this  head 
the  author  treats  insufflation,  the  use  of  the 
nasal  douche  and  atomizers,  etc.,  and  gives 
a  valuable  chapter  upon  hypodermatic  (hy- 
podermic) methods,  with  a  list  of  the  reme- 
dies, solutions,  and    doses   employed,  and 
cautions  as  to  the  points  to  be  avoided  in 
hypodermatic  injections.     Then  follows  an 
article  on  transfusion,  with  references,  as  in 
other  cases,  to  the  authorities  consulted.     In 
Part  II  the  actions  and  uses  of  remedial 
agents  are  very  fully  described.      In  this 
part  we  find  the  uses  of  water,  externally 
and  internally,  of  heat,  of  air,  and  of  mass- 
age,  discussed,  as  well  as  the  actions  of 
drugs  in  general,  and  the  effects  of  various 
kinds  of  aliments  and  beverages.     Formulae 
are  given  for  the   preparation  of  animal 
broths  and  diet-drinks  ;   the  koumiss-cure, 
whey- cure,  and  buttermilk-cure,  each  receive 
some  attention.     Directions  are  also  given 
for  the  preparation  of  gruels,  jellies,  pep- 
tonized milk,  and  other  restorative  agents. 

The  various  pharmacopooal  preparations 
are  briefly  mentioned,  their  strength  noted, 
and  the  dose  given,  while  their  physiologi- 
cal and  therapeutical  use  receives  more  at- 
tention. Processes  for  their  preparation  are 
not  given. 

In  addition  to  a  very  copious  general  in- 
dex, the  work  is  provided  with  a  very  full 
"clinical  index,"  which  will  serve  to  sug- 
gest the  remedies  that  may  be  employed  in 
any  particular  disease,  but  which  may  also 
prove  an  injury  in  other  ways  as  furnishing 
an  aid  to  quackery,  and  offering  an  encour- 
agement  to  "  counter-prescribing  "  by  drug- 
gists. 

Human  Proportion  and  Anthropometry. 
By  Dr.  Robert  Fletcher.     Cambridge, 
Mass. :  Moses  King.    Pp.  37,  with  Plates. 
This  is  a  lecture  delivered  at  the  Na- 
tional Museum,  Washington,  D.  C,  and  in- 
cludes an  examination  and  explanation  of 
the  ancient  Egyptian  and  the  Polykleitan 
canons  of  proportion,  with  a  review  of  the 
results  of  recent  anthropometric  measure- 
ments. 


712 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


The  Motions  of  Fluids  and  Solids  on  the 
Earth's  Surface.  By  Professor  Will- 
iam Ferrel.  Keprinted,  with  Notes,  by 
Frank  Waldo.  Washington :  Govern- 
ment Printing-office.     Pp.  61. 

This  essay,  the  first  and  most  important 
of  the  valuable  mathematical  essays  of  Pro- 
fessor Ferrel  on  the  motions  of  the  atmos- 
phere, is  reprinted  as  the  first  part  of  a 
paper,  the  object  of  which  is  to  place  in  the 
hands  of  the  investigator  and  student  the 
important  writings  on  the  subject,  elucidated 
with  notes.  It  is  to  be  followed  by  a  sec- 
ond part,  including  the  writings  of  several 
European  mathematicians,  who  have  en- 
gaged in  the  study. 

Meteorological  and  Physical  Observa- 
tions ON  the  East  Coast  of  British 
North  America.  By  Orray  Taft  Sher- 
man. Washington:  Government  Print- 
ing-Office.     Pp.  202. 

This  volume  contains  the  observations 
and  deductions  made  by  the  meteorologist 
of  the  scientific  party  of  the  schooner  Flor- 
ence, which  spent  the  winter  of  1877-"78 
in  Cumberland  Sound,  latitude  from  64'50° 
to  6Y°,  and  completes  the  scientific  record 
of  the  expedition.  The  observations  relate 
to  tidal  phenomena,  temperature,  hygrome- 
try,  the  winds,  atmospheric  pressure,  the 
weather,  and  the  color  of  the  sky,  cloudi- 
ness, precipitation,  and  auroral  phenomena. 

Annual  Report  of  the  Operations  of  the 
United  States  Life-saving  Service,  for 
the  Fiscal  Year  ending  June  30,  1882. 
Washington:  Government  Printing-Of- 
ficc.     Pp.  504. 

The  report  well  illustrates  the  efiiciency 
and  usefulness  of  the  service  to  which  it 
relates.  The  department  has  189  stations, 
of  which  144  are  on  the  Atlantic,  37  on  the 
lakes,  seven  on  the  Pacific,  and  one  at  the 
Falls  of  the  Ohio,  Louisville,  Kentucky.  It 
had  cognizance,  during  the  year  covered  by 
the  present  report,  of  345  disasters  to  ves- 
sels of  different  classes,  directly  involving 
2,398  persons.  Of  these  persons,  2,386 
were  saved,  and  only  twelve  were  lost.  Of 
$4,766,227  of  property  involved,  $3,106,- 
457  were  saved.  Interesting  statements 
are  made  respecting  the  success  that  has 
attended  the  use  of  the  surf-boat,  the  self- 
righting  and  self -bailing  life-boat,  the 
breeches-buoy,  the  wreck-gun,  the  heaving- 


stick,  the  India-rubber  dress,  and  other  life- 
saving  apparatus.  Circumstantial  accounts 
are  given  of  each  of  the  cases  of  shipwreck 
and  rescue ;  statistics  are  shown  of  wrecks 
and  casualties  in  American  waters  and  dis- 
asters to  American  vessels  in  other  waters, 
since  1879;  and  the  instructions  of  the  ser- 
vice to  mariners  in  case  of  shipwreck  are 
furnished. 

Charts  and  Tables  showing  Geographi- 
cal Distribution  of  Rainfall  in  the 
United  States.  By  H.  H.  C.  Dunwoody. 
Washington :  Government  Printing- 
office.     Pp.  51,  with  13  Charts. 

The  charts  exhibit  the  geographical  dis- 
tribution of  the  average  monthly  and  aver- 
age yearly  rainfall  in  the  United  States,  as 
determined  by  observers  of  the  Signal  Ser< 
vice.  The  tables  give  the  actual  rainfall 
occurring  during  each  month  at  the  regular 
Signal-Service  stations  and  army  posts,  with 
the  average  rainfall  for  each  month,  season, 
and  year,  and  serve  to  show  the  fluctuations 
of  rainfall  in  different  sections  of  the  coun- 
try  during  the  last  ten  years. 

The  North  Atlantic  Cyclones  of  August, 
1883.  By  Lieutenant  W.  H.  II.  South- 
erland,  U.  S.  Navy.  W^ashington :  Gov- 
ernment Printing-office.    Pp.  22. 

This  report  includes  the  records  of  the 
cyclones  of  August  19th  to  August  27th, 
and  of  August  27th  to  September  1st,  with 
maps  of  their  course,  compiled  from  the 
logs  of  vessels  which  came  under  their  in- 
fluence. Nautical  directions  are  appended 
for  manoeuvring  in,  and  avoiding  the  cen- 
ter of,  cyclones  in  the  North  Atlantic. 

Horological  and  Thermometric  Bureau 
OF  Yale  College  Observatory.  Third 
Annual  Report.  By  Leonard  Waldo. 
New  Haven :  Tuttle,  Morehouse  &  Tay- 
lor.    Pp.  26. 

Watches  continue  to  be  received  for 
testing  from  a  variety  of  makers,  and  show 
a  decided  improvement  in  quality  of  per- 
formance. The  establishment  of  a  school 
of  horology  is  suggested,  but  endowments 
are  wanting.  Time-signals  are  regularly 
transmitted  from  the  observatory  to  the 
railroads  of  the  State.  Certificates  have 
been  issued  of  5,295  thermometers,  against 
4.552  in  18Sl-'82  and  1,957  in  1880-'81. 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


713 


Chemicax   Problems,  with   Brief    State- 
ments OF  THE  Principles  involted.     By 
James  C.  Foye,  Ph.  D.     New  York :  D. 
Van  Nostrand.     Pp.  141.     50  cts. 
The  value  of  problems  as  means  for  secur- 
ing accuracy  in  a  knowledge  of  the  subject, 
and  as  tests  for  attainments,  is  generally 
recognized  by  the  best  educators.    The  pres- 
ent work  was  prepared  to  meet  a  need  felt 
by  the  author,  who  is  a  professor  in  Law- 
rence University,  Wisconsin,  in  instructing 
his  classes.     Its  plan  is  very  simple.     After 
defining  the  terms  used,  and  briefly  stating 
the  principle  to  be  illustrated,  a  typical  prob- 
lem is  solved,  and  from  the  solution  a  for- 
mula of  general  application  is  deduced,  which 
is  followed  by  problems  to  be  worked  by  the 
student.    These,  as  a  rule,  bear  upon  the  fun- 
damental  principles  of  chemistry, 

Steam-Heating.  An  Exposition  of  the  Amer- 
ican Practice  of  warming  Buildings  by 
Steam.   By  Robert  Brigrs.   New  York : 
D.  Van  Nostrand.     Pp.  108.     50  cts. 
Unless  some  application  of  electricity  is 
devised  to  supersede  it,  steam  is,  in  all  prob- 
ability, destined  to  be  the  agent  by  which 
our  houses  will  be  heated  in  the  future. 
Aside  from  its  superior  cleanliness  as  com- 
pared with  most  other  methods  of  heating 
apartments,  the  facility  with  which  the  warm- 
ing and  ventilation  are  managed,  when  it  is 
once  established,  is  a  strong  recommenda- 
tion in  its  favor.     Mr.  Briggs's  treatise  in- 
cludes a  great  deal  that  the   builder  and 
householder  will  find  useful  on  the  subject, 
particularly  on  the  practical  side. 


PUBLICATIONS  EECEIVED. 

Proceedin{?8  of  the  Boston  Society  of  Natural 
History.  Yol.  XXII.  Norember,  1SS2,  to  Febru- 
ary, 1S83.    Pp.  112,  with  Six  Plates. 

Summary  of  Progress  in  Mineralogy  in  18S3. 
By  H.  Carvill  Lewis,  Philadelphia.    Pp.  50. 

"What  shall  we  do  for  the  Drunkard  T  By  Or- 
pTieus  Everts,  M.D.  Cincinnati:  Eobert  Clarke 
&  Co.    Pp.  56. 

Insects  injurious  to  Vegetation  and  how  to  get 
rid  of  Them.  By  Dr.  C.  A.  Greene,  of  Harrisbnrg, 
Pa.    Pp.  9. 

A  Brief  Statement  of  the  Doctrines  and  Philoso- 
phy of  the  Social  Labor  Movement.  By  A.  J. 
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co :  S.  F.  Truth  Publishing  Company.  Pp.  62. 
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tion.   By  Professor  Tyndall.    London.     Pp.  48. 

The  Batrachia  of  the  Permian  Period  of  North 
America.    By  E.  D.  Cope.    Pp.  14. 


Paleontological  Bulletin.  No.  87.  YariouS  pa- 
pers by  E.  D.  Cope.  Philadelphia :  A  E.  Foote, 
1223  Belmont  Avenue.    Pp.  20. 

The  Evidence  for  Evolution  in  the  History  of 
the  Extinct  Mammalia.  By  E.  D.  Cope,  of  Phila- 
delphia.   Salem :  Salem  Press.    Pp.  19. 

Micrometry,  Report  of  the  National  Committee, 
etc.    E.  H.  Ward,  Secretary.    Troy,  N.  Y.    Pp.  Ti. 

The  Bufalini  Prize,  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education, 
"Washington  :  Government  Printing-Offlce.    Pp.  6. 

Development  of  a  Dandelion-Flower.  By  John 
M.  Coulter.    Pp.  7. 

The  Seasons  in  Iowa,  and  a  Calendar  for  1884. 
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Illinois.    By  WilUam  Hosea  Ballou.    Pp.  6. 

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Pilot  Chart  of  the  North  Atlantic  for  January, 
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tail of  Floating  Wrecks.  Bv  Commander  J.  R.  Bart- 
lett,  U.  S.  Hydrographic  Office. 

Injurious  Garden  Insects.  Bv  Byron  D.  Hal- 
stead,  Sc.  D.  New  York  :  Phillips  &  Hunt.  Pp. 
16.    Scents. 

The  Zone  of  Asteroids  and  the  Ring  of  Saturn. 
By  Professor  Daniel  Kirkwood,  Bloomington,  Indi- 
ana.   Pp.  4. 

People  and  Places.  By  Sarah  K.  Bolton. 
Cleveland  Educational  Bureau,  Cleveland,  Ohio. 
Pp.  40. 

American  Society  of  Microscopists.  Proceed- 
ings of  the  Sixth  Annual  Meeting,  August,  1S88, 
Buffalo  :  Haas  &  Klein.    Pp.  279.    $1.3U. 

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!  Morphology,  Estimates  of  Intelligence,  Vital 
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Physical  Studies  of  Lake  Tahce.  By  Pi-ofessor 
John  Le  Conte.    Pp.  87. 

Hvsteria.  By  James  Hendrie  Lloyd,  A.  M.,  M.  D. 
Phila'delphia.    Pp.  21. 

Downward  Displacement  of  the  Transverse  Co- 
lon. Bv  Charles  Hermon  Thomas,  M.  D.  Philadel- 
phia.   Pp.  4. 

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ics. By  R.  R.  Bowker.  New  York :  Society  for 
Political  Education.    Pp.  48.    25  cents. 

Medical  Symbolism.  By  T.  S.  Sozinskey,  M.  D. 
Philadelphia.    Pp.  11. 

The  Ellipticon.  By  J.  L.  Naish.  New  York, 
Pp.2.    $1. 

New  York  Post-Graduate  Medical  School,  New 
York  City.    Sessions  of  18S3-'84.     Pp.  16. 

The  Termination  of  the  Nerves  in  the  Kidney. 
By  M.  L.  Holbrook,  M.  D.    New  York  City.     Pp.  8. 

Annual  Report  of  the  Hj^drographer  of  the  Navy 
Department.  1883.  Washington:  Government 
Printing-office.    Pp.  15. 

Report  of  the  Commission  to  select  and  locate 
Parks  in  New  York  Citv.  New  York:  M.  H. 
Brown,  49  Park  Place.    Pp.  215,  with  Plates. 

Federal  Taxation  :  The  L^rgcnt  Necessity  of  Re- 
form.    By  Samuel  Barnett.     Atlanta,  Ga.    Pp.  45. 

Prison  Contract  Labor:  Analysis  of  the  Vote 
(New  York).  Albany  :  Weed,  Parsons  &  Co.  Pp. 
22. 

Astronomical  Observatory  of  Harvard  College. 
Thirty-eighth  Annual  Report.  By  Edward  C. 
Pickering.  Cambridge  :  John  Wilson  &  Son.  Pp. 
17. 

Bureau  of  Statistics,  Treasury  Department. 
Quarterly  Report  to  September  80,  188;^.  Wash- 
ington :  Government  Printing-Office.    Pp.  133. 


7H 


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Physics  in  Pictures.  With  Thirty  Colored 
Plates  for  Ocular  Instruction.  By  Theodore  Eck- 
ardt  and  A.  H.  Keane.  London  :  Edward  Stanlord. 
Text,  pp.  20.    Is.  M. 

Common  -  Sense  Binder.  New  York  •  Asa  L. 
Shipman's  Sons. 

Hints  on  the  Drainage  and  Sewerage  of  Dwell- 
ings. IJy  William  Paul  Gerhard.  New  York : 
William T.  Comstock.  Ib84.  Pp.302.  Illustrated. 
$2.50. 

Land  and  its  Eent.  By  Francis  A.  Walker, 
Ph.D.LL.  D.  Boston  :  Little,  Brown  &  Co.  1SS3. 
Pp.  232.     75  cents. 

A  Bachelor's  Talks  about  Married  Life  and 
Things  Adjacent.  By  Wiliiam  Aikman.  D.  D. 
New^York:  Towler  &  Wells.  1S84.  Pp.  278. 
$1.50. 

The  Philosophy  of  Self-Consciousness.     By  P. 

F.  Fitzgerald.    Cincinnati:  E.  Clarke  &  Co.    18S3. 
$1.25. 

Electricity,  Magnetism,  and  Electric  Telegraphy. 
By  Thomas  D.  Lockwood.  New  York:  D.  Van 
Nostrand.    1883.    Pp.  877. 

For  Mothers  and  Daughters :  A  Manual  of  Hy- 
giene for  Women  and  the  Household.    By  Mrs.  E. 

G.  Cook,  M.D.      New  York:    Fowler  &  Wells. 
Pp.292.    Illustrated.    $1.50. 

Geological  Survey  of  Alabama :  Eeport  for 
Years  1881  and  18b2.  By  Eugene  Allen  Smith, 
Ph.D.  Montgomery,  Ala.:  W.  D.  Brown  &  Co. 
1883.    Pp.  015,  with  Maps. 

Second  Biennial  Eeport  State  Board  of  Health 
of  Iowa  for  Fiscal  Period  ending  June  80,  1883. 
Des  Moines  :  George  E.  Eoberts.    1883.    Pp.  417. 

The  Eelations  of  Mind  and  Brain.  By  Henry 
Calderwood,  LL.  D.  Second  edition.  London : 
Macmillan  &  Co.    1884.    Pp.  527. 

Chemistry,  Inorganic  and  Organic,  with  Experi- 
ments. By"  Charles  Loudon  Bloxam.  From  the 
fifth  and  revised  Enghsh  edition.  Philadelphia : 
Henry  C.  Lea's  Son  &  Co.  1883.  Pp.738.  Cloth, 
$3.75;  leather,  $4.75. 

First  Eegistration  Eeport  of  the  State  Board  of 
Health  of  Iowa,  for  the  Year  ending  October  1, 
1881.  Des  Moines:  George  E.  Eoberts.  1883.  Pp. 
811. 

The  Field  of  Disease  :  A  Book  of  Preventive 
Medicine.  By  B.  W.  Richardson,  M.  D..  F.  E.  S. 
Philadelphia :  Henry  C.  Lea's  Son  &  Co.  1884. 
Pp.  737.    Cloth,  $4  ;  leather,  $5  ;  russia,  $5.50. 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 

Snb-aerlal  Decay  of  Rocks. — Professor 
T.  S.  Hunt  publishes,  in  the  "American 
Journal  of  Science,"  an  elaborate  paper  on 
the  "  Decay  of  Rocks,"  in  which  he  insists 
that  recent  geological  studies  afford  evidence 
that  a  sub-aerial  decay  both  of  silicated 
crystalline  and  calcareous  rocks  has  taken 
place  universally  and  from  the  most  ancient 
epochs,  and  that  it  was  very  extensive  in 
pre-Cambrian  times.  He  further  insists  that 
the  materials  resulting  from  this  decay  arc 
preserved  in  situ,  in  some  regions  by  over- 
lying strata ;  in  others  by  the  position  of 
the  decayed  material  with  reference  to  de- 
nuding agents  ;  and  that  the  process  of  de- 
cay, though  continuous  through  later  geo- 
logical ages,  has,  under  ordinary  conditions. 


been  insignificant  in  amount  since  the  gla- 
cial period,  on  account  of  the  relatively  short 
time  that  has  elapsed,  and  also,  probably, 
on  account  of  changed  atmospheric  con- 
ditions in  the  later  time.  The  process  of 
decay,  he  believes,  "  has  furnished  the  ma- 
terials for  the  clays,  sands,  and  iron-oxides 
from  the  beginning  of  Palaeozoic  time  to 
the  present,  and  also  for  the  corresponding 
rocks  of  Eozoic  time,  which  have  been 
formed  from  the  older  feldspathic  rocks  by 
the  partial  loss  of  protoxide  bases.  The 
bases  thus  separated  from  crystalline  sili- 
cated rocks  have  been  the  source,  directly 
and  indirectly,  of  all  limestones  and  car- 
bonated rocks,  and  have,  moreover,  caused 
profound  secular  changes  in  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  ocean's  waters.  The  decay  of 
sulphureted  ores  in  the  Eozoic  rocks  has 
given  rise  to  oxidized  iron-ores,  and  also  to 
deposits  of  rich  copper-ores  in  various  geo- 
logical horizons."  Finally,  Professor  Hunt 
maintains  that  "  the  rounded  masses  of  crys- 
talline rock  left  in  the  process  of  decay 
constitute  not  only  the  bowlders  of  the 
drift,  but,  judging  from  analogy,  the  simi- 
lar masses  in  conglomerates  of  various  ages, 
going  back  to  Eozoic  time  ;  and  that  not 
only  the  forms  of  these  detached  masses, 
but  the  outlines  of  eroded  regions  of  crystal- 
line rocks,  were  determined  by  the  preced- 
ing process  of  sub-aerial  decay  of  these 
rocks." 

"  Colds."— The  views  of  Dr.  Page  on  the 
subject  of  "  catching  cold,"  published  in  the 
"  Monthly  "  for  January,  having  been  sharp- 
ly criticised  as  unsound  and  extreme,  we 
give  below  an  extract  on  the  same  subject 
from  the  London  "  Lancet,"  a  scientific  med- 
ical authority  of  the  highest  grade:  "A 
person  in  good  health,  with  fair  play,  easily 
resists  cold.  But  when  the  health  flags  a 
little,  and  liberties  arc  taken  with  the  stom- 
ach or  the  nervous  system,  a  chill  is  easily 
taken,  and,  according  to  the  weak  spot  of 
the  individual,  assumes  the  form  of  a  cold, 
or  pneumonia,  or,  it  may  be,  jaundice.  Of 
all  causes  of  *  cold,'  probably  fatigue  is  one 
of  the  most  efficient.  A  jaded  man  coming 
home  at  night  from  a  long  day's  work,  a 
growing  youth  losing  two  liours'  sleep  over 
evening  parties  two  or  three  times  a  week, 
or  a  young  lady  heavily  '  doing  the  season,' 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


7^S 


young  children  at  this  festive  season  over- 
fed and  with  a  short  allowance  of  sleep,  are 
common  instances  of  the  victims  of  '  cold.' 
Luxury  is  favorable  to  chill-taking ;  very 
hot  rooms,  soft  chairs,  feather  beds,  create 
a  sensitiveness  that  leads  to  catarrhs.  It  is 
not,  after  all,  the  '  cold '  that  is  so  much 
to  be  feared  as  the  antecedent  conditions 
that  give  the  attack  a  chance  of  doing  harm. 
Some  of  the  worst  '  colds '  happen  to  those 
who  do  not  leave  their  house  or  even  their 
bed,  and  those  who  are  most  invulnerable 
are  often  those  who  are  most  exposed  to 
changes  of  temperature,  and  who  by  good 
sleep,  cold  bathing,  and  regular  habits,  pre- 
serve the  tone  of  their  nervous  system  and 
circulation.  Probably  many  chills  are  con- 
tracted at  night  or  at  the  fag-end  of  the 
day,  when  tired  people  get  the  equilibrium 
of  their  circulation  disturbed  by  either  over- 
heated sitting-rooms  or  underheated  bed- 
rooms and  beds.  This  is  especially  the 
case  with  elderly  people.  In  such  cases  the 
mischief  is  not  always  done  instantaneously, 
or  in  a  single  night.  It  often  takes  place 
insidiously,  extending  over  days  or  even 
weeks.  It  thus  appears  that  '  taking  cold ' 
is  not  by  any  means  a  simple  result  of  a 
lower  temperature,  but  depends  largely  on 
personal  conditions  and  habits,  affecting  es- 
pecially the  nervous  and  muscular  energy  of 
the  body." 

How  and  where  Malaria  tbriyes. — The 

health-officers  of  New  Britain,  Connecticut, 
have  made  an  instructive  report  concerning 
the  prevalence  of  malarial  diseases  in  that 
town,  and  their  connection  with  certain  sup- 
posed causes.  The  causes  of  malarial  and 
other  miasmatic  diseases  are  not  identical, 
though  they  are  similar,  and  the  two  classes 
not  infrequently  occur  in  a  given  locality  at 
the  same  time ;  and  the  hygienic  measures 
required  to  prevent  them  all  are  the  same. 
The  essential  conditions  for  the  development 
of  malaria  appear  to  be:  the  presence  of 
the  malarial  germ ;  a  high  temperature  and 
dry  atmosphere;  and  favorable  conditions 
of  the  soil ;  and  the  absence  of  either  of 
them  will  suspend  or  prevent  the  action  of 
the  poison.  We  have  power  only  over  the 
third  condition.  "  A  generous  rain  in  the 
vicinity  has,  we  think,  invariably  suspended 
its  action.     And  yet  a  previous  condition  of 


moisture  is  essential  to  its  manifestation. 
All  deposits  of  vegetable  matter,  such  as 
muck,  sink-drainage,  heaps  of  decaying  veg- 
etable matter,  or  even  wet,  spongy  land,  fur- 
nish the  essentials  for  its  support ;  but  it  is 
requisite  that  the  soil  shall  have  been  very 
wet,  or  covered  with  water  some  portions  of 
the  year."  A  generous  crop  of  grass,  and 
perhaps  of  other  vegetable  substance,  has 
been  known  to  prevent  malaria.  In  1880 
nearly  all  the  families  in  the  neighborhood 
of  some  lots  which  were  largely  a  deposit 
of  muck  had  malaria.  The  lots  were 
plowed,  dragged,  and  sowed  with  grass-seed, 
and  the  appearance  of  the  crop  of  grass  and 
weeds  was  attended  by  a  disappearance  of 
chills  and  fever.  Two  or  three  other  in- 
stances are  mentioned  in  the  same  town,  in 
which  fever-and-ague  was  banished  by  giv- 
ing a  similar  treatment  to  tracts  of  swampy 
and  mucky  soil.  Another  case  is  specified 
where  malaria  was  prevented  by  the  drying 
up  of  the  sewerage  and  sink- water  which 
usually  found  its  outlet  through  a  system  of 
ditches  cut  in  muck.  Preparations  were 
making  to  lay  tiles  in  the  ditches  and  fill 
them  up,  but,  before  this  was  done,  a  heavy 
rain  washed  them  out,  and  "  caused  the  pre- 
vailing sickness  to  abate  as  suddenly  as  it 
had  commenced."  From  the  first,  malaria 
has  not  prevailed  in  those  parts  of  the  city 
where  vegetable  deposits  and  filth  have  been 
absent,  and  the  health  of  the  streets  in 
which  sewers  have  been  laid  has  been  re- 
markably good. 

Can  Dogs  be  taught  to  read  ? — Under 
the  title  "  Instinct,"  Sir  John  Lubbock  writes 
as  follows  in  a  recent  number  of  the  "  Spec- 
tator " : 

"  Sir  :  Mr.  Darwin's  '  Xotes  on  Instinct,' 
recently  published  by  my  friend  Mr.  Ro- 
manes, have  again  called  attention  to  the 
interesting  subject  of  instinct  in  animals. 
Miss  Martineau  once  remarked  that,  consid- 
ering how  long  we  have  lived  in  close  asso- 
ciation with  animals,  it  is  astonishing  how 
little  we  know  about  them,  and  especially 
about  their  mental  condition.  This  applies 
with  especial  force  to  our  domestic  ani- 
mals, and  above  all,  of  course,  to  dogs.  I 
believe  that  it  arises  very  much  from  the 
fact  that  hitherto  we  have  tried  to  teach 
animals,  rather  than  to  learn  from  them — 


7i6 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


to  convey  our  ideas  to  them,  rather  than  to 
devise  any  language,  or  code  of  signals,  by 
means  of  which  they  might  communicate 
theirs  to  us.  No  doubt,  the  former  process 
is  interesting  and  instructive,  but  it  does 
not  carry  us  very  far.  Under  these  circum- 
stances,  it  has  occurred  to  me  whether  some 
such  system  as  that  followed  by  deaf-mutes, 
and  especially  by  Dr.  Ilowe  with  Laura 
Bridgman,  might  not  prove  very  instructive, 
if  adapted  to  the  case  of  dogs.  Accordingly 
I  prepared  some  pieces  of  stout  cardboard, 
and  printed  on  each  in  legible  letters  a 
■word,  such  as  '  food,'  '  bone,'  '  out,'  etc.  I 
then  began  training  a  black  poodle, '  Van ' 
by  name,  kindly  given  me  by  my  friend 
Mr.  Nickalls.  I  commenced  by  giving  the 
dog  food  in  a  saucer,  over  which  I  laid  the 
card  on  which  was  the  word  '  food,'  placing 
also  by  the  side  an  empty  saucer,  covered 
by  a  plain  card.  *  Van  '  soon  learned  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  two,  and  the  next  stage 
was  to  teach  him  to  bring  me  the  card  ;  this 
he  now  does,  and  hands  it  to  me  quite  pret- 
tily, and  I  then  give  him  a  bone,  or  a  little 
food,  or  take  him  out,  according  to  the  card 
brought.  He  still  brings  sometimes  a  plain 
card,  in  which  case  I  point  out  his  error, 
and  he  then  takes  it  back  and  changes  it. 
This,  however,  does  not  often  happen.  Yes- 
terday  morning,  for  instance,  he  brought 
me  the  card  with  '  food '  on  it  nine  times  in 
succession,  selecting  it  from  among  other 
plain  cards,  though  I  changed  the  relative 
position  every  time.  No  one  who  sees  him 
can  doubt  that  he  understands  the  act  of 
bringing  the  card  with  the  word  '  food '  on 
it,  as  a  request  for  something  to  eat,  and 
that  he  distinguishes  between  it  and  a  plain 
card.  I  also  believe  that  he  distinguishes, 
for  instance,  between  the  card  with  the  word 
'  food '  on  it  and  the  card  with  *  out '  on  it. 
This,  then,  seems  to  open  up  a  method 
which  may  be  carried  much  further,  for  it  is 
obvious  that  the  cards  may  be  multiplied, 
and  the  dog  thus  enabled  to  communicate 
freely  with  us.  I  have  as  yet,  I  know,  made 
only  a  very  small  beginning,  and  hope  to 
carry  the  experiment  much  further,  but  my 
object  in  troubling  you  with  this  letter  is 
twofold.  In  the  first  place,  I  trust  that 
some  of  your  readers  may  be  able  and  will- 
ing to  suggest  extensions  or  improvements 
of  the  idea.    Secondly,  my  spare  time  is 


small,  and  liable  to  many  interruptions ; 
and  animals  also,  we  know,  differ  greatly 
from  one  another.  Now,  many  of  your 
readers  have  favorite  dogs,  and  I  would  ex- 
press a  hope  that  some  of  them  may  be  dis- 
posed to  study  them  in  the  manner  indicated. 
The  observations,  even  though  negative, 
would  be  interesting ;  but  I  confess  I  hope 
that  some  positive  results  might  follow, 
which  would  enable  us  to  obtain  a  more  cor- 
rect insight  into  the  minds  of  animals  than 
we  have  yet  acquired." 

Salts  in  Rivers  and  in  the  Sea.— The 
sea,  it  is  well  understood,  is  fed  with  salt 
as  well  as  with  water,  by  the  rivers.  The 
question  then  arises  naturally,  IIow  is  it  that 
the  rivers — admitting  that  they  are  mildly 
salt,  although  they  appear  to  be  fresh — dif- 
fer from  the  ocean  in  the  kind  as  well  as  in 
the  strength  of  their  saltness  ?  Mr.  W.  Mat- 
tieu  "Williams  answers  the  question  by  show- 
ing that,  when  sea-water  is  evaporated,  sul- 
phate of  lime  is  the  first  salt  to  be  deposited, 
while  chloride  of  sodium,  sulphate  of  mag- 
nesia, chloride  of  potassium,  and  the  bro- 
mides, are  deposited  later.  Hence,  when 
the  sea-water  reaches  the  point  of  satura- 
tion with  sulphate  of  lime,  no  more  can  be 
dissolved  in  it,  but  all  additional  supplies 
must  be  deposited.  Moreover,  if  a  soluble 
salt  of  lime  were  brought  into  the  sea,  its 
lime  would  combine  with  the  sulphuric  acid 
there  combined  with  magnesia,  or  soda,  or 
potash,  which  would,  in  obedience  to  a  curi- 
ous chemical  law,  leave  those  bases  to  com- 
bine with  that  one  which  would  form  an 
insoluble  compound.  Thus  the  total  quan- 
tity of  lime  in  sea-water  is  limited  by  the 
solubility  of  sulphate  of  lime,  and  this 
amounts  to  only  about  one  part  in  four 
hundred  of  water. 

The  Caribs  and  the  Greeks.— Mr.  A.  J. 

Van  Koolnijk  has  published  in  the  '*  Journal 
of  the  Dutch  Geographical  Society  "  an  ac- 
count of  Carib  tombs  and  relics  which  have 
been  found  in  the  Island  of  Aruba,  off  Dutch 
Guiana.  Among  the  relics  are  potteries  of 
good  workmanship,  elaborately  ornamented 
and  painted  in  a  variety  of  colors  obtained 
on  the  island.  Some  of  the  more  common 
ornaments  are  figures  of  frogs  and  frogs' 
heads,  which  indicate  that  the  Indians  had 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY, 


1^1 


considerable  respect  for  those  animals. 
Many  of  the  ornaments,  the  handles  of  the 
vessels,  and  the  skill  with  which  the  reliefs 
were  finished,  reminded  the  discoverers  of 
Greek  patterns.  Some  of  the  vessels,  too, 
bore  figures  which  were  thought  to  be  in- 
scriptions or  hieroglyphics,  and  a  remark- 
able resemblance  was  traced  between  these 
characters  and  the  letters  of  the  Greek  al- 
phabet. This  leads  our  Dutch  antiquary  to 
consider  the  question  whether  there  may 
not  have  been  some  kind  of  a  connection 
between  these  Caribs  and  the  ancient 
Greeks.  Ch.  Riimehn  is  quoted  as  having 
suggested  the  possibility  of  looking  for  the 
origin  of  the'northern  tribes  of  Colombia, 
through  the  Guanches  of  the  Canary  Islands, 
to  the  Foulahs  of  the  Soodan.  Cyries  also 
speaks  of  having  seen  hieroglyphic  figures 
representing  the  sun,  moon,  and  various 
animals,  roughly  cut  on  the  granite  rocks 
of  Guiana  at  such  heights  that  ladders  had 
to  be  used  to  reach  them. 

Tlie  Stone  Age  in  Africa, — Eerr  Richard 
Andree  has  accumulated  a  large  mass  of 
evidences  of  the  existence  of  a  stone  age  in 
Africa — a  point  which  has  hitherto  been  in- 
volved in  much  doubt.  The  Djurs,  on  the 
White  Nile,  still  hammer  their  iron  with  a 
block  of  granite ;  smoothed  stones  are  still 
used  for  hammer  and  anvil  between  the 
east  coast  and  the  Tanganyika  Lake;  the 
Hottentots  and  Bushmen  dig  roots  with  per- 
forated stones ;  the  Arabs  in  Egypt  curry 
their  shorn  sheep  with  flint ;  the  Bushmen 
tip  their  arrows  with  bone,  and  the  Gabiri, 
in  Bagirmi,  with  clay.  Stories,  which  are 
reminiscences  of  the  days  of  stone  instru- 
ments, are  told  among  the  Hereros,  and 
among  the  Bazimba  of  Madagascar.  When 
the  Europeans  discovered  the  Canary  Isl- 
ands, they  found  the  Guanches  in  the  midst 
of  a  stone  age.  This  much  we  know  of  the 
present  use  of  stone.  The  historical  evi- 
dences are  scarce.  Diodorus  Siculus  says 
the  Libyans  threw  stones  at  their  enemies, 
and  Agatharcides  says  that  the  Ethiopians 
tied  stone  points  to  their  arrows,  while  Stra- 
bo  says  they  tipped  them  with  antelope- 
horn.  Vessels  and  implements  of  stone  have 
become  quite  common  among  the  "  finds  " 
of  Egypt,  and  in  all  the  countries  and  the 
deserts  to  the  western  border  of  Morocco. 


While  not  more  is  known  about  the  stone 
evidences  than  about  the  other  features  of 
the  intermediate  countries,  flints  and  stone 
vessels,  of  both  crude  palaeolithic  and  more 
highly-finished  forms  are  found  at  numer- 
ous places  in  the  southern  point  of  Africa, 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Orange  River  to  Dela- 
goa  Bay.  The  implements  are  very  sim- 
ilar in  form  and  material  to  the  European 
finds,  and  present  the  same  puzzle  in  the 
occurrence  of  nephrite  among  them.  As- 
suming that  evidences  will  be  found  at  least 
as  abundantly  in  the  countries  which  have 
not  yet  been  examined  for  them,  the  con- 
clusion is  drawn  that  the  Africans,  although 
they  have  been  using  iron  as  far  back  in  his- 
torical times  as  our  knowledge  extends,  had 
also  a  stone  age. 

Indistinctness  of  Race  Divisions.— Pro- 
fessor Leon  Rosny,  in  his  forthcoming  work 
on  the  "  Danubian  Principalities,"  says, 
speaking  of  the  nationality  of  the  Roumani- 
ans, that  that  people  confirms  a  view  which 
he  has  held  for  years,  and  which  is  also  M. 
Renan's  view,  that  the  matter  of  nationality 
is  very  largely  a  question  of  feeling.  Many 
different  elements  may  have  contributed  to 
the  formation  of  a  Roumanian  nationality, 
but  the  chief  one  has  been  the  fancy  that 
the  people  of  Moldavia  and  Wallachia  were 
descended  from  a  mixture  of  the  ancient 
Dacians  with  Trajan's  soldiers,  and  were, 
therefore,  the  Romans  of  the  East,  whose 
mission  it  was  to  guard  the  interests  of  the 
Latin  race  in  that  part  of  Europe.  Reminis- 
cences of  Roman  antiquity  are  still  current 
in  the  country,  as,  for  example,  in  a  popular 
dance,  the  Kalusar,  which  represents  the 
rape  of  the  Sabine  women.  Conversely,  the 
Tartars  of  the  Dobrudja  are  composed  of  a 
great  variety  of  types,  from  that  of  the  pure 
European  to  that  of  the  most  pronounced 
Mongolian,  but  they  all  pass  alike  for  Tar- 
tars. These  things  suggest,  again  and  again, 
the  thought  that  the  characteristic  traits 
which  are  held  to  be  most  decisive  in  de- 
termining the  differences  between  the  groups 
of  mankind  are  in  reality  very  flexible  and 
changeable.  Physical  tokens  are  of  service 
only  for  the  establishment  of  two  or  three 
grand  divisions  among  men,  and  the  value 
even  of  these  divisions  is  becoming  more 
and  more  subject  to  criticism.     Linguistic 


718 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


distinctions,  on  which  ethnographic  classifi- 
cations have  for  some  time  been  assumed, 
arc  likewise  very  fallacious.  People  have 
been  capable  of  changing  their  vocabulary 
and  their  grammar,  and  even  of  discarding 
their  whole  language  and  adopting  another 
of  different  spirit.  The  groups  of  the  hu- 
man race  are,  as  a  whole,  the  product  of  his- 
torical changes  in  the  different  phases  of 
their  existence,  and  the  influence  of  the  sur- 
roundings in  which  they  have  developed 
themselves.  Professor  Halevy  supports  M. 
Rosny's  theory,  and  believes  that  nations 
may  change  their  language,  their  disposition, 
and  their  moral  character,  according  to  the 
surroundings  among  which  they  live,  and 
according  to  their  institutions.  Africans, 
for  example,  show  a  change  from  the  mo- 
ment they  become  Mohammedans.  The 
word  *'  race  "  should  no  longer  be  used  in 
ethnology.  "  When  I  was  in  Abyssinia," 
he  says,  "  during  the  war  between  England 
and  King  Theodore,  it  was  quite  impossible 
to  distinguish  a  Hindoo  in  the  British  ser- 
vice, when  he  was  stripped,  from  a  native 
Abyssinian.  Even  Theophrastus  was  aware 
of  the  striking  similarity,  and  classed  the 
Indians  and  Abyssinians  together  as  Ethio- 
pians." 

The  Check  in  the  Growth  of  France.— 

The  attention  of  French  economists  has  been 
drawn  for  several  years  to  the  fact  that  the 
population  of  their  country  is  not  increasing,  j 
but  shows  rather  a  tendency,  in  many  parts  j 
of  the  country,  to  diminish.     The  tendency 
is   steadily  manifested,  in   several  depart-  \ 
ments,  to  a  greater  degree  than  in  others,  | 
and  has  been  maintained  with  considerable  : 
uniformity  in  those  departments  where  it  is  i 
most  marked.     The  departments  in  which 
the   decrease  is  most  observable  are  the  j 
group  in  Languedoc  and  the  group  in  Nor- 
mandy.    Of  the  five  Xorman  departments, 
only  one,  that  of  the  Lower  Seine,  shows  an 
increase,  and  the  increase  there  is  solely  due 
to  the  attraction  of  the  large  towns  of  Havre 
and  Rouen.     The  tendency  of  population  to 
gravitate  toward  the  cities,  at  the  expense 
of  the  rural  districts,  is  as  marked  in  France 
as  in  other  countries,  and  contributes  its 
quota  toward  retarding  the  growth  of  the 
country  as  a  whole ;  for  mankind  are  less 
prolific  in  towns  than  in  the  country.    A 


few  departments  show  an  increase  of  popu- 
lation, and  these,  curiously,  are  about  even- 
ly divided  between  the  richest  and  the  poor- 
est departments  in  the  nation.  The  cause 
of  the  stationary  condition  of  the  population 
is  found,  by  those  who  endeavor  to  account 
for  it,  in  the  evenly  comfortable  situation  of 
the  people.  They  are  contented  with  things 
as  they  are,  and  avoid  having  large  families, 
in  order  to  evade  extra  exertion  and  prevent 
the  diminution  of  their  estates  that  would 
follow  if  there  were  many  heirs  to  divide 
them  among.  Every  one  aims  to  live  and 
save,  so  as  to  leave  his  children  as  well  off 
as  himself,  and  a  little  better  off  if  possible. 
Hence  very  few  have  more  than  three  chil- 
dren. All  the  large  towns  have  increased 
enormously  during  the  present  century,  at 
such  a  rate  that,  if  the  population  of  the 
whole  country  had  increased  at  the  same 
rate,  France  would  have  had  seventy-five 
million  inhabitants,  or  would  have  been  as 
densely  populated  as  England.  Had  it  not 
been,  in  fact,  for  the  augmentation  of  the 
populations  of  Paris,  Lyons,  and  Marseilles, 
the  population  of  all  France  would  have  act- 
ually diminished  during  the  last  five  years. 
This  augmentative  population,  except  as  it 
is  of  foreign  origin,  contributes,  as  we  have 
seen,  to  the  tendency  to  depletion  of  the 
aggregate. 

Anthropology  in  Italy.— Anthropology 
is  studied  in  Italy  with  considerable  zeal, 
and  nearly  every  large  town  has  its  collec- 
tion and  its  specialist  of  repute.  The  coun- 
try, as  may  be  judged  from  the  figure  it  has 
made  in  history,  is  rich  in  monuments  dat- 
ing from  a  very  great  antiquity.  In  upper 
Italy  earth-walls  have  recently  been  discov- 
ered on  the  mountain-heights,  which  are  at- 
tributed to  the  Celts.  The  plains  of  Lom- 
bardy  and  Emilia  have  furnished  numerous 
remains  of  lake-dwellings,  which  have  been 
studied  by  Pigorini,  Strobcl,  and  Chierici, 
and  are  represented  in  the  collections  of 
Parma  and  Reggio.  Not  less  important  are 
the  Etruscan  necropolis  of  Margabotto  and 
that  of  the  Cerlosa  of  Bologna.  Bologna 
has  its  newly  built  Museo  Civico  under  the 
direction  of  Gozzodini,  and  the  accomplished 
geologist  Capelini,  who  has  discovered  traces 
of  cannibalism  in  a  cave  on  the  Island  of 
Palraaria.     The  Olmo  skull,  which  Gocchi 


NOTES. 


719 


regards  as  post-Pliocene,  and  which  may  be 
compared  with  the  Cro-Magnon  and  Steeten 
skulls,  is  in  the  geological  collection  of  this 
city.  Mantegazza  has  founded  an  anthro- 
pological and  ethnological  museum  in  Flor- 
ence, with  Miloni  in  charge  of  the  Etruscan 
and  Schiaparclli  of  the  archaeological  de- 
partments. Perugia,  too,  has  Etruscan  an- 
tiquities, and  Belluci  is  collecting  prehistoric 
stone  implements  there.  Pigorini  has  estab- 
lished a  prehistorical  and  ethnological  mu- 
seum at  Rome,  where  Michael  St.  de  Rossi 
has  won  much  honor  by  his  researches. 
Nicolucci,  who  has  founded  an  anthropo- 
logical collection  at  the  University  of  Na- 
ples, has  examined  about  a  hundred  skulls, 
and  has  found  them  to  be  meso-cephalic 
Grecian  skulls,  very  like  those  still  typical 
in  the  region. 

Two  East  African  Tribes.— Some  inter- 
esting  information  respecting  East  African 
tribes  has  been  obtained  by  the  London  Geo- 
graphical Society  from  the  notes  of  the  Rev. 
T.  Wakefield,  missionary  at  Ribe,  near  Mom- 
basa. Kavirondo  appears  to  be  the  most 
important  country  on  the  eastern  shore  of 
the  Victoria  Nyanza,  and  is  described  as  a 
great  grass-clad  plain,  with  a  few  detached 
hills  and  clumps  of  trees,  but  altogether 
without  forests.  The  people  are  tall  and 
powerfully  built,  of  a  deep  black,  and  with 
thick  lips  and  flat  npses.  They  wear  their 
hair  short,  or  dress  it  elaborately,  or  shave 
it  all  off  but  a  tuft  on  the  crown,  or  shave 
half  the  head,  or  a  few  patches  only,  ac- 
cording to  their  taste.  The  women  tattoo 
the  stomach  and  the  back,  but  the  men  do 
so  only  rarely.  Dress  is  almost  unknown. 
The  women  are  content  with  a  string  worn 
round  the  waist,  to  which  they  attach  a  tail- 
like appendage  made  of  bark.  They  wear 
no  ornaments,  but  smear  themselves  with 
disagreeable  (to  whites)  substances.  The 
men  wear  iron  bracelets  on  their  fore-arms, 
and  above  their  elbows.  Their  spears  are 
long  and  have  short  blades,  and  their  shields 
are  made  of  buffalo-hides.  Neither  swords 
nor  knives  are  in  use.  Both  sexes  work  in 
the  fields.  Millet,  beans,  bananas,  and  large 
crops  of  sweet-potatoes  are  grown,  and  two 
harvests  are  gathered  in  the  year.  A  thick 
porridge,  on  festive  occasions,  made  with 
milk,  constitutes  the  staple  food,  and  is  eaten 
with  the  hands.     Cattle,   sheep,  and  goats 


are  raised.  The  huts  are  circular  and  roomy, 
and  high  enough  for  a  man  to  stand  upright 
within  them.  Another  people,  the  Wa-Uka- 
ra,  are  likewise  tall  and  muscular,  and  have 
a  similar  variety  of  tastes  about  their  hair, 
They  paint  their  bodies  red,  with  clay  mixed 
in  oil,  and  their  arms  and  legs  with  white ; 
tattoo  their  stomachs  and  upper  arms  and 
have  few  ornaments.  Women  wear  kilts  of 
bark-cloth  and  skins,  and  men  a  longer  gar- 
ment of  like  material.  They  live  in  circular 
huts,  built  over  pits  three  feet  deep,  and 
covered  with  conical  roofs.  They  marry 
only  when  full-grown,  and  pay  the  dowry 
for  their  wives  in  cattle  and  goats.  They 
grow  a  variety  of  crops,  and  pound  their 
corn  or  millet  in  a  wooden  mortar,  or  grind 
it  on  a  flat  stone,  beneath  which  a  cowhide 
is  spread  out  to  receive  the  flour.  Their  do- 
mestic animals  are  cattle,  goats,  sheep  of  a 
superior  kind,  dogs,  and  fowls,  but  cats  are 
not  known.  Their  blacksmiths  manufacture 
hoes,  axes,  and  spears ;  and  they  produce 
cooking-pots  of  clay  and  baskets  of  wicker- 
work.  Ukara  contains  a  large  number  of 
populous  villages. 


NOTES.  I 

Near  Mandan,  in  the  neighborhood  of 
the  junction  of  the  Hart  and  Missouri  Riv- 
ers, are  what  appear  to  be  two  large  ceme- 
teries of  an  ancient  race.  One  of  them  is 
composed  of  what  are  described  as  trenches 
filled  with  bones  of  man  and  beast,  and  cov- 
ered with  several  feet  of  earth  so  as  to 
form  considerable  mounds.  With  the  bones 
are  associated  broken  pottery,  vases  of  flint, 
and  agates.  The  pottery  is  described  as 
being  of  a  dark  material,  handsomely  deco- 
rated, delicate  in  finish,  and  very  light, 
pointing  to  the  existence  of  a  considerable 
degree  of  civilization. 

The  death  has  been  announced  of  Mr. 
Robert  B.  Tolles,  of  Boston,  the  distin- 
guished maker  of  American  microscopes 
and  telescopes  of  great  powers. 

Dr.  Grassi  is  said  to  have  made  the  im- 
portant discovery  that  flies  are  active  agents 
in  the  propagation  of  disease.  They  take 
the  ova  of  parasitical  worms  into  their 
mouths  and  discharge  them  unchanged  in 
convenient  places,  often  upon  substances  to 
be  used  as  human  food.  Dr.  Grassi  is  so 
deeply  impressed  with  the  magnitude  and 
seriousness  of  the  consequences  that  he 
hopes  some  effectual  means  may  soon  be 
found  of  destroying  flies. — Science  Monthly. 


720 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


Special  attention  is  given  by  the  British 
Government  officers,  in  Cyprus,  to  the  de- 
struction of  tlic  locusts,  with  a  view  to  their 
extermination.  The  governor  reports  that 
in  1882  he  was  successful  in  keeping  the 
pests  down,  and  he  considers  the  method  of 
screens  so  effectual  that  he  proposes  to  rely 
on  catching  the  live  locusts,  and  not  to 
gather  their  eggs.  The  accepted  practice 
in  China,  Russia,  and  Turkey  is  based  on  a 
different  view. 

Brigadier-General  Andrew  A.  IIum- 
PHREYS,  who  died  in  Washington  on  the  28th 
of  November,  in  the  seventy-fourth  year  of 
his  age,  performed  many  important  services 
in  the  shape  of  scientific  surveys  and  works 
of  engineering.  He  was  Superintendent  of 
the  Coast  Survey  from  1844  to  1849,  of  the 
Topographic  and  Hydrographic  Survey  of  the 
Mississippi  Delta  from  1849  to  1851,  and  of 
surveys  for  railroads  and  geographical  ex- 
plorations west  of  the  Mississippi  to  1861. 
lie  was  again  engaged  in  the  examination 
of  the  Mississippi  levees  for  about  a  year 
after  the  war,  after  which  he  was  placed  in 
command  of  the  Corps  of  Engineers  and  in 
charge  of  the  Engineer  Bureau.  The  report 
on  the  "  Physics  and  Hydraulics  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi," prepared  by  him  in  conjunction 
with  Lieutenant  H.  L.  Abbott,  has  much  sci- 
entific value. 

M.  DE  Sahzec,  a  French  Oriental  archss- 
ologist,  suggested  some  time  ago  that  the 
ancient  Eastern  stone-cutters  used  diamond- 
pointed  tools  in  their  more  delicate  work 
on  diorite  and  other  hard  stones.  He  is 
corroborated  by  Mr.  Flinders  Petri e,  an 
English  Egyptologist,  who  has  found  in  his 
minute  examinations  of  ancient  work  lines 
of  a  character  that  could  not  apparently 
have  been  cut  in  those  stones  (diorltes  and 
granites)  with  any  metallic  tool,  but  must 
have  been  made  with  a  gem-point. 

M.  EoDERT  Haensel,  of  Reichenberg, 
Bohemia,  has  succeeded  in  accurately  photo- 
graphing a  flash  of  lightning.  His  pictures, 
of  which  he  has  taken  several,  show  the 
light  of  the  flash  under  the  form  of  long- 
continuous  sparks,  traversing  the  atmos- 
phere. In  one  of  them  the  point  where 
the  spark  meets  the  earth  is  very  clearly 
defined.  With  the  spark,  the  landscape 
also  is  well  produced,  and  a  means  is  given 
for  estimating  the  length  of  the  luminous 
train,  which,  in  one  instance,  is  calculated 
to  be  1,700  metres,  or  more  than  a  mile. 

An  International  Society  of  Electricians 
has  been  formed  at  Paris,  under  the  honor- 
ary presidency  of  M.  Cochet.  It  is  open  for 
admission  to  membership  to  every  French- 
man or  foreigner  interested,  whether  in  a 
general,  scientific,  industrial,  or  commercial 
■way,  in  the  progress  of  theoretical  or  ap- 
plied electricity.  The  price  of  membership 
is  twenty  francs,  or  about  four  dollars,  a  year. 


M.  George  Bontemps,  a  French  chemist, 
distinguished  particularly  for  his  labors  in 
the  appHcation  of  the  sciences  to  glass- 
making,  died  at  Amboise,  France,  November 
14th,  aged  eighty-four  years.  He  began  his 
chemical  studies  under  Gay-Lussac  and  The- 
nard,  and  has  been  connected  with  glass- 
making,  in  nearly  every  branch  of  which  he 
has  participated,  since  1818.  He  introduced 
several  improvements  in  the  art,  among 
them  the  revival  of  the  manufacture  of 
ruby  glass  in  1826,  after  it  had  ceased  for 
two  centuries,  and  was  successful  in  mak- 
ing good  optical  glass.  He  published  many 
papers  related  to  glass-making,  and  a  large 
work  on  the  subject 

M.  DE  QuATREFAGES  recently  presented 
to  the  French  Academy  of  Sciences  a  re- 
port by  M.  E.  Cartailhac  on  a  flint-quarry 
that  was  worked  during  the  stone  age  at 
Mur-dc-Barrez,  in  Aveyron.  It  consisted  of 
vertical  pits  dug  through  the  Aquitanian 
limestone  to  the  level  of  the  flint-beds,  at 
depths  of  from  two  to  four  metres.  The 
walls  of  the  pits  bore  evident  marks  of  the 
pick,  a  tool  of  deer-horn,  of  which  a  con- 
siderable number  of  specimens  were  found 
in  the  bottoms  of  the  pits.  These  pits  are 
the  first  that  have  been  found  in  France, 
and  are  very  much  hke  the  ones  which  have 
been  discovered  at  Spiennes,  in  Belgium, 
and  Cisbury,  in  England. 

M.  IvoN  TiLLARCEAr,  a  French  astrono- 
mer and  mathematician,  died  on  the  23d  of 
December,  aged  seventy-one  years.  He  was 
educated  to  be  an  engineer,  but  became 
connected  with  the  observatory,  where  he 
distinguished  himself  by  his  investigations 
of  the  periodicity  of  comets,  his  calculations 
of  the  motions  of  the  stars,  and  his  services 
in  determining  latitudes  and  longitudes. 

The  common  objection  among  woman- 
kind, says  the  "  Pall  Mall  Budget,"'to  letting 
their  ages  be  known  is  not  sliared  by  the 
ladies  of  Japan,  who  actually  display  the 
facts  as  to  their  age  in  the  arrangement  of 
their  hair.  Girls  from  nine  to  fifteen  wear 
their  hair  interlaced  with  red  crape,  describ- 
ing a  half-circle  round  the  head,  the  fore- 
head being  left  free  with  a  curl  at  each  side. 
From  fifteen  to  thirty  the  hair  is  dressed 
very  high  on  the  forehead,  and  put  up  at 
the'back  in  the  shape  of  a  fan  or  butterfly, 
with  interlacings  of  silver  cord  and  a  deco- 
ration of  colored  balls.  Beyond  thirty,  a 
woman  twists  her  hair  round  a  shell-pin, 
placed  horizontally  at  the  back  of  the  head. 
Widows  also  designate  themselves,  and 
whether  or  not  they  desire  to  marry  again. 

The  subject  fixed  for  the  Howard  medal, 
to  be  awarded  next  year  by  the  English 
Statistical  Society,  is  "The  Preservation  of 
Health,  ns  it  is  affected  by  Personal  Habits, 
such  as  Cleanliness,  Temperance,  etc." 


AUGUSTUS  WILLIAM  HOFMANN. 


THE 


POPULAR    SCIENCE 
MONTHLY. 


AFEIL,  1884. 


THE  COMING  SLAYEEY. 

By  HEEBEET  SPENCEE. 

THE  kinship  of  pity  to  love  is  shown  among  other  ways  in  this,  that 
it  idealizes  its  object.  Sympathy  with  one  in  suffering  suppresses, 
for  the  time  being,  remembrance  of  his  transgressions.  The  feeling 
which  vents  itself  in  "poor  fellow! "  on  seeing  one  in  agony,  excludes 
the  thought  of  "bad  fellow,"  which  might  at  another  time  arise. 
Naturally,  then,  if  the  wretched  are  unknown  or  but  vaguely  known,, 
all  the  demerits  they  may  have  are  ignored  ;  and  thus  it  happens  that 
when,  as  just  now,  the  miseries  of  the  poor  are  depicted,  they  are 
thought  of  as  the  miseries  of  the  deserving  poor,  instead  of  being 
thought  of,  as  in  large  measure  they  should  be,  as  the  miseries  of  the 
undeserving  poor.  Those  whose  hardships  are  set  forth  in  pamphlets 
and  proclaimed  in  sermons  and  speeches  which  echo  throughout  so- 
ciety are  assumed  to  be  all  worthy  souls,  grievously  wronged,  and 
none  of  them  are  thought  of  as  bearing  the  penalties  of  their  own 
misdeeds. 

On  hailing  a  cab  in  a  London  street,  it  is  surprising  how  generally 
the  door  is  officiously  opened  by  one  who  expects  to  get  something  for 
his  trouble.  The  surprise  lessens  after  counting  the  many  loungers 
about  tavern-doors,  or  after  observing  the  quickness  with  which  a 
street-performance,  or  procession,  draws  from  neighboring  slums  and 
stable-yards  a  group  of  idlers.  Seeing  how  numerous  they  are  in  every 
small  area,  it  becomes  manifest  that  tens  of  thousands  of  such  swarm 
through  London.  "  They  have  no  work,"  you  say.  Say  rather  that 
VOL.  XXIV. — 46 


722  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

they  either  refuse  work  or  quickly  turn  themselves  out  of  it.  They 
are  simply  good-for-nothings,  who  in  one  way  or  other  live  on  the 
good-for-somethings — vagrants  and  sots,  criminals  and  those  on  the 
way  to  crime,  youths  who  are  burdens  on  hard-worked  parents,  men 
who  appropriate  the  wages  of  their  wives,  fellows  who  share  the  gains 
of  prostitutes  ;  and  then,  less  visible  and  less  numerous,  there  is  a  cor- 
responding class  of  women. 

Is  it  natural  that  happiness  should  be  the  lot  of  such  ?  or  is  it  natu- 
ral that  they  should  bring  unhappiness  on  themselves  and  those  con- 
nected with  them  ?  Is  it  not  manifest  that  there  must  exist  in  our 
midst  an  immense  amount  of  misery  which  is  a  normal  result  of  mis- 
conduct and  ought  not  to  be  dissociated  from  it?  There  is  a  notion, 
always  more  or  less  prevalent  and  just  now  vociferously  expressed, 
that  all  social  suffering  is  removable,  and  that  it  is  the  duty  of  some- 
body or  other  to  remove  it.  Both  these  beliefs  are  false.  To  separate 
pain  from  ill-doing  is  to  fight  against  the  constitution  of  things,  and 
will  be  followed  by  far  more  pain.  Saving  men  from  the  natural 
penalties  of  reckless  living  eventually  necessitates  the  infliction  of 
artificial  penalties  in  solitary  cells,  on  tread- wheels,  and  by  the  lash.  I 
suppose  a  dictum  on  which  the  current  creed  and  the  creed  of  science 
are  at  one  may  be  considered  to  have  as  high  an  authority  as  can  be 
found.  Well,  the  command  "  if  any  would  not  work  neither  should 
he  eat "  is  simply  a  Christian  enunciation  of  that  universal  law  of  Na- 
ture under  which  life  has  reached  its  present  height — the  law  that  a 
creature  not  energetic  enough  to  maintain  itself  must  die  ;  the  sole 
difference  being  that  the  law  which  in  the  one  case  is  to  be  artificially 
enforced  is,  in  the  other  case,  a  natural  necessity.  And  yet  this  par- 
ticular tenet  of  their  religion  which  science  so  manifestly  justifies  is 
the  one  which  Christians  seem  least  inclined  to  accept.  The  current 
assumption  is  that  there  should  be  no  suffering,  and  that  society  is  to 
blame  for  that  which  exists. 

"  But  surely  we  are  not  without  responsibilities,  even  when  the  suf- 
fering is  that  of  the  unworthy  ?  " 

If  the  meaning  of  the  word  "we"  be  so  expanded  as  to  include 
with  ourselves  our  ancestors,  and  especially  our  ancestral  legislators,  I 
agree.  I  admit  that  those  who  made,  and  modified,  and  administered, 
the  old  poor-law,  were  responsible  for  producing  an  appalling  amount 
of  demoralization,  which  it  will  take  more  than  one  generation  to  re- 
move. I  admit,  too,  the  partial  responsibility  of  recent  and  present 
law-makers  for  regulations  which  have  brought  into  being  a  permanent 
body  of  tramps,  who  ramble  from  union  to  union  ;  and  also  their  re- 
sponsibility for  maintaining  a  constant  supply  of  felons  by  sending 
back  convicts  into  society  under  such  conditions  that  they  are  almost 
compelled  again  to  commit  crimes.  Moreover,  I  admit  that  the  phil- 
anthropic are  not  without  their  share  of  responsibility ;  since,  while 
anxiously  aiding  the  offspring  of  the  unworthy,  they  do  nothing  for 


THE   COMING   SLAVERY.  723 

the  offspring  of  the  worthy  save  burdening  their  parents  by  increased 
local  rates.  Nay,  I  even  admit  that  these  swarms  of  good-for-noth- 
ings, fostered  and  multiplied  by  public  and  private  agencies,  have,  by 
sundry  mischievous  meddlings,  been  made  to  suffer  more  than  they 
would  otherwise  have  suffered.  Are  these  the  responsibilities  meant  ? 
I  suspect  not. 

But  now,  leaving  the  question  of  responsibilities,  however  con- 
ceived, and  considering  only  the  evil  itself,  what  shall  we  say  of  its 
treatment  ?    Let  me  begin  with  a  fact. 

A  late  uncle  of  mine,  the  Rev.  Thomas  Spencer,  for  some  twenty 
years  incumbent  of  Hinton  Charterhouse,  near  Bath,  no  sooner  entered 
on  his  parish  duties  than  he  proved  himself  anxious  for  the  welfare  of 
the  poor,  by  establishing  a  school,  a  library,  a  clothing  club,  and  land- 
allotments,  besides  building  some  model  cottages.  Moreover,  up  to 
1833  he  was  a  pauper's  friend — always  for  the  pauper  against  the  over- 
seer. There  presently  came,  however,  the  debates  on  the  poor-law, 
which  impressed  him  with  the  evils  of  the  system  then  in  force. 
Though  an  ardent  philanthropist,  he  was  not  a  timid  sentimentalist. 
The  result  was  that,  immediately  the  new  poor-law  was  passed,  he  pro- 
ceeded to  carry  out  its  provisions  in  his  parish.  Almost  universal  op- 
position was  encountered  by  him  ;  not  the  poor  only  being  his  oppo- 
nents, but  even  the  farmers  on  whom  came  the  burden  of  heavy  poor- 
rates.  For,  strange  to  say,  their  interests  had  become  apparently 
identified  with  maintenance  of  this  system  which  taxed  them  so  large- 
ly. The  explanation  is,  that  there  had  grown  up  the  practice  of  pay- 
ing out  of  the  rates  a  part  of  the  wages  of  each  farm-servant — "  make- 
wages,"  as  the  sum  was  called.  And  though  the  farmers  contributed 
most  of  the  fund  out  of  which  "  make- wages  "  were  paid,  yet,  since  all 
other  rate-payers  contributed,  the  farmers  seemed  to  gain  by  the  ar- 
rangement. My  uncle,  however,  not  easily  deterred,  faced  all  this 
opposition  and  enforced  the  law.  The  result  was  that  in  tw^o  years 
the  rates  were  reduced  from  £700  a  year  to  £200  a  year,  while  the 
condition  of  the  parish  was  greatly  improved.  "  Those  who  had  hith- 
erto loitered  at  the  corners  of  the  streets,  or  at  the  doors  of  the  beer- 
shops,  had  something  else  to  do,  and  one  after  another  they  obtained 
employment "  ;  so  that,  out  of  a  population  of  eight  hundred,  only  fif- 
teen had  to  be  sent  as  incapable  paupers  to  the  Bath  Union  Work- 
house, in  place  of  the  one  hundred  who  received  out-door  relief  a  short 
time  before.  If  it  be  said  that  the  £20  telescope  which,  a  few  years 
after,  his  parishioners  presented  to  my  uncle,  marked  only  the  grati- 
tude of  the  rate-payers,  then  my  reply  is  the  fact  that,  when,  some 
years  later  still,  having  killed  himself  by  overwork,  in  pursuit  of  popu- 
lar welfare,  he  was  taken  to  Hinton  to  be  buried,  the  procession  which 
followed  him  to  the  grave  included  not  the  well-to-do  only  but  the 
poor. 


724  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Several  motives  have  prompted  this  brief  narrative.  One  is  the 
wish  to  prove  that  sympathy  with  the  people  and  self-sacrificing  ef- 
forts on  their  behalf  do  not  necessarily  imply  approval  of  gratuitous 
aids.  Another  is  the  desire  to  show  that  benefit  may  result,  not  from 
multiplication  of  artificial  appliances  to  mitigate  distress,  but,  con- 
trariwise, from  diminution  of  them.  And  a  further  purpose  I  have 
in  view  is  that  of  preparing  the  way  for  an  analogy. 

Under  another  form  and  in  a  different  sphere,  we  are  now  yearly 
extending  a  system  which  is  identical  in  nature  with  the  system  of 
"make-wages"  under  the  old  poor-law.  Little  as  politicians  recog- 
nize the  fact,  it  is  nevertheless  demonstrable  that  these  various  public 
appliances  for  working-class  comfort,  which  they  are  supplying  at  the 
cost  of  rate-payers,  are  intrinsically  of  the  same  nature  as  those  which, 
in  past  times,  treated  the  farmer's  man  as  half -laborer  and  half-pauper. 
In  either  case  the  worker  receives,  in  return  for  what  he  does,  money 
wherewith  to  buy  certain  of  the  things  he  wants ;  while,  to  procure 
the  rest  of  them  for  him,  money  is  furnished  out  of  a  common  fund 
raised  by  taxes.  What  matters  it  whether  the  things  supplied  by 
rate-payers  for  nothing,  instead  of  by  the  employer  in  payment,  are 
of  this  kind  or  that  kind  ?  the  principle  is  the  same.  For  sums  re- 
ceived let  us  substitute  the  commodities  and  benefits  purchased  ;  and 
then  see  how  the  matter  stands.  In  old  poor-law  times,  the  farmer 
gave  for  work  done  the  equivalent,  say  of  house-rent,  bread,  clothes, 
and  fire  ;  while  the  rate-payers  practically  supplied  the  man  and  his 
family  with  their  shoes,  tea,  sugar,  candles,  a  little  bacon,  etc.  The 
division  is,  of  course,  arbitrary  ;  but  unquestionably  the  farmer  and 
the  rate-payers  furnished  these  things  between  them.  At  the  present 
time  the  artisan  receives  from  his  employer  in  wages  the  equivalent 
of  the  consumable  commodities  he  wants  ;  while  from  the  public 
comes  satisfaction  for  others  of  his  needs  and  desires.  At  the  cost  of 
rate-payers  he  has  in  some  cases,  and  will  presently  have  in  more,  a 
house  at  less  than  its  commercial  value  ;  for  of  course  when,  as  in 
Liverpool,  a  municipality  spends  nearly  £200,000  in  pulling  down  and 
reconstructing  low-class  dwellings,  and  is  about  to  spend  as  much 
again,  the  implication  is  that  in  some  way  the  rate-payers  supply  the 
poor  with  more  accommodation  than  the  rents  they  pay  would  other- 
wise have  brought.  The  artisan  further  receives  from  them,  in  school- 
ing for  his  children,  much  more  than  he  pays  for ;  and  there  is  every 
probability  that  he  will  presently  receive  it  from  them  gratis.  The 
rate -payers  also  satisfy  what  desire  he  may  have  for  books  and 
newspapers,  and  comfortable  places  to  read  them  in.  In  some  cases 
too,  as  in  Manchester,  gymnasia  for  his  children  of  both  sexes,  as 
well  as  recreation -grounds,  are  provided.  That  is  to  say,  he  ob- 
tains, from  a  fund  raised  by  local  taxes,  certain  benefits  beyond  those 
which  the  sum  received  for  his  labor  enables  him  to  purchase.  The 
sole  difference,  then,  between   this   system   and   the   old   system   of 


THE  COMING   SLAVERY.  725 

"  make-wages  "  is  between  the  kinds  of  satisfactions  obtained  ;  and 
tbis  difference  does  not  in  the  least  affect  the  nature  of  the  arrange- 
ment. 

Moreover,  the  two  are  pervaded  by  substantially  the  same  illusion. 
In  the  one  case,  as  in  the  other,  what  looks  like  a  gratis  benefit  is  not 
a  gratis  benefit.  The  amount  which,  under  the  old  poor-law,  the  half- 
pauperized  laborer  received  from  the  parish  to  eke  out  his  weekly  in- 
come was  not  really,  as  it  appeared,  a  bonus,  for  it  was  accompanied 
by  a  substantially  equivalent  decrease  of  his  wages,  as  was  quickly 
proved  when  the  system  was  abolished  and  the  wages  rose.  Just  so 
is  it  with  these  seeming  boons  received  by  working-people  in  towns. 
I  do  not  refer  only  to  the  fact  that  they  unawares  pay  in  part  through 
the  raised  rents  of  their  dwellings  (when  they  are  not  actual  rate- 
payers) ;  but  I  refer  to  the  fact  that  the  wages  received  by  them  are, 
like  the  wages  of  the  farm-laborer,  diminished  by  these  public  burdens 
falling  on  employers.  Read  the  accounts  coming  of  late  from  Lan- 
cashire concerning  the  cotton-strike,  containing  proofs,  given  by  arti- 
sans themselves,  that  the  margin  of  profit  is  so  narrow  that  the  less 
skillful  manufacturers,  as  well  as  those  with  deficient  capital,  fail,  and 
that  the  companies  of  co-operators  who  compete  with  them  can  rarely 
hold  their  own  ;  and  then  consider  what  is  the  implication  respecting 
wages.  Among  the  costs  of  production  have  to  be  reckoned  taxes, 
general  and  local.  If,  as  in  our  large  towns,  the  local  rates  now  amount 
to  one  third  of  the  rental  or  more — if  the  employer  has  to  pay  this, 
not  on  his  private  dwelling  only,  but  on  his  business-premises,  facto- 
ries, warehouses,  or  the  like,  it  results  that  the  interest  on  his  capital 
must  be  diminished  by  that  amount,  or  the  amount  must  be  taken 
from  the  wages-fund,  or  partly  one  and  partly  the  other.  And  if 
competition  among  capitalists  in  the  same  business  and  in  other  busi- 
nesses has  the  effect  of  so  keeping  down  interests  that,  while  some 
gain,  others  lose,  and  not  a  few  are  ruined — if  capital,  not  getting 
adequate  interest,  flows  elsewhere  and  leaves  labor  unemployed — then 
it  is  manifest  that  the  choice  for  the  artisan  under  such  conditions  lies 
between  diminished  amount  of  work  or  diminished  rate  of  payment 
for  it.  Moreover,  for  kindred  reasons  these  local  burdens  raise  the 
costs  of  the  things  he  consumes.  The  charges  made  by  distributors, 
too,  are,  on  the  average,  determined  by  the  current  rates  of  interest 
on  capital  used  in  distributing  businesses  ;  and  the  extra  costs  of  carry- 
ing on  such  businesses  have  to  be  paid  for  by  extra  prices.  So  that 
as  in  the  past  the  rural  worker  lost  in  one  way  what  he  gained  in  an- 
other, so  in  the  present  does  the  urban  worker  ;  there  being,  too,  in 
both  cases,  the  loss  entailed  on  him  by  the  cost  of  administration  and 
the  waste  accompanying  it. 

"  But  what  has  all  this  to  do  with  *  the  coming  slavery '  ?  "  will  per- 
haps be  asked.  Nothing  directly,  but  a  good  deal  indirectly,  as  we 
shall  see  after  yet  another  preliminary  section. 


726  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

It  is  said  that,  when  railways  were  first  opened  in  Spain,  peasants 
standing  on  the  tracks  were  not  unfrequently  run  over,  and  that  the 
blame  fell  on  the  engine-drivers  for  not  stopping,  rural  experiences 
having  yielded  no  conception  of  the  momentum  of  a  large  mass  mov- 
ing at  a  high  velocity. 

The  incident  is  recalled  to  me  on  contemplating  the  ideas  of  the 
so-called  "  practical "  politician,  into  whose  mind  there  enters  no 
thought  of  such  a  thing  as  political  momentum,  still  less  of  a  political 
momentum  which,  instead  of  diminishing  or  remaining  constant,  in- 
creases. The  theory  on  which  he  daily  proceeds  is  that  the  change 
caused  by  his  measure  will  stop  where  he  intends  it  to  stop.  He  con- 
templates intently  the  things  his  act  will  achieve,  but  thinks  little  of 
the  remoter  issues  of  the  movement  his  act  sets  up,  and  still  less  its 
collateral  issues.  When,  in  war-time,  "  food  for  powder  "  was  to  be 
provided  by  encouraging  population — when  Mr.  Pitt  said,  "  Let  us 
make  relief  in  cases  where  there  are  a  number  of  children  a  matter  of 
right  and  honor,  instead  of  a  ground  for  opprobrium  and  contempt "  * — 
it  was  not  expected  that  the  poor-rates  would  be  quadrupled  in  fifty 
years,  that  women  with  many  bastards  would  be  preferred  as  wives  to 
modest  women  because  of  their  incomes  from  the  parish,  and  that  hosts 
of  rate-payers  would  be  pulled  down  into  the  ranks  of  pauperism. 
Legislators  who  in  1833  voted  £20,000  a  year  to  aid  in  building  school- 
houses  never  supposed  that  the  step  they  then  took  would  lead  to 
forced  contributions,  local  and  general,  now  amounting  to  £6,000,000  ; 
they  did  not  intend  to  establish  the  principle  that  A  should  be  made 
responsible  for  educating  B's  offspring  ;  they  did  not  dream  of  a  com- 
pulsion which  should  deprive  poor  widows  of  the  help  of  their  elder 
children  ;  and  still  less  did  they  dream  that  their  successors,  by  requir- 
ing impoverished  parents  to  apply  to  boards  of  guardians  to  pay  the 
fees  which  school-boards  would  not  remit,  would  initiate  a  habit  of 
applying  to  boards  of  guardians  and  so  cause  pauperization. f  Neither 
did  those  who  in  1834  passed  an  act  regulating  the  labor  of  women 
and  children  in  certain  factories  imagine  that  the  system  they  were 
beginning  would  end  in  the  restriction  and  inspection  of  labor  in  all 
kinds  of  producing  establishments  where  more  than  fifty  people  are 
employed  ;  nor  did  they  conceive  that  the  inspection  provided  would 
grow  to  the  extent  of  requiring  that,  before  a  "  young  person  "  is  em- 
ployed in  a  factory,  authority  must  be  given  by  a  certifying  surgeon, 
who,  by  personal  examination  (to  which  no  limit  is  placed),  has  satis- 
fied himself  that  there  is  no  incapacitating  disease  or  bodily  infirmity, 
his  verdict  determining  whether  the  "  young  person  "  shall  earn  wages 
or  not. I  Even  less,  as  I  say,  does  the  politician  who  plumes  himself 
on  the  practicalness  of  his  aims  conceive  the  indirect  results  that  will 

*  Hansard's  "  Parliamentary  History,"  xxxii,  p.  710. 

f  "Fortnightly  Review,"  January,  1884,  p.  17. 

\  "  Factories  and  Workshops  Act,"  41  and  42  Victoria,  cap.  16. 


THE   COMING   SLAVERY,  727 

follow  the  direct  results  of  his  measures.  Thus,  to  take  a  case  con- 
nected with  one  named  above,  it  was  not  intended  through  the  system 
of  "  payment  by  results  "  to  do  anything  more  than  give  teachers  an 
efficient  stimulus  ;  it  was  not  supposed  that  in  numerous  cases  their 
health  would  give  way  under  the  stimulus  ;  it  was  not  expected  that 
they  would  be  led  to  adopt  a  cramming  system  and  to  put  undue  press- 
ure on  dull  and  weak  children,  often  to  their  great  injury  ;  it  was  not 
foreseen  that  in  many  cases  a  bodily  enfeeblement  would  be  caused 
which  no  amount  of  grammar  and  geography  can  compensate  for.  Nor 
did  it  occur  to  the  practical  politicians  who  provided  a  compulsory  load- 
line  for  merchant-vessels,  that  the  pressure  of  ship-owners'  interests 
would  habitually  cause  the  putting  of  the  load-line  at  the  very  highest 
limit,  and  that  from  precedent  to  precedent,  tending  ever  in  the  same 
direction,  the  load-line  would  gradually  rise — as  from  good  authority 
I  learn  that  it  has  already  done.  Legislators  who,  some  forty  years 
^o^,  by  act  of  Parliament  compelled  railway  companies  to  supply 
cheap  locomotion,  would  have  ridiculed  the  belief,  had  it  been  ex- 
pressed, that  eventually  their  act  would  punish  the  companies  which 
improved  the  supply  ;  and  yet  this  was  the  result  to  companies  which 
began  to  carry  third-class  passengers  by  fast  trains,  since  a  penalty  to 
the  amount  of  the  passenger-duty  was  inflicted  on  them  for  every  third- 
class  passenger  so  carried.  To  which  instance  concerning  railways, 
add  a  far  more  striking  one  disclosed  by  comparing  the  railway  poli- 
cies of  England  and  France.  The  law-makers  who  provided  for  the 
ultimate  lapsing  of  French  railways  to  the  state  never  conceived  the 
possibility  that  inferior  traveling  facilities  would  result — did  not  fore- 
see that  reluctance  to  depreciate  the  value  of  property  eventually  com- 
ing to  the  state  would  negative  the  authorization  of  competing  lines, 
and  that  in  the  absence  of  competing  lines  locomotion  would  be  rela- 
tively costly,  slow,  and  infrequent  ;  for,  as  Sir  Thomas  Farrar  has 
shown,  the  traveler  in  England  has  great  advantages  over  the  French 
traveler  in  the  economy,  swiftness,  and  frequency  with  which  his  jour- 
neys can  be  made. 

But  the  "  practical "  politician,  who,  in  spite  of  such  experiences 
repeated  generation  after  generation,  goes  on  thinking  only  of  proxi- 
mate results,  naturally  never  thinks  of  results  still  more  remote,  still 
more  general,  and  still  more  important  than  those  just  exemplified. 
To  repeat  the  metaphor  used  above — he  never  asks  whether  the  politi- 
cal momentum  set  up  by  his  measure,  in  some  cases  decreasing  but  in 
other  cases  greatly  increasing,  will  or  will  not  have  the  same  general 
direction  with  other  such  momenta  ;  and  whether  it  may  not  join  them 
in  presently  producing  an  aggregate  energy  working  changes  never 
thought  of.  Dwelling  only  on  the  effects  of  his  particular  stream  of 
legislation,  and  not  observing  how  other  such  streams  already  existing, 
and  still  other  streams  which  will  follow  his  initiative,  pursue  the  same 
average  course,  it  never  occurs  to  him  that  they  may  presently  unite 


728  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

into  a  voluminous  flood  utterly  changing  the  face  of  things.  Or  to 
leave  figures  for  a  more  literal  statement,  he  is  unconscious  of  the  truth 
that  he  is  helping  to  form  a  certain  type  of  social  organization,  and 
that  kindred  measures,  effecting  kindred  changes  of  organization,  tend 
with  ever-increasing  force  to  make  that  type  general,  until,  passing  a 
certain  point,  the  proclivity  toward  it  becomes  irresistible.  Just  as 
each  society  aims  when  possible  to  produce  in  other  societies  a  struct- 
ure akin  to  its  own — just  as,  among  the  Greeks,  the  Spartans  and  the 
Athenians  severally  struggled  to  spread  their  respective  political  insti- 
tutions, or  as,  at  the  time  of  the  French  Revolution,  the  European 
monarchies  aimed  to  re-establish  monarchy  in  France,  so,  within  every 
society,  each  species  of  structure  tends  to  propagate  itself.  Just  as 
the  system  of  voluntary  co-operation  by  companies,  associations,  unions, 
to  achieve  business  ends  and  other  ends,  spreads  throughout  a  com- 
munity, so  does  the  antagonistic  system  of  compulsory  co-operation 
under  state-agencies  spread,  and  the  larger  becomes  its  extension  the 
more  power  of  spreading  it  gets.  The  question  of  questions  for 
the  politician  should  ever  be,  "  What  type  of  social  structure  am 
I  tending  to  produce  ?  "  But  this  is  a  question  he  scarcely  ever  en- 
tertains. 

Here  we  will  entertain  it  for  him.  Let  us  now  observe  the  general 
course  of  recent  changes,  with  the  accompanying  current  of  ideas,  and 
see  whither  they  are  carrying  us. 

The  blank  form  of  a  question  daily  asked  is,  "  We  have  already 
done  this  ;  why  should  we  not  do  that?"  And  the  regard  for  prece- 
dent suggested  by  it  is  ever  pushing  on  regulative  legislation.  Hav- 
ing had  brought  within  their  sphere  of  operation  more  and  more 
numerous  businesses,  the  acts  restricting  hours  of  employment  and 
dictating  the  treatment  of  workers  are  now  to  be  made  applicable  to 
shops.  From  inspecting  lodging-houses  to  limit  the  numbers  of  occu- 
pants and  enforce  sanitary  conditions,  we  have  passed  to  inspecting  all 
houses  below  a  certain  rent  in  which  there  are  members  of  more  than 
one  family,  and  are  now  passing  to  a  kindred  inspection  of  all  small 
houses.*  The  buying  and  working  of  telegraphs  by  the  state  is  made 
a  reason  for  urging  that  the  state  should  buy  and  work  the  railways. 
Supplying  children  with  food  for  their -minds  by  public  agency  is 
being  followed  in  some  cases  by  supplying  food  for  their  bodies  ;  and, 
after  the  practice  has  been  made  gradually  more  general,  we  may 
anticipate  that  the  supply  now  proposed  to  be  made  gratis  in  the  one 
case  will  eventually  be  proposed  to  be  made  gratis  in  the  other,  the 
argument  that  good  bodies  as  well  as  good  minds  are  needful  to  make 
good  citizens  being  logically  urged  as  a  reason  for  the  extension.  And 
then,  avowedly  proceeding  on  the  precedents  furnished  by  the  church, 
the  school,  and  the  reading-room,  all  publicly  provided,  it  is  contended 
*  See  letter  of  Local  Government  Board,  "Times,"  January  2,  1884. 


THE   COMING  SLAVERY.  729 

that  "  pleasure,  in  the  sense  it  is  now  generally  admitted,  needs  legis- 
lating for  and  organizing  at  least  as  much  as  work."  '^ 

Not  precedent  only  prompts  this  spread,  but  also  the  necessity 
which  arises  for  supplementing  ineffective  measures,  and  for  dealing 
with  the  artificial  evils  continually  caused.  Failure  does  not  destroy 
faith  in  the  agencies  employed,  but  merely  suggests  more  stringent 
use  of  such  agencies  or  wider  ramifications  of  them.  Laws  to  check 
intemperance,  beginning  in  early  times  and  coming  down  to  our  own 
times,  when  further  restraints  on  the  sale  of  intoxicating  liquors  oc- 
cupy nights  every  session,  not  having  done  what  was  expected,  there 
come  demands  for  more  thorough-going  laws,  locally  preventing  the 
sale  altogether  ;  and  here,  as  in  America,  these  will  doubtless  be  fol- 
lowed by  demands  that  prevention  shall  be  made  universal.  All  the 
many  appliances  for  *'  stamping  out "  epidemic  diseases  not  having 
succeeded  in  preventing  outbreaks  of  small-pox,  fevers,  and  the  like,  a 
further  remedy  is  applied  for  in  the  shape  of  police-power  to  search 
houses  for  diseased  persons,  and  authority  for  medical  oflScers  to  ex- 
amine any  one  they  think  fit,  to  see  whether  he  or  she  is  suffering 
from  an  infectious  or  contagious  malady.  Habits  of  improvidence 
having  for  generations  been  cultivated  by  the  poor-law,  and  the  im- 
provident enabled  to  multiply,  the  evils  produced  by  compulsory  char- 
ity are  now  proposed  to  be  met  by  compulsory  insurance. 

The  extension  of  this  policy,  causing  extension  of  corresponding 
ideas,  fosters  everywhere  the  tacit  assumption  that  Government  should 
step  in  whenever  anything  is  not  going  right.  "  Surely  you  would 
not  have  this  misery  continue  !  "  exclaims  some  one,  if  you  hint  a  de- 
murrer to  much  that  is  now  being  said  and  done.  Observe  what  is 
implied  by  this  exclamation.  It  takes  for  granted,  first,  that  all  suffer- 
ing ought  to  be  prevented,  which  is  not  true  :  much  suffering  is  cura- 
tive, and  prevention  of  it  is  prevention  of  a  remedy.  In  the  second 
place,  it  takes  for  granted  that  every  evil  can  be  removed  :  the  truth 
being  that,  with  the  existing  defects  of  human  nature,  many  evils  can 
only  be  thrust  out  of  one  place  or  form  into  another  place  or  form — 
often  being  increased  by  the  change.  The  exclamation  also  implies 
the  unhesitating  belief,  here  especially  concerning  us,  that  evils  of  all 
kinds  should  be  dealt  with  by  the  state.  There  does  not  occur  the 
inquiry  whether  there  are  at  work  other  agencies  capable  of  dealing 
with  evils,  and  whether  the  evils  in  question  may  not  be  among  those 
which  are  best  dealt  with  by  these  other  agencies.  And  obviously,  the 
more  numerous  governmental  interventions  become,  the  more  con- 
firmed does  this  habit  of  thought  grow,  and  the  more  loud  and  per- 
petual the  demands  for  intervention. 

Every  extension  of  the  regulative  policy  involves  an  addition  to 
the  regulative  agents — a  further  growth  of  officialism  and  an  increas- 

*  "Fortnightly  Review,"  January,  1884,  p.  21. 


730  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

ing  power  of  the  organization  formed  of  officials.  Take  a  pair  of  scales 
with  many  shot  in  the  one  and  a  few  in  the  other.  Lift  shot  after 
shot  out  of  the  loaded  scale  and  put  it  into  the  unloaded  scale.  Pres- 
ently you  will  produce  a  balance,  and,  if  you  go  on,  the  position  of  the 
scales  will  be  reversed.  Suppose  the  beam  to  be  unequally  divided, 
and  let  the  lightly  loaded  scale  be  at  the  end  of  a  very  long  arm  ;  then 
the  transfer  of  each  shot,  producing  a  much  greater  effect,  will  far 
sooner  bring  about  a  change  of  position.  I  use  the  figure  to  illustrate 
what  results  from  transferring  one  individual  after  another  from  the 
regulated  mass  of  the  community  to  the  regulating  structures.  The 
transfer  weakens  the  one  and  strengthens  the  other  in  a  far  greater 
degree  than  is  implied  by  the  relative  change  of  numbers.  A  com- 
paratively small  body  of  officials,  coherent,  having  common  interests, 
and  acting  under  central  authority,  has  an  immense  advantage  over  an 
incoherent  public  which  has  no  settled  policy,  and  can  be  brought  to 
act  unitedly  only  under  strong  provocation.  Hence  an  organization  of 
officials,  once  passing  a  certain  stage  of  growth,  becomes  less  and  less 
resistible  ;  as  we  see  in  the  bureaucracies  of  the  Continent. 

Not  only  does  the  power  of  resistance  of  the  regulated  part  de- 
crease in  a  geometrical  ratio  as  the  regulating  part  increases,  but  the 
private  interests  of  many  in  the  regulated  part  itself  make  the  change 
of  ratio  still  more  rapid.  In  every  circle  conversations  show  that  now, 
when  the  passing  of  competitive  examinations  renders  them  eligible 
for  the  public  service,  youths  are  being  educated  in  such  ways  that 
they  may  pass  them  and  get  employment  under  Government.  One 
consequence  is,  that  men  who  might  otherwise  reprobate  some  further 
growth  of  officialism  are  led  to  look  on  it  with  tolerance,  if  not  favor- 
ably, as  offering  possible  careers  for  those  dependent  on  them  and  those 
related  to  them.  Any  one  who  remembers  the  numbers  of  upper-class 
and  middle-class  families  anxious  to  place  their  children  will  see  that 
no  small  encouragement  to  the  spread  of  legislative  control  is  now 
coming  from  those  who,  but  for  the  personal  interests  thus  arising, 
would  be  hostile  to  it. 

This  pressing  desire  for  careers  is  enforced  by  the  preference  for 
careers  which  are  thought  respectable.  "  Even  if  his  salary  is  small, 
his  occupation  will  be  that  of  a  gentleman,"  thinks  the  father,  who 
wants  to  get  a  Government-clerkship  for  his  son.  And  this  relative 
dignity  of  state-servants,  as  compared  with  those  occupied  in  business, 
increases  as  the  administrative  organization  becomes  a  larger  and  more 
powerful  element  in  society,  and  tends  more  and  more  to  fix  the  stand- 
ard of  honor.  The  prevalent  ambition  with  a  young  Frenchman  is  to 
get  some  small  official  post  in  his  locality,  to  rise  thence  to  a  place  in 
the  local  center  of  government,  and  finally  to  reach  some  head  office 
in  Paris.  And  in  Russia,  where  that  universality  of  state-regulation 
which  characterizes  the  militant  type  of  society  has  been  carried  far- 
thest, we  see  this  ambition  pushed  to  its  extreme.     Says  Mr.  Wallace, 


THE  COMING   SLAVERY.  731 

quoting  a  passage  from  a  play,  "  All  men,  even  shopkeepers  and  cob- 
blers, aim  at  becoming  officers,  and  the  man  who  has  passed  his  whole 
life  without  official  rank  seems  to  be  not  a  human  being."  * 

These  various  influences,  working  from  above  downward,  meet 
with  an  increasing  response  of  expectations  and  solicitations  proceed- 
ing from  below  upward.  The  hard-worked  and  overburdened  who 
form  the  great  majority,  and  still  more  the  incapables  perpetually 
helped,  who  are  ever  led  to  look  for  more  help,  are  ready  supporters 
of  schemes  which  promise  them  this  or  the  other  benefit  by  state 
agency,  and  ready  believers  of  those  who  tell  them  that  such  benefits 
can  be  given  and  ought  to  be  given.  They  listen  with  eager  faith  to 
all  builders  of  political  air-castles,  from  Oxford  graduates  down  to 
Irish  irreconcilables,  and  every  additional  tax-supported  appliance  for 
their  welfare  raises  hopes  of  further  ones.  Indeed,  the  more  numer- 
ous public  instrumentalities  become,  the  more  is  there  generated  in 
citizens  the  notion  that  everything  is  to  be  done  for  them,  and  nothing 
by  them.  Each  generation  is  made  less  familiar  with  the  attainment 
of  desired  ends  by  individual  actions  or  private  combinations,  and 
more  familiar  with  the  attainment  of  them  by  governmental  agencies  ; 
until,  eventually,  governmental  agencies  come  to  be  thought  of  as  the 
only  available  agencies.  This  result  was  well  shown  in  the  recent 
Trades-Unions  Congress  at  Paris.  The  English  delegates,  reporting 
to  their  constituents,  said  that,  between  themselves  and  their  foreign 
colleagues,  "  the  point  of  difference  was  the  extent  to  which  the  state 
should  be  asked  to  protect  labor  "  :  reference  being  thus  made  to  the 
fact,  conspicuous  in  the  reports  of  the  proceedings,  that  the  French 
delegates  always  invoked  governmental  power  as  the  only  means  of 
satisfying  their  wishes. 

The  diffusion  of  education  has  worked,  and  will  work  still  more,  in 
the  same  direction.  "We  must  educate  our  masters,"  is  the  well- 
known  saying  of  a  Liberal  who  opposed  the  last  extension  of  the  fran- 
chise. Yes,  if  the  education  were  worthy  to  be  so  called,  and  were 
relevant  to  the  political  enlightenment  needed,  much  might  be  hoped 
from  it.  But  knowing  rules  of  syntax,  being  able  to  add  up  correctly, 
having  geographical  information,  and  a  memory  stocked  with  the  dates 
of  kings'  accessions  and  generals'  victories,  no  more  imply  fitness  to 
form  political  conclusions  than  acquirement  of  skill  in  drawing  implies 
expertness  in  telegraphing,  or  than  ability  to  play  cricket  implies  pro- 
ficiency on  the  violin.  "  Surely,"  rejoins  some  one,  "  facility  in  read- 
ing opens  the  way  to  political  knowledge."  Doubtless  ;  but  will  the 
way  be  followed  ?  Table-talk  proves  that  nine  out  of  ten  people  read 
what  amuses  them  or  interests  them  rather  than  what  instructs  them, 
and  that  the  last  thing  they  read  is  something  which  tells  them  dis- 
agreeable truths  or  dispels  groundless  hopes.     That  popular  education 

*"  Russia,"!,  422. 


732  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

results  in  an  extensive  reading  of  publications  which  foster  pleasant 
illusions,  rather  than  of  those  which  insist  on  hard  realities,  is  beyond 
question.  Says  "A  Mechanic,"  writing  in  the  "Pall  Mall  Gazette" 
of  December  3,  1883  : 

Improved  education  instills  the  desire  for  culture — culture  instills  the  desire 
for  many  things  as  yet  quite  beyond  workingmen's  reach ;  ...  in  the  furious 
competition  to  which  the  present  age  is  given  up  they  are  utterly  impossible  to 
the  poorer  classes ;  hence  they  are  discontented  with  things  as  they  are,  and  the 
more  educated  the  more  discontented.  Hence,  too,  Mr.  Euskin  and  Mr.  Morris 
are  regarded  as  true  prophets  by  many  of  us. 

And,  that  the  connection  of  cause  and  effect  here  alleged  is  a  real  one, 
we  may  see  clearly  enough  in  the  present  state  of  Germany. 

Being  possessed  of  electoral  power,  as  are  now  the  mass  of  those 
who  are  thus  led  to  nurture  sanguine  anticipations  of  benefits  to  be 
obtained  by  social  reorganization,  it  results  that  whoever  seeks  their 
votes  must  at  least  refrain  from  exposing  their  mistaken  beliefs,  even 
if  he  does  not  yield  to  the  temptation  to  express  agreement  with  them. 
Every  candidate  for  Parliament  is  prompted  to  propose  or  support 
some  new  piece  of  ad  captanclum  legislation.  Nay,  even  the  chiefs  of 
parties,  these  anxious  to  retain  office  and  those  to  wrest  it  from  them, 
severally  aim  to  get  adherents  by  outbidding  one  another.  Each  en- 
deavors to  score  a  trick  by  trumping  his  antagonist's  good  card,  as  we 
have  lately  seen.  And  then,  as  divisions  in  Parliament  show  us,  the 
traditional  loyalty  to  leaders  overrides  questions  concerning  the  intrin- 
sic propriety  of  proposed  measures.  Representatives  are  unconscien- 
tious enough  to  vote  for  bills  which  they  regard  as  essentially  wrong 
in  principle,  because  party-needs  and  regard  for  the  next  election  de- 
mand it.  And  thus  a  vicious  policy  is  strengthened  even  by  those 
who  see  its  viciousness. 

Meanwhile  there  goes  on  out-of-doors  an  active  propaganda  to 
which  all  these  influences  are  ancillary.  Communistic  theories,  par- 
tially indorsed  by  one  act  of  Parliament  after  another,  and  tacitly  if 
not  avowedly  favored  by  numerous  public  men  seeking  supporters,  are 
being  advocated  more  and  more  vociferously  under  one  or  other  form 
by  popular  leaders,  and  urged  on  by  organized  societies.  There  is  the 
movement  for  land-nationalization  which,  aiming  at  a  system  of  land- 
tenure  equitable  in  the  abstract,  is,  as  all  the  world  knows,  pressed  by 
Mr.  George  and  his  friends  with  avowed  disregard  for  the  just  claims 
of  existing  owners,  and  as  the  basis  of  a  scheme  going  more  than  half- 
way to  state-communism.  And  then  there  is  the  thorough-going 
Democratic  Federation  of  Mr.  Hyndman  and  his  adherents.  We  are 
told  by  them  that  "  the  handful  of  marauders  who  now  hold  posses- 
sion [of  the  land]  have  and  can  have  no  right  save  brute  force  against 
the  tens  of  millions  whom  they  wrong."  They  exclaim  against  "  the 
shareholders  who  have  been  allowed  to  lay  hands  upon  (!)  our  great 


THE  COMING  SLAVERY.  733 

railway  communications."  They  condemn  "  above  all,  the  active  capi- 
talist class,  the  loan-mongers,  the  farmers,  the  mine-exploiters,  the 
contractors,  the  middlemen,  the  factory-lords — these,  the  modern  slave- 
drivers  "  who  exact  "  more  and  yet  more  surplus  value  out  of  the  wage- 
slaves  whom  they  employ."  And  they  think  it  "high  time"  that 
trade  should  be  "  removed  from  the  control  of  individual  greed  and 
individual  profit."  * 

It  remains  to  point  out  that  the  tendencies  thus  variously  dis- 
played are  being  strengthened  by  press-advocacy,  daily  more  pro- 
nounced. Journalists,  always  chary  of  saying  that  which  is  distaste- 
ful to  their  readers,  are  some  of  them  going  with  the  stream  and  add- 
ing to  its  force.  Legislative  meddlings  which  they  would  once  have 
condemned  they  now  pass  in  silence,  if  they  do  not  advocate  them  ; 
and  they  speak  of  laisser-faire  as  an  exploded  doctrine.  "  People  are 
no  longer  frightened  at  the  thought  of  socialism,"  is  the  statement 
which  meets  us  one  day.  On  another  day,  a  town  which  does  not 
adopt  the  Free  Libraries  Act  is  sneered  at  as  being  alarmed  by  a 
measure  so  moderately  communistic.  And  then,  along  with  editorial 
assertions  that  this  economic  evolution  is  coming  and  must  be  accept- 
ed, there  is  prominence  given  to  the  contributions  of  its  advocates. 
Meanwhile  those  who  regard  the  recent  course  of  legislation  as  disas- 
trous, and  see  that  its  future  course  is  likely  to  be  still  more  disastrous, 
are  being  reduced  to  silence  by  the  belief  that  it  is  useless  to  reason 
with  people  in  a  state  of  political  intoxication. 

See,  then,  the  many  concurrent  causes  which  threaten  continually 
to  accelerate  the  transformation  now  going  on.  There  is  that  spread 
of  regulation  caused  by  following  precedents,  which  become  the  more 
authoritative  the  further  the  policy  is  carried.  There  is  that  increas- 
ing need  for  administrative  compulsions  and  restraints  which  results 
from  the  unforeseen  evils  and  short-comings  of  preceding  compulsions 
and  restraints.  Moreover,  every  additional  state-interference  strength- 
ens the  tacit  assumption  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  state  to  deal  with 
all  evils  and  secure  all  benefits.  Increasing  power  of  a  growing  ad- 
ministrative organization  is  accompanied  by  decreasing  power  of  the 
rest  of  the  society  to  resist  its  further  growth  and  control.  The  mul- 
tiplication of  careers  opened  by  a  developing  bureaucracy  tempts 
members  of  the  classes  regulated  by  it  to  favor  its  extension,  as  add- 
ing to  the  chances  of  safe  and  respectable  places  for  their  relatives. 
The  people  at  large,  led  to  look  on  benefits  received  through  public 
agencies  as  gratis  benefits,  have  their  hopes  continually  excited  by  the 
prospects  of  more.  A  spreading  education,  furthering  the  diffusion  of 
pleasing  errors  rather  than  of  stern  truths,  renders  such  hopes  both 
stronger  and  more  general.  Worse  still,  such  hopes  are  ministered  to 
by  candidates  for  public  choice  to  augment  their  chances  of  success  ; 

*  "Socialism  made  Plain,"  Reeves,  185  Fleet  Street. 


734  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

and  leading  statesmen,  in  pursuit  of  party  ends,  bid  for  popular  favor 
by  countenancing  them.  Getting  repeated  justifications  from  new 
laws  harmonizing  with  their  doctrines,  political  enthusiasts  and  unwise 
philanthropists  push  their  agitations  with  growing  confidence  and  suc- 
cess. Journalism,  ever  responsive  to  popular  opinion,  daily  strengthens 
it  by  giving  it  voice  ;  while  counter-opinion,  more  and  more  discour- 
aged, finds  little  utterance. 

Thus  influences  of  various  kinds  conspire  to  increase  corporate  ac- 
tion and  decrease  individual  action.  And  the  change  is  being  on  all 
sides  aided  by  schemers,  each  of  whom  thinks  only  of  his  pet  project, 
and  not  at  all  of  the  general  reorganization  which  his,  joined  with 
others  such,  are  working  out.  It  is  said  that  the  French  Revolution 
devoured  its  own  children.  Here  an  analogous  catastrophe  seems  not 
unlikely.  The  numerous  socialistic  changes  made  by  act  of  Parlia- 
ment, joined  with  the  numerous  others  presently  to  be  made,  will  by- 
and-by  be  all  merged  in  state-socialism — swallowed  in  the  vast  wave 
which  they  have  little  by  little  raised. 

**  But  why  is  this  change  described  as  *  the  coming  slavery '  ?  "  is 
a  question  which  many  will  still  ask.  The  reply  is  simple.  All  so- 
cialism involves  slavery. 

AYhat  is  essential  to  the  idea  of  a  slave  ?  We  primarily  think  of 
him  as  one  who  is  owned  by  another.  To  be  more  than  nominal, 
however,  the  ownership  must  be  shown  by  control  of  the  slave's  ac- 
tions— a  control  which  is  habitually  for  the  benefit  of  the  controller. 
That  which  fundamentally  distinguishes  the  slave  is  that  he  labors 
under  coercion  to  satisfy  another's  desires.  The  relation  admits  of 
sundry  gradations.  Remembering  that  originally  the  slave  is  a  pris- 
oner whose  life  is  at  the  mercy  of  his  captor,  it  suffices  here  to  note 
that  there  is  a  harsh  form  of  slavery  in  which,  treated  as  an  animal,  he 
has  to  expend  his  entire  effort  for  his  owner's  advantage.  Under  a 
system  less  harsh,  though  occupied  chiefly  in  working  for  his  o^vner, 
he  is  allowed  a  short  time  in  which  to  work  for  himself,  and  some 
ground  on  which  to  grow  extra  food.  A  further  amelioration  gives 
him  power  to  sell  the  produce  of  his  plot  and  keep  the  proceeds. 
Then  we  come  to  the  still  mpre  moderated  form  which  commonly 
arises  where,  having  been  a  free  man  working  on  his  own  land,  con- 
quest turns  him  into  what  we  distinguish  as  a  serf  ;  and  he  has  to  give 
to  his  owner  each  year  a  fixed  amount  of  labor  or  produce,  or  both, 
retaining  the  rest  himself.  Finally,  in  some  cases,  as  in  Russia  until 
recently,  he  is  allowed  to  leave  his  o^\Tier's  estate  and  work  or  trade 
for  himself  elsewhere,  under  the  condition  that  he  shall  pay  an  annual 
sum.  What  is  it  which,  in  these  cases,  leads  us  to  qualify  our  concep- 
tion of  the  slavery  as  more  or  less  severe  ?  Evidently  the  greater  or 
smaller  extent  to  which  effort  is  compulsorily  expended  for  the  benefit 
of  another  instead  of  for  self-benefit.     If  all  the  slave's  labor  is  for  his 


THE  COMING  SLAVERY.  735 

owner  the  slavery  is  heavy,  and  if  but  little  it  is  light.  Take  now  a 
further  step.  Suppose  an  owner  dies,  and  his  estate  with  its  slaves 
comes  into  the  hands  of  trustees,  or  suppose  the  estate  and  everything 
on  it  to  be  bought  by  a  company  ;  is  the  condition  of  the  slave  any 
the  better  if  the  amount  of  his  compulsory  labor  remains  the  same  ? 
Suppose  that  for  a  company  we  substitute  the  community  ;  does  it 
make  any  difference  to  the  slave  if  the  time  he  has  to  work  for  others 
is  as  great,  and  the  time  left  for  himself  is  as  small,  as  before  ?  The 
essential  question  is.  How  much  is  he  compelled  to  labor  for  other 
benefit  than  his  own,  and  how  much  he  can  labor  for  his  own  benefit  ? 
The  degree  of  his  slavery  varies  according  to  the  ratio  between  that 
which  he  is  forced  to  yield  up  and  that  which  he  is  allowed  to  retain  ; 
and  it  matters  not  whether  his  master  is  a  single  person  or  a  society. 
If,  without  option,  he  has  to  labor  for  the  society,  and  receives  from 
the  general  stock  such  portion  as  the  society  awards  him,  he  becomes 
a  slave  to  the  society.  Socialistic  arrangements  necessitate  an  enslave- 
ment of  this  kind  ;  and  toward  such  an  enslavement  many  recent 
measures,  and  still  more  the  measures  advocated,  are  carrying  us. 
Let  us  observe,  first,  their  proximate  effects,  and  then  their  ultimate 
effects. 

The  policy  initiated  by  the  Industrial  Dwellings  Acts  admits  of 
development,  and  will  develop.  Where  municipal  bodies  turn  house- 
builders,  they  inevitably  lower  the  values  of  houses  otherwise  built, 
and  check  the  supply  of  more.  Every  dictation  respecting  modes  of 
building  and  conveniences  to  be  provided  diminishes  the  builder's 
profit,  and  prompts  him  to  use  his  capital  where  the  profit  is  not  thus 
diminished.  So,  too,  the  owner,  already  finding  that  small  houses  en- 
tail much  labor  and  many  losses — already  subject  to  troubles  of  inspec- 
tion and  interference  and  to  consequent  costs,  and  having  his  prop- 
erty daily  rendered  a  more  undesirable  investment — is  prompted  to 
sell ;  and,  as  buyers  are  for  like  reasons  deterred,  he  has  to  sell  at  a 
loss.  And  now  these  still  multiplying  regulations,  ending,  it  may  be, 
as  Lord  Grey  proposes,  in  one  requiring  the  owner  to  maintain  the 
salubrity  of  his  houses  by  evicting  dirty  tenants,  and  thus  adding  to 
his  other  responsibilities  that  of  inspector  of  nuisances,  must  further 
prompt  sales  and  further  deter  purchasers — so  necessitating  greater 
depreciation.  What  must  happen  ?  The  multiplication  of  houses, 
and  especially  small  houses,  being  increasingly  checked,  there  must 
come  an  increasing  demand  upon  the  local  authority  to  make  up  for 
the  deficient  supply.  More  and  more,  the  municipal  or  kindred  body 
will  have  to  build  houses,  or  to  purchase  houses  rendered  unsalable  to 
private  persons  in  the  way  shown  ;  houses  which,  greatly  depreciated 
in  value  as  they  must  become,  it  will,  in  many  cases,  pay  to  buy  rather 
than  to  build  new  ones.  And  then,  when  in  towns  this  process  has 
gone  so  far  as  to  make  the  local  authority  the  chief  owner  of  houses, 
there  will  be  a  good  precedent  for  publicly  providing  houses  for  the 


736  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

rural  population,  as  proposed  in  the  Radical  programme,*  and  as  urged 
by  the  Democratic  Federation,  which  insists  on  "  the  compulsory  con- 
struction of  healthy  artisans'  and  agricultural  laborers'  dwellings  in 
proportion  to  the  population."  Manifestly,  the  tendency  of  that  which 
has  been  done,  is  being  done,  and  is  presently  to  be  done,  is  to  ap- 
proach the  socialistic  ideal  in  which  the  community  is  sole  house-pro- 
prietor. 

Such,  too,  must  be  the  effect  of  the  daily  growing  policy  on  the 
tenure  and  utilization  of  the  land.  More  numerous  public  benefits, 
to  be  achieved  by  more  numerous  public  agencies,  at  the  cost  of  aug- 
mented public  burdens,  must  increasingly  deduct  from  the  returns  on 
land  ;  until,  as  the  depreciation  in  value  becomes  greater  and  greater, 
the  resistance  to  change  of  tenure  becomes  less  and  less.  Already, 
as  every  one  knows,  there  is  in  many  places  diflficulty  in  obtaining 
tenants,  even  at  greatly  reduced  rents  ;  and  land  of  inferior  fertility 
in  some  cases  lies  idle,  or  when  farmed  by  the  owner  is  often  farmed 
at  a  loss.  Clearly  the  margin  of  profit  on  capital  invested  in  land  is 
not  such  that  taxes,  local  and  general,  can  be  greatly  raised  to  sup- 
port extended  public  administrations,  without  an  absorption  of  it 
which  will  prompt  owners  to  sell,  and  make  the  best  of  what  reduced 
price  they  can  get  by  emigrating  and  buying  land  not  subject  to 
heavy  burdens,  as,  indeed,  some  are  now  doing.  This  process,  carried 
far,  must  have  the  result  of  throwing  inferior  land  out  of  cultivation  ; 
after  which  there  will  be  raised  more  generally  the  demand  made  by 
Mr.  Arch,  who,  addressing  the  Radical  Association  of  Brighton  lately, 
and  contending  that  existing  landlords  do  not  make  their  land  ade- 
quately productive  for  the  public  benefit,  said  "he  should  like  the 
present  Government  to  pass  a  Compulsory  Cultivation  Bill "  :  an  ap- 
plauded proposal  which  he  justified  by  instancing  compulsory  vacci- 
nation (thus  illustrating  the  influence  of  precedent).  And  this  demand 
will  be  pressed,  not  only  by  the  need  for  making  the  land  productive, 
but  also  by  the  need  for  employing  the  rural  population.  After  the 
Government  has  extended  the  practice  of  hiring  the  unemployed  to 
work  on  deserted  lands,  or  lands  acquired  at  nominal  prices,  there  will 
be  reached  a  stage  whence  there  is  but  a  small  further  step  to  that 
arrangement  which,  in  the  programme  of  the  Democratic  Federation, 
is  to  follow  nationalization  of  the  land — the  "  organization  of  agri- 
cultural and  industrial  armies  under  state  control  on  co-operative 
principles." 

If  any  one  doubts  that  such  a  revolution  may  be  so  reached,  facts 
may  be  cited  to  show  its  likelihood.  In  Gaul,  during  the  decline  of 
the  Roman  Empire,  "  so  numerous  were  the  receivers  in  comparison 
with  the  payers,  and  so  enormous  the  weight  of  taxation,  that  the 
laborer  broke  down,  the  plains  became  deserts,  and  woods  grew  where 

*  "Fortnightly  Review,"  November,  1883,  pp.  619,  620. 


THE   COMING   SLAVERY.  737 

tlie  plow  had  been."*  In  like  manner,  when  the  French  Revolution 
was  approaching,  the  public  burdens  had  become  such  that  many 
farms  remained  uncultivated,  and  many  were  deserted  ;  one  quarter  of 
the  soil  was  absolutely  lying  waste  ;  and  in  some  provinces  one  half 
was  in  heath.f  Nor  have  we  been  without  incidents  of  a  kindred 
nature  at  home.  Besides  the  facts  that  under  the  old  poor-law  the 
rates  had  in  some  parishes  risen  to  half  the  rental,  and  that  in  various 
places  farms  were  lying  uncultivated,  there  is  the  fact  that  in  one  case 
the  rates  had  absorbed  the  whole  proceeds  of  the  soil. 

At  Cholesbury,  in  Buckinghamshire,  in  1832,  the  poor-rate  "suddenly 
ceased  in  consequence  of  the  impossibility  to  continue  its  collection,  tlie  land- 
lords having  given  up  their  rents,  the  farmers  their  tenancies,  and  the  clergy- 
man his  glebe  and  his  tithes.  The  clergyman,  Mr.  Jeston,  states  that  in  Octo- 
ber, 1832,  the  parish  officers  threw  up  their  books,  and  the  poor  assembled  in  a 
body  before  his  door  while  he  was  in  bed,  asking  for  advice  and  food.  Partly 
from  his  own  small  means,  partly  from  the  charity  of  neighbors,  and  partly  by 
rates  in  aid,  imposed  on  the  neighboring  parishes,  they  were  for  some  time  sup- 
ported." X 

The  commissioners  add  that  "the  benevolent  rector  recommends 
that  the  whole  of  the  land  should  be  divided  among  the  able-bodied 
paupers  "  :  hoping  that,  after  help  afforded  for  two  years,  they  might 
be  able  to  maintain  themselves.  These  facts,  giving  color  to  the 
prophecy  made  in  Parliament  that  continuance  of  the  old  poor-law 
for  another  thirty  years  would  throw  the  land  out  of  cultivation,  clearly 
prove  that  increase  of  public  burdens  may  end  in  forced  cultivation 
under  public  control. 

Then,  again,  comes  state-ownership  of  railways.  Already  this 
exists  to  a  large  extent  on  the  Continent.  Already  we  have  had  here 
a  few  years  ago  loud  advocacy  of  it.  And  now  the  cry  which  was 
raised  by  sundry  politicians  and  publicists  is  taken  up  afresh  by  the 
Democratic  Federation,  which  proposes  "  state-appropriation  of  rail- 
ways, with  or  without  compensation."  Evidently,  pressure  from  above 
joined  by  pressure  from  below  is  likely  to  effect  this  change,  dictated 
by  the  policy  everywhere  spreading  ;  and  with  it  must  come  many 
attendant  changes.  For  railway -proprietors,  at  first  owners  and 
workers  of  railways  only,  have  been  allowed  to  become  masters  of 
numerous  businesses  directly  or  indirectly  connected  with  railways  ; 
and  these  will  have  to  be  purchased  by  Government  when  the  railways 
are  purchased.  Already  exclusive  carrier  of  letters,  exclusive  trans- 
mitter of  telegrams,  and  on  the  way  to  become  exclusive  carrier  of 
parcels,  the  state  will  not  only  be  exclusive  carrier  of  passengers, 
goods,  and  minerals,  but  will  add  to  its  present  various  trades  many 

*  Lactant.,  "  De  M.  Persccut.,"  cc.  7,  23. 
f  Taine,  *'  La  Revolution,"  pp.  337,  338. 

X  "  Report  of  Commissioners  for  Inquiry  into  the  Administration  and  Practical  Oper- 
ation of  the  Poor-Laws,"  p.  37,  February  20,  1834. 
VOL,  XXIV. — 47 


738  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

other  trades.  Even  now,  besides  erecting  its  naval  and  military  es- 
tablishments, and  building  harbors,  docks,  breakwaters,  etc.,  it  does 
the  work  of  ship-builder,  cannon-founder,  small-arms  maker,  manufact- 
urer of  ammunition,  etc.,  etc.;  and,  when  the  railways  have  been 
appropriated  "with  or  without  compensation,"  as  the  Democratic 
Federationists  say,  it  will  have  to  become  locomotive-engine  builder, 
carriage-maker,  tarpaulin  and  grease  manufacturer,  passenger-vessel 
owner,  coal-miner,  stone-quarrier,  omnibus-proprietor,  etc.  Meanwhile 
its  local  lieutenants,  the  municipal  governments,  already  in  many 
places  suppliers  of  water,  gas-makers,  owners  and  workers  of  tram- 
ways, proprietors  of  baths,  will  doubtless  have  undertaken  various 
other  businesses.  And  when  the  state,  directly  or  by  proxy,  has  thus 
come  into  possession  of,  or  has  established,  numerous  concerns  for 
wholesale  production  and  for  wholesale  distribution,  there  will  be 
good  precedents  for  extending  its  function  to  retail  distribution  :  fol- 
lowing such  an  example,  say,  as  is  offered  by  the  French  Government, 
which  has  long  been  a  retail  tobacconist. 

Evidently,  then,  the  changes  made,  the  changes  in  progress,  and 
the  changes  urged,  are  carrying  us  not  only  toward  state-ownership 
of  land  and  dwellings  and  means  of  communication,  all  to  be  adminis- 
tered and  worked  by  state-agents,  but  toward  state-usurpation  of  all 
industries  ;  the  private  forms  of  which,  disadvantaged  more  and  more 
in  competition  with  the  state,  which  can  arrange  everything  for  its 
own  convenience,  will  more  and  more  die  away  just  as  many  volun- 
tary schools  have,  in  presence  of  board-schools.  And  so  will  be 
brought  about  the  desired  ideal  of  the  socialist. 

And  now  when  there  has  been  reached  this  desired  ideal,  which 
"practical"  politicians  are  helping  socialists  to  reach,  and  which  is 
so  tempting  on  that  bright  side  which  socialists  contemplate,  what 
must  be  the  accompanying  shady  side  which  they  do  not  contem- 
plate ?  It  is  a  matter  of  common  remark,  often  made  when  a  marriage 
is  impending,  that  those  possessed  by  strong  hopes  habitually  dwell 
on  the  promised  pleasures  and  think  nothing  of  the  accompanying 
pains.  A  further  exemplification  of  this  truth  is  supplied  by  these 
political  enthusiasts  and  fanatical  revolutionists.  Impressed  with  the 
miseries  existing  under  our  present  social  arrangements,  and  not  re- 
garding these  miseries  as  caused  by  the  ill-working  of  a  human  nature 
but  partially  adapted  to  the  social  state,  they  imagine  them  to  be 
forthwith  curable  by  this  or  that  rearrangement.  Yet,  even  did  their 
plans  succeed,  it  could  only  be  by  substituting  one  kind  of  evil  for 
another.  A  little  deliberate  thought  would  show  that  under  their  pro- 
posed arrangements  their  liberties  must  be  surrendered  in  proportion 
as  their  material  welfares  were  cared  for. 

For  no  form  of  co-operation,  small  or  great,  can  be  carried  on 
without    regulation    and    an    implied   submission    to   the   regulating 


THE   COMING   SLAVERY,  739 

agencies.  Even  one  of  their  own  organizations  for  effecting  social 
changes  yields  them  proof.  It  is  compelled  to  have  its  councils,  its 
local  and  general  officers,  its  authoritative  leaders,  who  must  be  obeyed 
under  penalty  of  confusion  and  failure.  And  the  experience  of  those 
who  are  loudest  in  their  advocacy  of  a  new  social  order  under  the 
paternal  control  of  a  government  shows  that,  even  in  private  volun- 
tarily-formed societies,  the  power  of  the  regulative  organization  be- 
comes great,  if  not  irresistible  ;  often,  indeed,  causing  grumbling  and 
restiveness  among  those  controlled.  Trades-unions  which  carry  on  a 
kind  of  industrial  war  in  defense  of  workers'  interests  versus  employ- 
ers' interests  find  that  subordination  almost  military  in  its  strictness  is 
needful  to  secure  efficient  action  ;  for  divided  councils  prove  fatal  to 
success.  And  even  in  bodies  of  co-operators,  formed  for  carrying  on 
manufacturing  or  distributing  businesses,  and  not  needing  that  obe- 
dience to  leaders  which  is  required  where  the  aims  are  offensive  or  de- 
fensive, it  is  still  found  that  the  administrative  agency  acquires  so  great 
a  power  that  there  arise  complaints  about  "  the  tyranny  of  organiza- 
tion." Judge,  then,  what  must  happen  when,  instead  of  combinations, 
small,  local,  and  voluntary,  to  which  men  may  belong  or  not  as  they 
please,  we  have  a  national  combination  in  which  each  citizen  finds 
himself  incorporated,  and  from  which  he  can  not  separate  himself 
without  leaving  the  country  !  Judge  what  must  under  such  conditions 
become  the  power  of  a  graduated  and  centralized  officialism,  holding 
in  its  hands  the  resources  of  the  community,  and  having  behind  it 
whatever  amount  of  force  it  finds  requisite  to  carry  out  its  decrees 
and  maintain  what  it  calls  order  !  Well  may  a  Prince  Bismarck  dis- 
play leanings  toward  state-socialism. 

And  then,  after  recognizing,  as  they  must  if  they  think  out  their 
scheme,  the  power  possessed  by  the  regulative  agency  in  the  new 
social  system  so  temptingly  pictured,  let  its  advocates  ask  themselves 
to  w^hat  end  this  power  must  be  used.  Not  dwelling  exclusively,  as 
they  habitually  do,  on  the  material  well-being  and  the  mental  gratifi- 
cations to  be  provided  for  them  by  a  beneficent  administration,  let 
them  dwell  a  little  on  the  price  to  be  paid.  The  officials  can  not 
create  the  needful  supplies  ;  they  can  but  distribute  among  individu- 
als that  which  the  individuals  have  joined  to  produce.  If  the  public 
agency  is  required  to  provide  for  them,  it  must  reciprocally  require 
them  to  furnish  the  means.  There  can  not  be,  as  under  our  existing 
system,  agreement  between  employer  and  employed — this  the  scheme 
excludes.  There  must  in  place  of  it  be  command  by  local  authorities 
over  workers,  and  acceptance  by  the  workers  of  that  which  the  au- 
thorities assign  to  them.  And  this,  indeed,  is  the  arrangement  dis- 
tinctly, but  as  it  would  seem  inadvertently,  pointed  to  by  the  members 
of  the  Democratic  Federation.  For  they  propose  that  production 
should  be  carried  on  by  "  agricultural  and  industrial  armies  under 
state  control "  ;  apparently  not  remembering  that  armies  presuppose 


740  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

grades  of  officers,  by  whom  obedience  would  have  to  be  insisted  upon, 
since  otherwise  neither  order  nor  efficient  work  could  be  insured.  So 
that  each  would  stand  toward  the  governing  agency  in  the  relation  of 
slave  to  master. 

"  But  the  governing  agency  would  be  a  master  which  he  and  others 
made  and  kept  constantly  in  check,  and  one  which  therefore  would  not 
control  him  or  others  more  than  was  needful  for  the  benefit  of  each 
and  all." 

To  which  reply  the  first  rejoinder  is  that,  even  if  so,  each  member 
of  the  community  as  an  individual  would  be  a  slave  to  the  community 
as  a  whole.  Such  a  relation  has  habitually  existed  in  militant  com- 
munities, even  under  ^i^a.s^-popular  forms  of  government.  In  ancient 
Greece  the  accepted  principle  was  that  the  citizen  belonged  neither 
to  himself  nor  to  his  family,  but  belonged  to  his  city — the  city  being 
with  the  Greek  equivalent  to  the  community.  And  this  doctrine, 
proper  to  a  state  of  constant  warfare,  is  a  doctrine  which  socialism 
unawares  reintroduces  into  a  state  intended  to  be  purely  industrial. 
The  services  of  each  will  belong  to  the  aggregate  of  all  ;  and  for 
these  services  such  returns  will  be  given  as  the  authorities  think 
proper.  So  that  even  if  the  administration  is  of  the  beneficent  kind 
intended  to  be  secured,  slavery,  however  mild,  must  be  the  outcome 
of  the  arrangement. 

A  second  rejoinder  is  that  the  administration  will  presently  become 
not  of  the  intended  kind,  and  that  the  slavery  will  not  be  mild.  The 
socialist  speculation  is  vitiated  by  an  assumption  like  that  which  viti- 
ates the  speculations  of  the  "  practical "  politician.  It  is  assumed  that 
officialism  will  work  as  it  is  intended  to  work,  which  it  never  does. 
The  machinery  of  communism,  like  existing  social  machinery,  has  to 
be  framed  out  of  existing  human  nature  ;  and  the  defects  of  existing 
human  nature  will  generate  in  the  one  the  same  evils  as  in  the  other. 
The  love  of  power,  the  selfishness,  the  injustice,  the  untruthfulness, 
which  often  in  comparatively  short  times  bring  private  organizations 
to  disaster,  will  inevitably,  where  their  effects  accumulated  from  gen- 
eration to  generation,  work  evils  far  greater  and  less  remediable  ;  since 
vast  and  complex  and  possessed  of  all  the  resources,  the  administrative 
organization  once  developed  and  consolidated  must  become  irresisti- 
ble. And,  if  there  needs  proof  that  the  periodic  exercise  of  electoral 
power  would  fail  to  prevent  this,  it  suffices  to  instance  the  French 
Government,  which,  purely  popular  in  origin,  and  subject  from  time 
to  time  to  popular  judgment,  nevertheless  tramples  on  the  freedom  of 
citizens  to  an  extent  which  the  English  delegates  to  the  late  Trades- 
Union  Congress  say  "  is  a  disgrace  to,  and  an  anomaly  in,  a  republican 
nation." 

The  final  result  would  be  a  revival  of  despotism.  A  disciplined 
army  of  civil  officials,  like  an  army  of  military  officials,  gives  supreme 
power  to  its  head — a  power  which  has  often  led  to  usurpation,  as  in 


THE   COMING   SLAVERY.  741 

mediaeval  Europe  and  still  more  in  Japan — nay,  has  thus  so  led  among 
our  neighbors  within  our  own  times.  The  recent  confessions  of  M. 
de  Maupas  have  shown  how  readily  a  constitutional  head,  elected  and 
trusted  by  the  whole  people,  may,  with  the  aid  of  a  few  unscrupulous 
confederates,  paralyze  the  representative  body  and  make  himself  auto- 
crat. That  those  who  rose  to  power  in  a  socialistic  organization  would 
not  scruple  to  carry  out  their  aims  at  all  costs,  we  have  good  reason 
for  concluding.  When  we  find  that  shareholders,  w^ho,  sometimes  gain- 
ing, but  often  losing,  have  made  that  railway-system  by  which  na- 
tional prosperity  has  been  so  greatly  increased,  are  spoken  of  by  the 
council  of  the  Democratic  Federation  as  having  "  laid  hands  "  on  the 
means  of  communication,  we  may  infer  that  those  who  directed  a 
socialistic  administration  might  interpret  with  extreme  perversity  the 
claims  of  individuals  and  classes  under  their  control.  And  when,  fur- 
ther, we  find  members  of  this  same  council  urging  that  the  state 
should  take  possession  of  the  railways,  "  with  or  without  compensa- 
tion," we  may  suspect  that  the  heads  of  the  ideal  society  desired, 
would  be  but  little  deterred  by  considerations  of  equity  from  pursuing 
whatever  policy  they  thought  needful — a  policy  which  would  always 
be  one  identified  with  their  own  supremacy.  It  would  need  but  a  war 
with  an  adjacent  society,  or  some  internal  discontent  demanding  for- 
cible suppression,  to  at  once  transform  a  socialistic  administration  into 
a  grinding  tyranny  like  that  of  ancient  Peru  ;  under  which  the  mass 
of  the  people,  controlled  by  grades  of  officials,  and  leading  lives  that 
were  inspected  out-of-doors  and  in-doors,  labored  for  the  support  of 
the  organization  which  regulated  them,  and  were  left  with  but  a  bare 
subsistence  for  themselves.  And  then  would  be  completely  revived, 
under  a  different  form,  that  regime  of  status — that  system  of  compul- 
sory co-operation,  the  decaying  tradition  of  which  is  represented  by 
the  old  Toryism,  and  toward  which  the  new  Toryism  is  carrying  us 
back. 

"  But  we  shall  be  on  our  guard  against  all  that — we  shall  take  pre- 
cautions to  ward  off  such  disasters,"  will  doubtless  say  the  enthusiasts. 
Be  they  "  practical "  politicians  with  their  new  regulative  measures,  or 
communists  with  their  schemes  for  reorganizing  labor,  the  answer  is 
ever  the  same  :  "  It  is  true  that  plans  of  kindred  nature  have,  from 
unforeseen  causes  and  adverse  accidents,  or  the  misdeeds  of  those  con- 
cerned, been  brought  to  failure  ;  but  this  time  we  shall  profit  by  past 
experiences  and  succeed."  There  seems  no  getting  people  to  accept 
the  truth,  which  nevertheless  is  conspicuous  enough,  that  the  welfare 
of  a  society  and  the  justice  of  its  arrangements  are  at  bottom  depend- 
ent on  the  characters  of  its  members  ;  and  that  improvement  in  nei- 
ther can  take  place  without  that  improvement  in  character  which  re- 
sults from  carrying  on  peaceful  industry  under  the  restraints  imposed 
by  an  orderly  social  life.  The  belief,  not  only  of  the  socialists  but 
also  of  those  so-called  Liberals  who  are  diligently  preparing  the  way 


742  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

for  them,  is  that  by  due  skill  an  ill-working  humanity  may  be  framed 
into  well-working  institutions.  It  is  a  delusion.  The  defective  natures 
of  citizens  will  show  themselves  in  the  bad  acting  of  whatever  social 
structure  they  are  arranged  into.  There  is  no  political  alchemy  by 
which  you  can  get  golden  conduct  out  of  leaden  instincts. 


THE  ELECTKIC  KAILWAY. 

By  Lieutekant  BEADLEY  A.  FISKE,  U.  S.  N. 

WITH  most  men  who  have  not  had  time  to  follow  the  progress 
made  of  late  in  applying  electricity  to  the  practical  work  of  the 
world,  this  form  of  energy  is  chiefly  associated  with  certain  experi- 
ments at  school,  by  which  the  tedium  of  book-studying  was  enlivened 
with  exhibitions  of  sparks  and  shocks  and  other  curious  and  interest- 
ing phenomena,  though  it  may  be  also  connected  in  their  minds  with 
electric  hair-brushes,  electric  corsets,  magnetic  clothing,  etc.  They 
regard  it  also  as  convenient  for  sending  dispatches  by  telegraph,  and 
in  general  for  doing  work  where  delicacy  but  not  much  force  is  requi- 
site ;  but  the  idea  seldom  occurs  to  them  that  this  versatile  power 
is  capable  of  swiftly  moving  the  mightiest  masses,  as  well  as  of 
operating  the  tiniest  apparatus  ;  of  turning  the  wheels  of  ponder- 
ous machinery,  as  well  as  of  vibrating  thousands  of  times  per  sec- 
ond the  little  diaphragm  of  the  telephone  ;  of  conveying  to  far- 
distant  points  the  waste  power  of  cataracts,  as  well  as  the  minute 
forces  liberated  by  the  telegraphic  key,  and  of  illuminating,  with  the 
purest  artificial  light  known,  the  most  extensive  and  thickly  popu- 
lated cities. 

Doubtless,  one  great  cause  of  the  skepticism  with  which  many  re- 
gard any  project  for  using  electricity  upon  a  large  scale  is  the  fact 
that  exhaustive  experiments  in  this  direction  were  made  in  the  early 
part  of  the  century,  and  the  conclusion  reached  was  that,  though 
power  and  light  could  both  be  distributed  by  electricity,  yet  the  ex- 
pense would  be  so  enormous  as  to  render  impracticable  auy  extended 
electrical  system. 

It  should  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  the  only  great  trouble 
found  was  the  expense,  and  also  that  the  principal  source  of  this  ex- 
pense has  been  removed.  In  those  days,  the  only  way  of  generating 
an  electric  current  was  by  the  use  of  the  voltaic  battery,  in  which  the 
electrical  energy  of  the  current  was  procured  from  the  heat  of  the 
chemical  combination  going  on  in  the  battery  ;  but  in  1831  Faraday 
discovered  a  much  cheaper  way  of  generating  electricity,  when  he 
found  that  it  could  be  produced  by  simply  moving  magnets  in  the 


THE  ELECTRIC  RAILWAY.  743 

vicinity  of  coils  of  wire,  or  coils  of  wire  in  the  vicinity  of  magnets. 
The  significance  of  his  discovery  was  so  apparent  that  inventors  began 
at  once  to  devise  means  for  generating  currents  upon  an  extended 
scale,  by  moving  large  magnets  in  the  vicinity  of  large  coils  of  wire 
by  means  of  machinery ;  and  this  mechanical  system  has  now  been 
brought  to  such  perfection  that  the  cost  of  producing  a  horse-power 
of  electrical  energy  can  be  as  easily  and  almost  as  accurately  calcu- 
lated as  the  cost  of  producing  a  horse-power  in  a  steam-engine  or  any 
other  familiar  apparatus. 

In  order  to  arrive  at  a  clear  comprehension  of  the  present  state  of 
the  art,  it  will  be  necessary  to  remember  that  any  work  which  we  per- 
form must  be  performed  by  the  expenditure  of  a  certain  and  absolute 
amount  of  energy,  and  that  we  can  not  create  this  energy,  but  can  only 
obtain  it  by  changing  the  form  of  some  other  kind  of  energy.  In 
the  voltaic  battery,  as  we  have  said,  the  electrical  energy  is  obtained 
by  transforming  the  heat  of  the  chemical  action  going  on  in  the  cell 
into  electrical  energy,  so  that  the  amount  of  the  latter  that  can  be 
got  out  of  any  voltaic  battery  is  limited  by  the  amount  of  energy  of 
the  chemical  combination.  Now,  the  metal  ordinarily  used  for  fur- 
nishing chemical  energy  in  a  voltaic  battery  is  zinc,  and  the  heat  of 
combination  of  zinc  with  oxygen  is  only  about  one  sixth  of  that  of 
coal,  while  its  cost  is  more  than  twenty  times  as  great ;  so  that,  to  get 
the  same  amount  of  energy  from  zinc  as  from  coal,  would  cost  about 
one  hundred  and  twenty  times  as  much.  Now,  in  the  mechanical 
method  of  generating  electricity,  the  electrical  energy  is  produced  by 
the  mechanical  means  of  moving  large  magnets  near  coils  of  wire  ; 
but  the  mechanical  energy  necessary  to  do  this  is  obtained  by  the 
combustion  of  coal  (i.  e.,  the  chemical  combination  of  coal  with 
oxygen). 

It  would  be  incorrect,  however,  to  say  that  we  can  in  this  way  pro- 
duce electricity  one  hundred  and  twenty  times  as  cheaply  as  by  a  bat- 
tery, because  there  is  an  enormous  loss  in  converting  the  heat  of  com- 
bustion of  the  coal  into  electricity,  whereas  the  voltaic  battery  pro- 
duces the  electricity  directly.  The  losses  in  converting  the  energy  of 
the  combustion  of  coal  into  mechanical  energy  are  so  prodigious  that 
even  a  theoretically  perfect  engine  could  not  get  hold  of  more  than 
from  twenty  to  twenty-five  per  cent  of  the  total  energy  in  the  coal,  on 
account  of  the  loss  of  the  heat ;  so  that,  if  an  engine  (a  good  one)  has 
an  efficiency  of  eighty  per  cent,  it  can  not  actually  convert  into  work 
as  much  as  twenty  per  cent  of  the  total  energy  in  the  coal.  The  loss 
now  in  converting  this  mechanical  energy  into  the  electrical  energy  in 
the  circuit  where  it  is  desired  may  be  taken  as  about  fifteen  per  cent, 
so  that  only  about  from  fifteen  to  seventeen  per  cent  of  the  total  en- 
ergy of  the  burning  coal  may  be  looked  for  in  the  electrical  circuit. 
But,  as  the  original  cost  of  the  coal  is  only  y|-g-  of  that  of  the  zinc  fur- 
nishing an  equal  amount  of  energy,  we  see  that  the  mechanical  method 


744 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


of  producing  electricity  is,  roughly  speaking,  about  twenty  times  as 
cheap  as  that  of  generating  it  by  batteries. 

The  present  way  of  generating  large  quantities  of  electricity  re- 
quires, then,  an  engine  and  boiler  for  converting  the  chemical  energy 
of  burning  coal  into  mechanical  energy,  and  a  device  whereby  this 
mechanical  energy  is  made  to  move  magnets  in  the  vicinity  of  coils  of 
wire  or  coils  of  wire  in  the  vicinity  of  magnets,  so  as  to  convert  the 
mechanical  energy  into  electrical  energy.  Such  a  device  is  called  an 
electric  machine,  or,  ordinarily,  a  dynamo-electric  machine  ;  and  this 
term  is  usually  abbreviated  into  "  dynamo." 

A  dynamo  of  a  type  in  considerable  use,  and  one  of  the  earliest 
and  best  forms,  is  shown  in  Fig.  1.  In  this  dynamo,  coils  of  wire  are 
wrapped  about  the  long  "armature"  shown  in  the  center,  which  is 
revolved  between  the  poles  of  the  large  magnet  (A)  by  a  belt  coming 
from  a  steam-engine,  and  going  around  the  armature-pulley  seen  at 


Pio.  1. 


the  rear.  The  approach  to  and  recession  from  the  poles  of  the  differ- 
ent coils  of  wire  of  the  armature  generate  a  succession  of  currents 
which  are  collected  by  "  brushes,"  and  sent  out  into  the  circuit  as  a 
constant  current. 

But  a  most  beautiful  example  of  the  truth  of  the  theory  of  the 


THE  ELECTRIC  RAILWAY,  745 

conservation  of  energy  is  afforded  by  the  fact  that  a  dynamo  will  not 
only  generate  an  electric  current  if  it  be  revolved  by  mechanical  means, 
but  that  it  will  itself  revolve,  if  an  electric  current  be  sent  through  it 
from  an  exterior  source  ;  so  that  it  not  only  can  transform  mechanical 
energy  into  electrical  energy,  but  can  also  transform  electrical  into 
mechanical  energy.  When  used  for  this  purpose  it  is  called  an  "  elec- 
tro-motor," and  sometimes  an  "  electric  engine." 

Not  only,  however,  is  it  necessary  for  an  engine  to  be  capable  of 
doing  a  certain  kind  of  work  ;  it  is  also  necessary  for  it  to  be  capable 
of  doing  it  economically,  and  it  is  for  this  reason  that  such  a  great 
future  is  prophesied  for  electric  engines.  For,  while  an  excellent  and 
elaborately  constructed  stationary  steam-engine  can  produce  but  a 
small  fraction  of  the  energy  it  absorbs,  a  good  electric  engine  (or  elec- 
tro-motor) will  return  seventy-five  per  cent  of  the  electric  energy  given 
it  by  the  generating  dynamo.  For  the  reason,  however,  that  no  eco- 
nomical means  of  generating  large  currents  are  yet  discovered,  except 
the  method  described  of  first  burning  coal,  the  use  of  electric  machin- 
ery is  at  present  restricted  to  certain  industries.  Now,  one  of  these 
industries  is  believed  to  be  railroading. 

The  opinion  is  generally  held  that  railroad  companies  desire  to 
obtain  as  large  a  return  as  possible  upon  their  investment,  and  there- 
fore to  run  their  trains  as  cheaply  as  possible.  If  this  be  true,  the 
value  of  an  electric  railway  will  become  obvious,  when  one  remembers 
that,  of  necessity,  the  present  locomotive  is  wasteful  in  the  extreme, 
and  that  in  an  electric  railway  a  large  and  economical  stationary 
engine  renders  its  mechanical  energy  to  a  large  and  economical  dynamo 
which  sends  an  electric  current  to  an  economical  motor  on  an  electric 
locomotive.  This  motor  is  connected  with  the  driving-wheels  by 
gearing,  belting,  or  other  suitable  devices,  so  that  its  revolution  pro- 
duces a  revolution  of  the  driving-wheels  and  a  consequent  progress- 
ive motion  of  the  electric  locomotive,  in  the  same  way  that  the 
engine  of  a  steam-locomotive  produces  a  rotary  motion  of  the  driv- 
ing-wheels, and  a  consequent  progressive  motion  of  the  steam-loco- 
motive. There  is  a  certain  loss  of  electricity  in  passing  from  the 
dynamo  to  the  motor  on  the  locomotive,  both  from  leakage  and  from 
overcoming  the  resistance  of  the  conductors  ;  but,  for  distances  not 
too  great,  this  loss,  added  to  the  losses  in  converting  the  mechanical 
energy  of  the  stationary  engine  into  electrical  energy,  and  in  recon- 
verting this  electrical  energy  back  into  mechanical  energy  by  the 
motor,  is  not  equal  to  the  loss  inseparable  from  even  the  best  steam- 
locomotives. 

It  will  be,  of  course,  noticed  that  it  is  necessary  constantly  to 
maintain  an  electrical  connection  between  the  electro-motor  on  the 
locomotive  and  the  stationary  dynamo,  in  all  positions  of  the  locomo- 
tive. To  accomplish  this  effectively,  a  number  of  systems  have  been 
invented.     By  one  system  the  rails  themselves  act  as  conductors,  the 


746  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

current  going  to  the  locomotive  by  one  rail  and  returning  by  the 
other  ;  while,  in  other  systems,  a  third  or  auxiliary  conductor  is  used. 
To  collect  the  current  and  pass  it  through  the  motor,  two  strips  of 
copper  or  brass  in  the  circuit  of  the  motor  extend  from  the  locomo- 
tive and  press  upon  the  conductors  ;  so  that,  as  the  car  advances, 
these  keep  up  a  scraping  contact.  Two  wheels  in  circuit  with  the  mo- 
tor are  also  sometimes  used  as  collectors. 

The  distinction  of  being  the  first  to  conceive  and  suggest  the  idea 
of  an  electric  railway  seems  to  belong  to  Dr.  Werner  Siemens,  of  the 
celebrated  firm  of  Siemens  &  Halske,  which  has  been  more  identified 
with  the  practical  development  of  electrical  science  than  any  other 
firm  in  the  world.  In  pursuance  of  his  idea.  Dr.  Siemens  constructed 
the  first  electrical  railway  at  Berlin  in  1879. 

In  this  railway,  whose  length  was  about  three  hundred  and  fifty 
yards,  and  whose  gauge  was  about  three  feet  and  three  inches,  a  third 
or  auxiliary  conductor  was  used  to  convey  the  current  from  the 
dynamo  to  the  motor.  This  conductor  lay  between  and  parallel  to  the 
other  two  rails,  and  the  current  was  taken  from  it  by  a  metal  brush 
connected  with  the  motor,  which  extended  from  the  car  and  pressed 
upon  the  conductor.  After  going  through  the  motor,  the  current 
went  to  both  rails  and  by  them  back  to  the  dynamo,  the  rails  acting 
as  the  "  return."  The  motor  was  placed  upon  a  car,  attached  to 
which  were  three  other  cars,  the  first  thus  acting  as  the  locomo- 
tive. Such  was  the  interest  excited  by  this  novel  system  of  trans- 
portation, and  such  its  success,  that  it  continued  in  operation  for  sev- 
eral months,  and  carried  thousands  of  people,  the  money  received 
for  fares  being  contributed,  it  is  said,  to  charitable  institutions  in 
the  city. 

The  success  of  this  experimental  railway  led  the  Messrs.  Siemens 
to  plan  another  upon  a  more  extended  scale  ;  and  they  applied  to 
the  authorities  for  permission  to  build  an  elevated  road  in  Berlin, 
six  miles  long,  on  which  single  cars,  each  fitted  with  an  electro- 
motor, were  to  be  run  by  means  of  electricity.  Permission  to  do  this 
was  refused,  on  account  of  the  inconvenience  to  the  inhabitants  which 
would  result  from  the  structure  ;  but,  ultimately,  leave  was  given 
the  same  firm  to  build  a  surface  electric  railway  from  Lichterfelde, 
one  of  the  suburbs,  to  the  military  academy.  This  railway  is  still 
running,  and  its  operation  has  throughout,  for  more  than  two  years, 
been  of  the  most  satisfactory  character.  No  auxiliary  conductor  is 
used,  the  current  going  from  the  dynamo  along  one  rail,  through  one 
of  the  wheels,  through  the  motor,  through  a  wheel  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  car,  and  thence  to  the  other  rail,  which  acts  as  the  "re- 
turn." No  trains  are  made  up,  but  each  car  is  fitted  with  an  electro- 
motor, which  lies  beneath  the  flooring.  As  the  authorities  declare 
these  cars  to  fall  under  the  same  heading  as  tram-cars,  the  speed  at 
which  they  may  be  run  is  limited  by  law  to  twelve  miles  per  hour. 


THE  ELECTRIC  RAILWAY. 


1M 


This  speed  is  realized  with  ease,  but  a  much  greater  rate  could  be  at- 
tained, if  it  were  allowed. 

It  can  hardly  be  hoped,  however,  that  such  a  simple  system  as 
this  could  be  adopted  for  running  cars  in  the  streets  of  a  city,  for 
other  difficulties  would  be  introduced.  The  fact  that  the  rails  in  the 
streets  must,  of  necessity,  be  close  to  the  surface  of  the  ground,  and 
that  they  are  to  be  stepped  upon  by  men  and  horses,  shows  at  once 
the  necessity  of  having  the  conductor  out  of  the  way,  and  the  danger 
of  having  the  current  traverse  the  rails.  At  the  Electrical  Exposition 
held  at  Paris  in  1881,  Messrs.  Siemens  &  Halske  had  an  electric  rail- 
way in  operation,  in  which  a  third  or  auxiliary  conductor  was  used  ; 
but  this  ran  along  on  posts  like  a  telegraph-wire,  the  current  being 
conveyed  from  this  conductor  to  the  motor  by  means  of  a  flexible  con- 
ductor, which  was  connected  at  one  end  with  the  motor  on  the  car, 
and  at  the  other  with  a  contact-carriage,  or  trolly,  which  was  drawn 
along  the  conductor  by  the  car  as  it  advanced. 

In  mines,  in  tunnels,  and  in  all  places  where  the  smoke  of  burning 
coal  is  objectionable,  it  would  seem  that  the  electric  railway  possesses 
unrivaled  advantages.  As  the  motor  gives  off  no  smoke,  makes  little 
noise,  occupies  but  a  small  space,  and  does  not  have  to  carry  its  own 


Fig.  2. 


748  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

fuel,  it  possesses  many  points  of  superiority  over  the  present  cumber- 
some, noisy,  smoky  locomotive.  Indeed,  in  long  passages  such  as  those 
in  the  mines  at  Zankerode,  where  a  Siemens  electric  railway  is  now 
running,  a  steam-locomotive  would  be  not  only  undesirable  but  im- 
possible. 

In  the  Zankerode-mine  railway,  the  current  is  sent  from  the  dy- 
namo along  the  roof  of  the  tunnel  through  one  of  the  inverted  T-rails 
shown  in  Fig.  2,  which  thus  acts  as  a  conductor,  and  upon  which  slides 
a  contact-carriage  connected  with  the  motor  on  the  car  by  one  of  the 
flexible  conductors,  also  shown.  The  return  current  coming  from  the 
motor  goes  to  the  other  inverted  T-iron  by  the  other  flexible  conduct- 
or, and  thence  back  to  the  dynamo. 

The  most  extensive  electric  railway  now  in  use  is  that  constructed 
by  Messrs.  Siemens  in  Ireland,  which  runs  from  Portrush  to  Bush- 
mills, a  distance  of  about  six  miles.  As  at  present  operated,  a  dynamo 
revolved  by  a  stationary  steam-engine  supplies  the  necessary  current ; 
but  it  is  intended  to  utilize  the  waste  power  of  a  waterfall  situated 
about  three  quarters  of  a  mile  from  the  end  of  the  line,  as  soon  as  the 
necessary  works  can  be  constructed.  The  cost  of  running  the  electric 
locomotives  is  found  to  be  less  than  that  of  running  steam-locomotives 
over  the  same  track,  and  it  will  be  much  reduced  as  soon  as  the  utiliza- 
tion of  the  power  of  the  waterfall  (twenty-four  feet)  is  made  possible. 

By  another  system  of  electric  propulsion,  it  has  been  attempted  to 
carry  batteries  of  electric  accumulators  in  the  car,  instead  of  conveying 
the  current  to  the  car  by  conductors.  By  this  system,  as  yet  unde- 
veloped, a  large  stationary  engine  is  to  be  used  to  turn  a  dynamo 
which  will  generate  a  current  that  will  charge  the  accumulators  or 
"  storage-batteries,"  as  they  are  sometimes  called  ;  these  accumulators 
to  lie  under  the  seats  or  in  some  other  convenient  place,  and  render  the 
current  to  the  motor  direct. 

As  accumulators  may  play  an  important  part  in  electric  railroading, 
and  as  much  that  is  incorrect  has  appeared  in  print  concerning  them, 
a  few  words  of  description  may  not  be  out  of  place. 

Probably  the  most  prevalent  conception  of  an  accumulator  is  a  box 
or  other  receptacle  in  which  electricity  is  put  and  from  which  it  can 
be  drawn  when  desired  ;  and  for  practical  purposes  this  idea  is  suffi- 
ciently correct.  From  a  scientific  point  of  view,  however,  it  is  more 
satisfactory  to  regard  an  accumulator  as  a  battery  in  which  the  elec- 
trical energy  of  the  current  which  it  renders  arises  from  a  chemical 
action  due  primarily  to  another  current  which  was  sent  through  it. 
To  speak  more  in  detail,  the  ordinary  accumulator  (Fig.  3)  consists  of 
two  lead  plates  standing  in  acidulated  water  and  capable  of  behaving 
like  an  ordinary  voltaic  battery,  after  they  have  been  acted  upon  by  a 
strong  current.  This  current,  called  the  charging  current,  when  it  goes 
through  the  liquid,  decomposes  it,  the  oxygen,  separated,  going  to  one 
lead  plate  and  the  hydrogen  to  the  other  lead  plate.     The  oxygen  at- 


THE  ELECTRIC  RAILWAY, 


749 


Fia,  3. 


tacks  the  lead  plate  to  which  it  goes,  thus  forming  peroxide  of  lead, 
and  the  hydrogen  reduces  any  oxide  that  may  be  on  the  other  lead 
plate,  thus  producing  pure  lead,  some  of  the  surplus 
hydrogen  forming  as  a  film  upon  the  surface.  The 
charging  current  is  then  reversed,  so  that  the  latter 
plate  is  now  attacked,  and  is  then  reversed  again  ; 
the  effect  of  these  operations  being  to  render  the 
surfaces  of  both  lead  plates  porous  so  that  they  pre- 
sent a  large  surface,  and  can  therefore  hold  a  great 
deal  of  peroxide  of  lead.  When  the  charging  cur- 
rent is  broken,  the  oxygen,  which  has  been  forcibly 
separated  from  the  liquid,  seeks  to  recombine  in  the 
same  way  that  a  stone  which  has  been  forcibly  sep- 
arated from  the  earth  seeks  the  earth  when  liberated. 
If  now  the  two  lead  plates  be  joined  with  a  wire,  the 
effect  of  the  oxygen  in  the  peroxide  of  lead  trying 
to  recombine  is  to  generate  an  electrical  current  in 
the  opposite  direction  to  the  original  one  ;  and  this 
is  the  current  which  is  utilized.  The  value  of  accu- 
mulators would  be  much  increased  if  this  return  cur- 
rent could  be  made  greater,  and  if  the  weight  and 
cost  of  the  accumulators  themselves  could  be  made  less.  At  pres- 
ent, however,  their  use  is  restricted  by  reason  of  their  great  cost  and 
weight,  and  by  the  small  ratio  (about  fifty  per  cent  in  practice)  of  the 
electrical  energy  returned  to  that  expended  in  charging  them.  Never- 
theless, the  fact  that  the  accumulator  system  of  electric  railroading 
obviates  the  necessity  for  any  conductors,  which  sometimes  are  incon- 
venient and  expensive,  and  which  themselves  occasion  great  loss  of 
electrical  energy,  leads  many  to  believe  that  for  short  routes,  as  upon 
street-car  lines  of  cities,  accumulators  will  be  very  efficient. 

At  the  Chicago  Exposition  of  Railway  Appliances,  which  has  just 
closed,  the  system  of  Messrs.  T.  A.  Edison  and  S.  D.  Field,  of  New 
York,  w^s  tried,  and  with  undeniable  success.  By  this  system  a  third 
conductor  is  used  ;  but  it  is  not  placed  upon  poles,  as  in  the  Siemens 
system  (for  this  would  not  be  practicable  in  the  streets  of  a  city),  but 
lies  in  a  long  sunken  trough  which  runs  between  and  parallel  to  the 
rails.  The  trough  is  covered,  and  a  long  and  very  narrow  slit  runs  the 
whole  length  of  the  cover.  Through  this  slit  extends  a  strong  metallic 
rod  which  is  connected  mechanically  with  a  contact-carriage  lying 
upon  the  conductor,  and  which  is  mechanically  and  electrically  con- 
nected with  the  car. 

It  is  claimed  that  by  means  of  a  scraper,  carried  by  the  contact- 
carriage,  there  will  be  no  trouble  occasioned  by  any  accumulation  on 
the  conductor  of  ice,  snow,  or  mud,  but  that  the  car  can  be  satisfac- 
torily run  in  all  kinds  of  weather. 

Fig.  4  represents  the  generator  and  track  as  arranged  at  the  Chi- 


75* 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


cago  Exposition.  It  will  be  noticed  that  one  pole  of  the  generator 
(dynamo)  is  connected  with  the  auxiliary  middle  rail,  and  the  other 
with  one  of  the  two  side-rails  which  are  metallically  connected  togeth- 
er, as  shown.  The  current  goes  to 
the  motor  on  the  car  by  the  middle 
conductor,  and  is  returned  to  the 
generator  by  the  side-rails. 

The  advantages  of  the  electric 
railway,  should  it  be  made  practi- 
cable in  all  respects,  are  obvious, 
and  there  is  good  reason  for  believ- 
ing that  in  time  it  will-  be  made 
available  and  economical  even  for 
lines  of  considerable  length. 

In  the  streets  of  a  city,  electric 
cars  would  be  advantageous  upon 
the   surface   roads  for  the   reason 
that  they  could  be  run  more  quietly 
and  swiftly  than  horse-cars,  and,  as 
an  electric  car  can  be  stopped  in 
less  than  its  own  length,  just  as 
safely  ;    in  crowded   parts   of  the 
city,  they  could  thread  their  way 
more  rapidly  through  the  crowds 
of  carts  and  other  vehicles,  because 
they  can  be  stopped  and   started 
more  quickly  and  require  less  room. 
But  it  would  be  upon  elevated  roads 
that  their  advantages  would  be  pro- 
nounced, for  we  should 
then  escape  much  of  the 
noise  and  all  of  the  smoke 
and  smell  that  now  at- 
tend the  passing  of  ele- 
vated trains. 

By  reason  of  our  abil- 
ity to  make  every  elec- 
trical car  its  own  loco- 

, .  motive,  it  is  clear  that  we 

uOJIBrci  toy  can  secure  greater  safety 
in  traveling,  and  greater 
frequency  in  the  times  of 
arrival  and  departure,  so  that  to  reach  the  depot  half  a  minute  too 
late  would  not  be  so  serious  a  thing  as  it  now  is.  As  each  car  is  very 
light,  it  can  be  stopped  in  a  much  shorter  distance  than  is  now  possible 
with  a  heavy  train  ;  and,  even  if  a  collision  should  occur,  it  would  not 


THE  ELECTRIC  RAILWAY.  751 

be  such  a  horrible  thing  as  a  collision  between  two  ponderous  trains, 
not  only  because  of  the  lightness  of  the  electric  cars,  but  also  because 
they  do  not  carry  steam  and  fire  as  locomotives  do.  Another  advan- 
tage of  the  lightness  of  the  cars  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  will  exert 
less  "  wear  and  tear  "  upon  the  tracks,  and  therefore  occasion  less  out- 
lay for  repairs. 

When  the  present  mode  of  traveling  in  Pullman  cars  is  compared 
with  the  mode  in  use  not  very  long  ago,  by  which  people  were  cramped 
for  hours  and  even  days  in  a  coach  without  springs  worth  calling  by 
that  name,  and  were  jolted  and  tossed  about  over  uneven  roads,  we 
conclude  that  traveling  at  the  present  time  is  a  very  luxurious  thing. 
But  what  will  it  be  when  we  can  sit  at  an  open  window,  and  glide 
along  at  the  rate  of  sixty  miles  an  hour,  without  the  fear  of  smoke 
or  cinders  ;  when  electric  bells  are  at  hand  leading  to  the  inaccessible 
retreats  where  porters  now  secrete  themselves  safe  from  discovery  ; 
when  we  can  start  from  our  homes  to  take  a  car  for  Boston,  as  we 
now  start  to  take  an  elevated  train,  knowing  that,  if  we  miss  one 
car,  another  will  be  soon  at  hand  ;  when  electric  incandescent  lamps, 
which  can  not,  in  case  of  accident,  scatter  burning  oil  in  all  directions, 
shall  fill  the  car  with  a  mild  and  steady  light  ;  when  dispatches  can  be 
received  on  board  a  train  in  motion  as  well  as  at  an  ofiice  ;  when  the 
cars  shall  be  heated  and  meals  prepared  by  electric  stoves  which  can 
not,  in  case  of  accident,  set  fire  to  the  car — all  the  electricity  needed  for 
these  and  numberless  other  purposes  being  derived  from  the  same  con- 
venient source — the  conductor  carrying  the  current  which  furnishes 
the  propelling  power  ? 

That  any  such  ideas  as  to  what  electricity  can  accomplish  are  vis- 
ionary and  impracticable  may  seem  to  be  the  case  to  some  ;  that  they 
are  so  in  reality  is  not  believed  by  many  who  have  given  the  subject 
impartial  study.  Some  of  these  believe  that,  in  the  very  near  future 
electric  cars  will  supplant  horse-cars  ;  and  upon  short  lines  like  ele- 
vated roads,  steam-locomotives  ;  but  that  it  will  not  be  practicable  for 
many  years  to  run  electrical  cars  upon  long  lines.  Such  may  be  the 
case.  But  it  should  be  remembered  that,  in  most  instances  in  the  his- 
tory of  industrial  progress,  the  practical  developments  of  meritorious 
systems  have  surpassed  in  rapidity  and  extent  the  expectations  of  even 
impartial  men.  A  very  high  scientific  authority  in  England  once 
spoke  very  favorably  of  the  idea  of  using  steam-vessels  for  accom- 
plishing short  distances,  and  for  river  navigation,  but  laughed  heartily 
over  the  suggestion  of  their  ever  going  to  sea,  and  offered  publicly 
to  eat  the  boilers  and  engines  of  the  first  one  that  should  cross  the 
Atlantic.  Probably  there  are  not  many  men  who,  in  the  light  of  what 
has  recently  been  accomplished,  would  promise  to  eat  the  motor  of 
the  first  electric  car  that  should  run  from  New  York  to  Chicago. 


752 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


PHOTOGRAPHrN"G  A   STREAK  OF  LIGHTNING. 

By  GASTON  TISSANDIEE. 

A  BOHEMIAN  observer,  M.  Robert  Haensel,  of  Reichenberg,  has 
succeeded  in  accurately  photographing  a  flash  of  lightning.  His 
pictures,  of  which  he  has  taken  several,  show  the  light  of  the  flash, 
under  the  form  of  long,  continuous  sparks,  traversing  the  atmosphere. 
With  the  spark  the  landscape  also  is  well  produced,  and  a  means  is 


FlQ.  1. 


PHOTOGRAPHING  A   STREAK  OF  LIGHTNING,    753 

given  for  estimating  the  length  of  the  luminous  train,  which,  in  one 
instance,  is  calculated  to  be  seventeen  hundred  metres,  or  more  than 
a  mile. 

Wheatstone  demonstrated  by  direct  experiments  of  great  ingenuity 
that  single  flashes  of  lightning  do  not  last  more  than  a  millionth  of  a 
second.  We  may  judge  from  this  of  the  wonderful  sensibility  of  the 
new  gelatine-bromide  plates  which  permit  the  taking  of  correct  views 
under  these  conditions. 

M.  Haensel  has  given  a  short  account  of  the  circumstances  under 
which  his  photographs  were  taken  and  of  the  processes  he  employed. 
On  the  6th  of  July,  1883,  during  a  storm,  when  the  sky  was  traversed 


Fig.  2. 

by  frequent  flashes  of  lightning,  he  turned  his  instrument  at  about  ten 
o'clock  in  the  evening  toward  that  point  whence  the  strongest  flashes 
seemed  to  issue.  The  apparatus  was  furnished  with  the  most  sensitive 
gelatine-bromide  plates,  and  the  flash  left  its  own  impression  upon 
them  as  it  was  formed.  Out  of  ten  plates  that  were  exposed,  he  ob- 
tained only  four  photographs,  of  two  of  which  we  here  give  exact 
copies,  taken  from  heliographic  reproductions  by  M.  Gillot,  of  Paris. 
The  first  figure  represents  two  flashes.  In  the  left  one  will  be  observed 
a  double  spark,  which  also  appears  triple  in  the  middle.  '^  '^~ 
VOL.  XXIV.— 48 


Simulta- 


754  TS^  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

neously  with  this  flash  the  sky  was  traversed  by  another,  which 
also  appears  ramified  in  even  a  more  complicated  manner  than  its 
companion.  The  second  figure  represents  in  all  its  beauty  a  flash 
with  many  extensive  and  divergent  ramifications. — Translated  for  the 
Popular  Science  Monthly  from  La  Nature. 


METHODS  OF  INSTPwUCTION  IK  MIXERALOGY.* 

By  M.  E.  WADSWOETH,  Ph.D., 
of  the  museum  of  comparative  zoology,  cambeidge,  mass. 

IN  the  present  discussions  concerning  the  relative  merits  of  classical 
and  scientific  studies  as  factors  in  education,  one  point  seems  to 
be  often  lost  sight  of  :  the  difference  between  instruction  given  for 
the  purpose  of  disciplining  the  mind  and  that  given  for  the  purpose 
of  imparting  information.  The  former  appears  to  be  the  chief  func- 
tion of  our  public  schools,  academies,  seminaries,  and  colleges  ;  the 
latter  the  principal  object  of  technological  and  professional  schools 
and  graduate  or  university  courses  proper. 

It  would  seem,  then,  that  it  is  necessary  for  any  one,  seeking  to 
replace  any  disciplinary  study  by  something  else,  to  show  that  the 
proposed  new  study  will  afford  an  equivalent  amount  in  kind.  In 
other  words,  if  the  scientist  can  not  show  that  the  studies  he  proposes 
to  introduce  into  our  colleges  and  high-schools  possess,  beyond  the 
information  given,  a  power  of  disciplining  the  mind,  in  certain  valu- 
able directions,  equal  to  any  other  studies,  his  case  had  better  be  aban- 
doned. Realizing  this,  it  is  proposed  to  show  how  instruction  in 
mineralogy  can  be  and  has  been  given  in  such  a  way  as  to  cultivate 
and  develop  faculties  of  the  greatest  value  and  use  to  any  man,  what- 
ever may  be  his  walk  in  life.  Of  necessity,  personal  experience  must 
be  ref eiTed  to  in  this  case,  which  is  the  excuse  for  the  seeming  egotism 
of  this  article. 

It  is  intended,  first,  to  show  how  this  was  accomplished  in  the  ele- 
mentary course  in  mineralogy  in  Harvard  College,  as  given  several 
years  ago.  This  course  extended  throughout  the  college  year,  re- 
quiring of  the  students  attendance  upon  three  lectures  a  week,  or  their 
equivalents,  and,  in  addition,  at  least  six  hours  of  laboratory  work. 
Since  it  (like  nearly  all  the  courses  in  Harvard)  was  an  elective,  it  was 
taken  only  by  a  limited  number  of  students. 

At  the  time  of  my  acquaintance  with  it,  as  a  pupil,  the  first  two 
and  a  half  months  were  devoted  to  crystallography,  while  determina- 
tive mineralogy  occupied  the  rest  of  the  year.  The  crystallography 
was  taught  by  means  of  crystal  models,  with  illustrations  taken  from 
natural  crystals,  and  embraced   certain  of  the  mathematical  princi- 

*  Abstract  of  a  paper  read  before  the  Society  of  Naturalists  of  Eastern  United  States, 
Ne^  York,  December  27,  1883. 


METHODS    OF  INSTRUCTION  IN  MINERALOGY.  755 

pies  ;  but  the  course  was  largely  devoted  to  the  drawing  of  figures  of 
crystals.  Nearly  all  of  this  instruction  was  of  a  kind  that  caused 
the  pupil  to  do  his  work  in  a  mechanical  manner,  following  "  thumb- 
rules  "  given  by  the  instructor.  The  student  evidently  was  not  ex- 
pected to  understand  the  reasons  for  his  work  —  the  great  object 
seemed  to  be  to  mechanically  produce  the  most  beautiful  and  perfect 
drawings  ;  and  on  this  part  of  the  course  itis  not  proposed  to  dwell. 

The  mineralogical  instruction  was  given  in  the  following  manner  : 
First,  there  had  been  chosen  a  set  of  the  most  important  mineral 
species,  amounting  to  over  two  hundred  in  all,  with  which  it  was 
thought  best  that  the  student  should  be  familiar.  A  sufficient  num- 
ber of  typical  specimens  of  each  species  and  its  important  varieties 
had  been  labeled  and  permanently  arranged,  according  to  Dana's 
"  System  of  Mineralogy,"  in  a  set  of  drawers  accessible  to  the  stu- 
dent. The  instructor,  with  the  specimens  before  him  and  the  stu- 
dents around  him,  proceeded  to  point  out  the  essential  characteristics 
of  these  minerals,  calling  attention  mainly  to  those  features  which 
would  distinguish  each  mineral  from  all  others  in  the  chosen  set. 
It  was  not  proposed  to  burden  the  pupil  with  long  descriptions  of 
each  mineral,  but  rather  to  require  him  to  know  and  understand  that 
which  separated  each  one  from  its  fellows,  and  caused  it  to  stand 
out  distinct  from  them.  To  this  end  every  means  of  determination 
that  seemed  essential  was  put  in  requisition,  except  quantitative  analy- 
sis. If  the  crystalline  form  was  sufficient,  the  student  was  not  ex- 
pected to  go  further.  If  the  physical  properties  sufficed,  that  was  all 
that  was  necessary  ;  if  not,  then  resort  must  be  had  to  the  blow- 
pipe, and  even  to  the  wet  tests.  The  student  was  taught  to  do  that 
which  the  practical  mineralogist  does — to  determine  his  minerals  by 
the  shortest  method  consistent  with  accuracy — the  method  to  vary 
according  to  the  specimen.  The  pupil  was  taught  to  observe  the 
color,  streak,  hardness,  etc.,  to  weigh  the  evidence  in  each  case,  and 
to  decide  according  to  the  weight  of  the  evidence.  No  guess-work 
was  permitted,  but  some  decisive  test  was  required  which  should  prove 
that  the  specimen  belonged  to  the  species  to  which  it  had  been  as- 
signed. After  a  certain  group  had  been  passed  over  by  the  instructor 
— as,  for  instance,  the  picked  species  of  the  native  elements,  sulphides, 
etc.,  and  sulpharsenites,  etc.,  of  Dana's  system — each  student  was  as- 
signed a  drawer  containing  specimens  of  these  minerals,  unlabeled  and 
mixed  together.  These  specimens  were  selected  so  as  to  be  fair  repre- 
sentatives of  the  species  and  varieties,  but  yet  sufficiently  difficult  and 
varied  to  bring  into  play  the  student's  faculties  which  it  was  desired  to 
cultivate.  As  aids,  the  student  was  allowed  his  lecture-notes,  Dana's 
"  System  of  Mineralogy,"  and  the  lecture-drawers  of  labeled  minerals. 

After  sufficient  time  had  been  given  for  the  laboratory- work,  each 
student  was  expected  to  be  questioned,  during  the  lecture-hour,  upon 
such  specimens  as  the  instructor  chose  from  his  drawer.     The  student 


756  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

was  required  not  only  to  name  the  specimen,  but  also  to  give  his  proofs 
why  this  belonged  to  a  certain  species  and  not  to  any  other. 

After  this  laboratory  work  had  been  performed,  the  instructor 
passed  on  to  the  next  group — the  chlorides,  etc.,  fluorides  and  oxides  of 
Dana's  system.  Lectures  with  the  succeeding  laboratory  work  fol- 
lowed, but  in  the  drawers  for  determination  there  were  placed  speci- 
mens not  only  of  this  group  but  also  of  the  preceding  group.  This 
was  followed  throughout  the  year,  so  that  the  student  was  unable  to 
lose  sight  of  any  species  he  had  previously  studied.  Written  exami- 
nations were  occasionally  interspersed,  in  which  the  student  was  re- 
quired to  determine  a  certain  number  of  picked  specimens  that  were 
placed  before  him,  and  write  out  the  reasons  for  his  determinations. 
This  system  of  instruction,  I  believe,  was  devised  by  the  teacher  of  the 
course  at  that  time,  Professor  J.  P.  Cooke.  After  having  endeavored 
to  inform  myself  as  to  the  methods  of  instruction  in  elementary  min- 
eralogy both  in  this  country  and  in  Europe,  I  have  as  yet  failed  to 
find  one  that,  in  my  judgment,  equals  this,  both  for  the  mental  disci- 
pline and  the  practical  instruction  it  gives ;  and  I  take  pleasure  in 
acknowledging  my  great  obligations  and  gratitude  to  Professor  Cooke 
for  the  mineralogical  instruction  I  received  from  him  in  that  course. 

When,  in  the  process  of  time,  this  course  passed  under  my  charge, 
great  modifications  were  made  in  it ;  the  crystallography  was  reduced 
in  amount  and  lithology  added.  By  a  different  arrangement  the  crys- 
tallography was  taught  in  six  lectures.  In  these,  by  means  of  a  few 
simple  principles,  the  student  was  taught  to  recognize  readily  to  which 
form  the  planes  of  any  crystal  belonged,  no  matter  how  many  different 
forms  might  be  represented.  Further  than  this  it  did  not  seem  prac- 
ticable to  go,  without  entering  upon  an  extended  course  of  instruction 
and  practice  in  mathematical  crystallography,  which  would  have  con- 
sumed the  entire  time  of  the  course.  However,  it  was  found  that  the 
students  were  better  trained  for  the  practical  application  of  crystal- 
lography to  determinative  mineralogy  by  this  brief  course  than  they 
had  formerly  been  by  the  two  and  a  half  months'  instruction  previ- 
ously given. 

Another  radical  change  was  the  substitution  for  the  "general 
quiz  "  of  all  the  students,  at  the  lecture-hour,  of  an  hour's  oral  ex- 
amination for  each  student.  Each  one  was  required  to  arrange  some 
hour  in  which  he  could  meet  the  instructor  alone  in  his  room,  with 
his  (the  student's)  crystal  models,  or  drawer  of  specimens,  as  the 
case  might  be.  During  that  hour  he  was  carefully  questioned  upon 
the  material,  and  every  effort  was  made  to  lead  him  to  express  his 
ideas  clearly.  He  was  cross-examined  on  every  point,  relating  not 
only  to  general  principles,  but  also  to  the  particular  specimens  in 
hand.  He  was  required  to  state  what  characters  were  upon  the  speci- 
mens, how  he  determined  them,  and  what  their  relations  were  to  oth- 
ers.    If  it  was  found  that  the  student's  methods  were  imperfect,  his 


METHODS    OF  INSTRUCTION  IN  MINERALOGY.  757 

logic  defective,  or  that  he  had  misunderstood  anything  in  the  lec- 
tures, every  effort  was  made  to  set  him  right.  The  examination  was 
really  made  a  pleasant  conversation  between  two  friends,  in  which 
one  constantly  endeavored  to  draw  the  other  out,  place  him  at  his  ease, 
and  enable  him  to  tell  what  he  knew.  Methods  of  thought  and  work 
were  the  great  objects,  far  more  than  correctly  naming  the  specimens. 
In  such  an  examination  as  this  the  student  was  obliged  to  depend  upon 
his  merits.  The  teacher  must  have  indeed  been  a  poor  one  if  he  could 
not  in  that  hour  find  out,  to  a  far  greater  extent  than  the  student 
dreamed  or  suspected,  what  he  knew  and  what  his  methods  of  thought 
and  work  were.  Every  effort  was  made  to  render  the  student  an  inde- 
pendent thinker,  to  cultivate  in  him  accuracy  and  quickness  of  observa- 
tion and  readiness  of  perception,  to  lead  him  to  rely  upon  himself,  to 
weigh  evidence,  to  reason  closely,  to  form  an  opinion,  and  give  his 
reasons  therefor — to  see,  to  be  accurate,  to  reason,  to  judge,  to  decide. 
'The  time  was  also  improved  as  a  means  of  getting  hold  of  him  and 
establishing  cordial  relations  with  him  ;  as  well  as  to  turn  him  uncon- 
sciously in  the  right  direction,  and  to  come  into  that  close  personal 
contact  which  it  is  so  difficult  to  bring  about  in  a  large  university,  but 
which  is  so  precious  and  valuable.  Since  these  hourly  examinations 
were  repeated  with  each  pupil  for  each  group,  the  chief  drawback  was 
the  tax  upon  the  instructor's  time  and  strength,  as  any  one  can  readily 
realize  when  he  considers  that  this  species  of  mental  gymnastics  was 
kept  up  from  six  to  ten  hours  a  day,  and  that  there  were  seven  groups 
requiring  from  twenty-six  to  thirty  hours  in  each  group.  It  is  to  be 
borne  in  mind  that  this  work  was  entirely  voluntary  on  the  instructor's 
part,  but  it  paid  in  the  results  to  the  students,  and  in  many  of  them  it 
has  influenced  powerfully  their  after-life. 

The  students  attending  the  course  comprised  freshmen,  sopho- 
mores, juniors,  seniors,  graduates,  specials,  and  scientific  school  stu- 
dents— a  perfectly  natural  result  from  the  extended  elective  system  of 
Harvard.  I  am  free  to  confess  that,  for  a  course  like  the  one  above  de- 
scribed, I  much  prefer  freshmen  and  sophomores  to  juniors  and  sen- 
iors. The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  prime  objects  of  such  a 
course  are  to  cultivate  observation  and  accuracy,  train  the  powers  of 
reasoning  and  judgment,  and  above  all  to  beget  in  the  student  inde- 
pendence and  freedom  of  thought.  The  previous  training  of  the 
upper-class  men  had  usually  been  such  as  to  cramp  and  weaken  what- 
ever faculties  in  these  directions  they  might  have  originally  possessed, 
and  hence  it  was  exceedingly  difficult  to  stimulate  them  to  right  meth- 
ods of  work  and  thought.  This  was  strikingly  exemplified  in  the  case^ 
of  those  students  who  were  thoroughly  conversant  with  the  blow-pipe,, 
from  their  previous  study  of  chemistry.  It  was  with  the  greatest  diffi- 
culty that  they  could  be  prevented  from  taking  some  one  of  the  nu- 
merous artificial  blow-pipe  keys  for  the  determination  of  minerals,, 
shutting  their  eyes  to  all  the  physical  characters,  transforming  them- 


758  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

selves  into  mere  wind-machines,  and  mechanically  grinding  out  their 
results. 

One  question  will  naturally  arise  in  the  minds  of  every  one  :  Can 
similar  methods  be  applied  in  giving  instruction  for  a  limited  time 
when  the  means  and  appliances  for  determination  are  of  themselves 
much  circumscribed  ?  In  one  case  this  has  been  practically  answered 
by  myself,  in  giving  instruction  in  the  rudiments  of  mineralogy  and 
lithology  in  the  Museum  of  Comparative  Zoology.  The  problem  was 
to  take  dust-covered  minerals  and  rocks  that  had  accumulated  through 
many  years — some  good,  but  most  of  them  mere  rubbish,  the  odds  and 
ends  of  various  collections — and  give  a  two  and  a  half  months'  course. 
From  the  necessity  of  the  case,  no  blow-pipes  could  be  used  in  the 
building,  there  were  no  crystal  models,  and  the  whole  apparatus  for 
qualitative  tests  was  a  bottle  of  hydrochloric  acid  and  a  few  test-tubes 
which  could  be  used  in  the  cold.  Streakers,  magnifying-glasses,  mag- 
nets, and  a  knife  or  file,  with  some  broken  glass,  completed  the  outfit. 
The  miscellaneous  collection  of  minerals  and  rocks  was  washed  and 
sorted,  and  such  specimens  as  could  be  used  were  labeled  and  placed  in 
drawers  accessible  to  the  students.  With  this  material  it  was  impossi- 
ble to  arrange  test-drawers  as  described  in  the  previous  course.  The 
instructor  then  directed  the  attention  of  the  students  to  those  physical 
and  chemical  characters  of  the  specimens  that  they  could  make  use  of. 
The  same  general  system  was  pursued  as  before,  so  far  as  the  differ- 
ent conditions  would  permit — the  object  being  the  same,  to  impart 
valuable  instruction  together  with  mental  training.  The  students,  un- 
der the  direction  of  the  instructor,  worked  over  the  labeled  drawers, 
and  determined  for  themselves  why  the  specimens  were  labeled  as 
they  were.  At  the  end  of  the  course  a  series  of  minerals  and  rocks 
was  placed  before  each  student,  and  he  was  required  to  determine 
them,  writing  out  his  reasons  therefor.  The  result  far  exceeded  my 
expectations.  Out  of  thirty-eight  students  examined,  comprising  fresh- 
men, sophomores,  juniors,  seniors,  graduates,  special  and  engineering 
students,  thirteen  took  over  ninety  per  cent,  three  of  whom  had  the 
maximum  mark ;  twelve  obtained  over  eighty  per  cent,  five  over 
seventy  per  cent,  four  between  fifty  and  sixty  per  cent,  and  four  be- 
tween ten  and  fifty  per  cent. 

That  this  course  afforded  an  intellectual  discipline  of  advantage  to 
the  student  has  been  shown,  among  various  ways,  by  the  testimony  of 
one  of  the  sophomore  students.  His  time  later  was  largely  devoted 
to  philosophical  studies,  including  language  and  history,  and  after 
graduation  he  pursued  the  same  studies  at  Harvard  and  in  the  best 
European  universities.  After  his  return  from  Europe  and  his  estab- 
lishment as  an  instructor  in  his  favorite  branches,  he  informed  me  that 
this  brief  course  had  been  of  permanent  advantage  to  him  in  his  later 
studies,  and  that  it  was  one  of  the  very  few  of  the  courses  taken  in 
college  upon  which  he  could  look  back  with  any  satisfaction  and  be- 


METHODS    OF  INSTRUCTION  IN  MINERALOGY,  759 

lieve  it  had  materially  aided  him  both  in  mental  discipline  and  in  meth- 
ods of  study.  I  speak  of  this  simply  to  fortify  my  claim  that  miner- 
alogy when  rightly  taught  affords  in  certain  directions  a  most  valuable 
means  of  intellectual  training. 

In  most  localities,  especially  in  regions  of  crystalline  rocks,  the 
teacher,  even  with  very  limited  means,  can  usually  procure  many 
specimens  of  at  least  a  few  species,  which  he  can  arrange  for  his  stu- 
dents, and  practice  them  upon  in  such  a  manner  as  to  bring  into  play 
the  required  faculties.  This  method  can  even  be  pursued  with  large 
audiences,  if  specimens  enough  can  be  obtained. 

Besides  exercising  the  pupils  on  the  selected  collection,  they  should 
be  encouraged  to  seek  the  specimens  themselves  in  the  field.  Every 
means  possible  should  be  taken  to  develop  in  them  methods  of  thought 
and  work  that  will  bear  fruit  in  their  future  life.  Far  less  should  be 
thought  of  training  mineralogists  than  of  training  men. 

In  giving  advanced  instruction,  the  secret  seems  to  be  to  bring  the 
student  up  to  the  level  of  the  instructor  ;  to  see  that  he  has  a  broad 
and  thorough  knowledge  of  the  principles  and  necessary  data  of  the 
science  ;  to  point  out  to  him  the  untrodden  fields  ;  to  strengthen  and 
exercise  him  so  that  he  may  walk  without  the  teacher's  aid.  The  great 
aim  should  be  to  render  the  student  independent  in  his  thought  and 
work,  to  free  him  from  a  slavish  following  after  mere  weight  of  au- 
thority, and  to  beget  in  him  a  desire  to  seek  truth  for  its  own  sake.  He 
should  be  so  trained  and  strengthened  that,  when  away  from  the  instruct- 
or's aid,  he  can  walk  in  the  untried  grounds  with  a  firm  and  steady  step. 

The  preceding  has  not  been  given  as  of  necessity  the  most  perfect 
way,  but  simply  as  a  way  for  reaching  certain  results. 

Far  more,  indeed,  depends  upon  the  teacher  and  his  spirit  than 
upon  the  method,  however  valuable  the  latter  may  be. 

It  may  also  not  be  amiss  to  call  attention  to  certain  requirements 
in  the  teacher.  That  an  original  investigator  in  any  science  may  be  a 
poor  instructor  in  that  science  is  too  well  known  to  be  disputed,  but  I 
believe  it  to  be  equally  true,  that  no  man  can  teach  any  science  in 
spirit  and  truth — can  produce  upon  his  pupils  the  effect  that  ought  to 
be  produced — unless  he  has  the  spirit  and  knowledge  of  an  investigator 
himself.  In  truth,  it  is  confidently  believed  that  no  man  can  be  a 
teacher  of  the  highest  order  who  has  not  walked  in  the  temple  of 
mystery  itself,  and  wrung  from  Mother  Nature  some  of  her  closely- 
guarded  secrets.  As  well  ask  one  who  has  only  read  about  disease  to 
properly  teach  medical  students  the  practice  of  medicine  as  to  ask  one 
who  has  only  read  about  any  science  to  give  proper  instruction  to  his 
students  in  it.  Yet  this  is  the  thing  which  the  majority  of  our  col- 
leges are  doing,  and  they  fill  their  chairs  as  if  they  thought  a  thorough 
training  in  any  science  disqualified  a  man  for  teaching  it.  And  then 
we  are  told  that  science-teaching  is  a  failure  !  Is  not  the  failure  more 
in  the  teachers  chosen  than  in  the  subjects  ? 


76o  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

PHYSIOLOGICAL  SIGOTFICAKCE  OF  VITAL  FOECE. 

By  WILLIAM  G.  STEVENSON,  M.  D. 

MODERN  science  has  so  extended  the  horizon  of  our  mental  per- 
spective, has  achieved  such  brilliant  triumphs  in  so  many  depart- 
ments of  thought,  and,  on  the  basis  of  verified  fact,  has  erected  such 
an  imposiug  superstructure  of  useful  knowledge  in  the  domain  of  in- 
organic nature,  that  some,  rejecting  the  vitalistic  theories  of  the  past, 
have  accepted  the  belief  that  the  deeper  mysteries  of  vital  phenomena 
will,  in  a  final  analysis,  be  demonstrated  to  be  but  resultants  of  physi- 
cal forces  acting  under  the  complex  conditions  of  organization. 

To  investigate  and  interpret  the  varied  phenomena  of  nature  is  the 
unquestioned  prerogative  of  the  human  intellect ;  but  science,  having 
to  do  only  with  "  particular  orders  of  phenomena  which  exist  in  rela- 
tion to  the  percipient  mind  "  and  are  susceptible  of  verification,  does 
not  hope  to  solve  the  prof  ound  mysteries  involved  in  the  ultimate  reali- 
ties of  either  matter,  energy,  or  life.  With  restless  energy  the  human 
mind  presses  on  in  its  search  for  truth,  and  brings  from  varied  sources 
new  facts  to  add  to  the  sum  of  knowledge,  until  the  conclusion  is 
reached  that  matter  is  indestructible  and  energy  persistent,  and  in  the 
formulated  laws  of  the  "  correlation  and  conservation  of  energy  "  the 
widest  generalizations  are  made.  In  thus  classifying  and  uniting  the 
manifestations  of  matter  and  of  life,  whether  morphological  or  physio- 
logical, under  one  general  cosmic  law,  their  explanation  is  made  com- 
plete within  the  limits  of  the  known. 

Phenomena  are  explained,  but  the  absolute  remains  unrevealed. 
The  questions  still  are  asked  :  What  is  gravity  ?  What  are  chemical, 
electrical,  and  vital  forces  ?  What  is  the  essential  nature  of  matter, 
energy,  and  life  ?     There  is  no  oracle  to  answer. 

The  study  of  vital  phenomena  is  difficult  because  of  their  complex 
character,  and,  in  the  absence  of  exact  analysis,  speculative  philosophy 
has  for  many  ages  ventured  different  theories  in  explanation  of  their 
nature.  In  seeking  to  give  the  present  status  of  physiological  science 
on  this  important  question,  it  is  of  interest  to  take  a  general  historical 
retrospect,  in  order  that  the  steps  of  progress  may  be  observed. 

The  atomic  philosophy,  as  taught  by  Democritus  and  Epicurus, 
recognized  but  one  kind  of  matter,  whose  elements,  by  virtue  of  their 
various  forms,  had  the  property  of  diversified  and  endless  combina- 
tions. ,  This  play  of  atoms,  independent  of  an  overruling  intelli- 
gence, produced  the  worlds  of  inorganic  and  of  organized  matter, 
which  move  on  in  endless  cycles  and  are  obedient  only  to  physical 
forces. 

Plato  regarded  the  intelligent  soul  as  of  dual  character  :  one  part, 
located  in  the  body,  being  mortal  and  presiding  over  the  appetites  and 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  VITAL  FORCE.  761 

passions  ;  the  other  part,  located  in  the  head,  being  immortal  and  the 
source  of  reason. 

The  nature  of  the  function  of  the  brain  and  of  the  nervous  system 
was  unknown  to  Aristotle,  who  thought  the  soul  contained  the  body 
having  its  mortal  part  located  in  the  heart.  He,  as  well  as  Plato, 
thought  the  "pneuma,"  or  breath,  was  to  cool  the  blood,  and  in  some 
way  act  as  an  instrument  of  mind  over  bodily  actions.  The  vital  prin- 
ciple of  all  life-forms  resides  in  a  germ  ;  *'  this  principle,  while  it  resem- 
bles heat,  is  not  fire,  but  a  spirit  similar  in  nature  to  the  sun  and  stars." 

Hippocrates  accepted  the  Pythagorean  doctrine  of  the  four  ele- 
ments, and  from  it  developed  his  theory  of  four  principal  "  humors  " 
of  the  body.  He  taught  the  existence  of  an  "  intermediate  nature," 
which,  though  distinct  from  the  mortal  soul  or  pneuma,  was  the  source 
of  vital  activity. 

The  pneuma  was  deemed  such  an  important  factor  in  the  expla- 
nation of  vital  phenomena,  that  a  school  called  "  Pneumatists  "  was 
founded  in  the  first  century  of  our  era.  It  was  not  then  known  that 
the  arteries  contained  blood,  but  they  were  regarded  as  the  channels 
through  which  the  pneuma  passed  throughout  the  body  ;  and  this 
pneuma  was  to  Galen,  a.  d.  130,  identical  with  the  soul.  For  fourteen 
hundred  years  "  pneumatism,"  under  varied  forms,  was  the  accepted 
philosophic  belief  of  the  civilized  world,  and  only  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  sixteenth  century  did  anatomical  study  enable  Sylvius,  Fallopius, 
Fabricius,  and  Harvey,  to  modify  the  prevailing  belief  of  bodily  func- 
tions. Then  it  was  that  Paracelsus  sought  to  explain  vital  phenomena 
through  the  agency  of  an  "  archseus "  or  demon,  which,  he  affirmed, 
was  located  in  the  stomach,  and  presided  over  the  processes  of  nutri- 
tion, separating  the  useful  from  the  poisonous  part  of  the  food. 

Van  Helmont  adopted  the  idea  of  an  archaeus,  but  thought  it  an 
immaterial  though  personal  force  or  entity,  which  "  presided  over  all 
bodily  functions  "  and  gave  to  each  member  of  the  body  its  own  spe- 
cial "  vital  spirit."  The  consensus  of  all  these  vital  spirits  produced 
health,  and  their  disagreement  disease. 

Van  Helmont  "  discovered  gaseous  substances  and  identified  the 
archaeus  itself  with  gas."  He  proclaimed  the  existence  of  a  general 
bond  of  sympathy  throughout  the  universe,  because  of  the  "  vital  spir- 
its "  which  resided  in  all  forms  of  matter. 

Descartes  regarded  the  body  simply  as  a  complex  machine,  acting 
under  conditions  of  physical  forces,  and  all  the  phenomena  of  life  were 
but  the  products  of  their  working.  The  soul,  however,  was  a  hihger 
and  independent  principle  which,  located  in  the  pineal  gland,  made 
itself  known  by  thought,  and  took  its  temporary  abode  in  the  body, 
simply  as  a  spectator  of  vital  functions. 

Leibnitz,  while  admitting  a  harmony  established  by  Divine  power, 
denied  to  soul  and  body  any  reciprocal  influence,  saying  :  "  The  body 
goes  on  in  its  development  mechanically,  and  the  laws  of  mechanics 


762  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

are  never  transgressed  in  its  natural  motions.  Everything  takes  place 
in  souls  as  though  there  were  no  body,  and  in  the  body  everything 
takes  place  as  though  there  were  no  soul." 

Lord  Bacon  accepted  the  doctrine  of  "  vital  spirits  "  as  applied  to 
both  animate  and  inanimate  bodies. 

Glisson  believed  in  "  vital  spirits  intermediate  between  the  soul  and 
organs,"  and  regarded  "  irritability  as  a  force  of  which  perception  and 
appetite  are  factors." 

Stahl,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  enunciated  the  doctrine  that 
chemical  forces  and  vital  force  not  only  differ  from  each  other,  but  are 
antagonistic.  Chemical  forces  are  destructive  of  the  living  body,  and 
are  held  in  abeyance,  and  their  disintegrating  power  is  neutralized  by 
a  vital  force  which  resides  in  the  body  and  ministers  to  its  functions. 
"  This  vital  force,  struggling  against  physical  force,  acts  intelligently, 
upon  a  definite  plan,  for  the  preservation  of  the  organism  "  ;  its  tri- 
umph secures  life,  while  the  rule  of  the  physical  forces  alone  brings 
death.  The  theories  of  "  vitalism  "  and  "  animism  "  thus  took  their 
places  among  the  philosophic  ventures  of  the  age. 

Borden,  Barthez,  and  Grimaud,  "  representing  the  school  of  Mont- 
pellier,"  accepted  "  vitalism  "  but  rejected  "  animism."  The  principle 
of  life  was  believed  to  be  distinct  from  the  soul,  though  it  was  thought 
to  operate  independently  of  mechanical  or  chemical  laws. 

Haller  inaugurated  the  inductive  method  in  physiological  science, 
and,  by  experiments,  located  irritability  in  the  muscular  tissue  and 
sensibility  in  the  nervous  tissue. 

Buffon  explained  vital  phenomena  through  the  instrumentality  of 
"  organic  molecules  "  which,  differing  in  form  and  nature,  were  inde- 
structible and  endowed  with  the  "properties  of  vitality."  These 
molecules,  when  associated,  not  only  gave  specific  character  to  each 
part  of  the  organism,  and  provided  for  its  physiological  activity,  but 
became  the  perennial  source  of  life. 

In  order  to  explain  how  the  organic  molecules  became  arranged 
into  the  specific  forms  of  life,  and  preserved  individual  and  type  iden- 
tity in  nutrition  and  reproduction,  Buffon  projected  his  theory  of  "  in- 
terior molds,"  by  which,  in  connection  with  the  "  organic  molecules," 
he  sought  to  account  for  all  the  phenomena  of  the  organic  world.  It 
was  not  until  1827,  when  the  ovule  in  the  ovarian  follicle  of  mamma- 
lians was  discovered  by  De  Baer,  that  the  theory  of  "  organic  mole- 
cules "  and  "  interior  molds  "  was  overthrown.  A  single  demonstrated 
fact  destroyed  the  speculations  of  an  age. 

Bonnet's  theory  of  "  included  germs  "  was  another  example  of  rea- 
soning from  premises  that  had  not  been  verified,  and  the  result  was 
disastrous  to  the  subjective  method.  He  taught  that  the  germs  of  all 
life-forms  not  only  pre-existed  in  their  first-created  representative,  but 
actually  contained  within  themselves,  already  formed,  all  the  parts  of 
the  future  organism. 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  VITAL  FORCE.  763 

Logical  deduction  and  scientific  research,  according  to  the  beliefs 
and  methods  of  the  age,  permitted  such  doctrines  to  receive  for  a  time 
the  approval  of  popular  assent.  But  the  spirit  of  inquiry  was  abroad 
in  the  world,  and  the  advance  of  embryological  science  soon  gave  the 
demonstration  that  the  doctrine  of  "  included  germs  "  had  no  founda- 
tion in  fact,  and  so  it  was  numbered  with  the  errors  of  the  past. 

Cuvier,  who  had  with  such  ability  compared  the  structure  of  ani- 
mal organs,  and  classified  the  facts  of  animal  life  in  their  statical  or 
anatomical  relationship,  was  a  "  vitalist,"  and  thought  the  vital  prop- 
erties of  the  body  a  kind  of  entity — independent  of  physical  or  chemi- 
cal forces. 

Bichat  sought,  by  a  study  of  the  tissues  which  composed  the  or- 
gans, to  learn  the  nature  of  their  functions,  or  the  dynamics  of  the 
living  body.  He  found  that  all  the  various  kinds  of  tissue  of  the 
body,  though  differing  in  function,  were  endowed  with  two  common 
properties — extensibility  and  contractility. 

While  he  made  phenomena  depend  on  the  properties  of  matter,  he 
nevertheless  followed  Stahl  as  a  "  vitalist,"  and  claimed  that  vital  and 
physical  properties  are  not  only  distinct  from  but  antagonistic  to  each 
other  :  "  The  vital  properties  preserve  the  living  body  by  counteract- 
ing the  physical  properties  that  tend  to  destroy  it."  Each  class  of 
phenomena  is  under  distinct  laws,  and  the  conflict  between  them  is 
active  and  constant.  As  one  or  the  other  triumphs,  life  or  death  re- 
sults, and  "health  and  disease  are  but  the  vicissitudes  of  the  strife." 

Life  is,  by  Bichat,  defined  as  "  the  group  of  functions  that  resist 
death,"  and  is  under  the  direct  supervision  of  a  special  principle  called 
at  different  times  "  soul,"  "  archseon,"  " psyche,"  or  "vital  force."  The 
philosophic  theory  which  postulated  this  undetermined  factor  was 
known  by  the  generic  term  of  "vitalism,"  which,  under  Stahl  and 
Bichat,  took  accurate  definition,  and  deeply  impressed  its  tenets  upon 
the  physical,  chemical,  and  physiological  sciences  of  the  age. 

Entities  of  some  kind  presided  over  the  functions  of  life  and  the 
manifestations  of  matter.  A  "  vital  principle  "  ruled  the  organic  world, 
and  the  phenomena  of  inorganic  nature  depended  upon  the  presence 
of  some  "  principle  "  which  existed  independent  of  the  matter  through 
which  it  displayed  itself.  Material  particles,  darting  from  luminous 
bodies  into  the  eye,  produced  the  sensation  of  light.  Heat  and  cold 
depended  upon  the  presence  or  absence  of  a  material  substance  called 
"  caloric."  Electricity  was  a  subtile,  material  agent,  existing  in  a 
"  latent "  state  in  all  substances,  and  manifesting  great  power  when 
liberated  from  its  repose.  And  so  throughout  the  domain  of  chemical, 
physical,  and  biological  phenomena,  material  entities  existed  and  were 
manifested  in  all  forms  of  inorganic  and  organic  bodies,  and  yet  were 
independent  of  them. 

This  was  not  an  age  for  synthetic  work  ;  indeed,  not  even  accurate 
analytic  work,  except  in  simple  things,  could  be  performed.     These 


764  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

are  possible  only  when  facts  have  been  observed,  and  definite  knowl- 
edge has  been  acquired  in  special  directions.  In  the  sixteenth  century, 
alchemy,  having  failed  to  discover  the  philosopher's  stone,  sought  to 
find  chemical  remedies  for  diseases.  Crude  theories  were  supported 
by  a  few  facts  wrongly  interpreted. 

Early  in  the  seventeenth  century  Glauber  states  that  salt  is  the 
origin  of  all  things.  Boyle  argues  against  the  theory  that  "salt, 
sulphur,  and  mercury  are  the  principles  of  things,"  and  makes  heat  a 
powerful  factor  in  originating  new  bodies.  Becher  thought  that  metals 
consisted  of  earth,  of  which  there  were  three  kinds — fusible  or  stony, 
fatty  or  fluid,  and  a  "  something  of  which  they  became  deprived  on 
ignition."  This  "something"  Stahl  named  "phlogiston,"  which  is 
akin  to  "  spirits  "  and  "  souls  "  of  the  alchemists. 

The  phlogistic  theory  of  Stahl  was  without  foundation  in  fact,  and 
yet,  based  upon  experimental  data,  it  was  a  step  upward  in  chemical 
research,  and  held  the  minds  of  all  for  over  one  hundred  and  fifty 
years,  including  such  great  names  in  the  eighteenth  century  as  Hales, 
Black,  Scheele,  Priestley,  Cavendish,  and  Lavoisier.  Then  it  was  that 
the  analytic  method  became  more  accurate.  Black,  with  the  balance, 
demonstrated  that  the  ignition  of  the  metals  magnesium  and  calcium 
gave  no  evidence  that  a  ponderable  "  caloric  "  entered  into  them,  but, 
to  the  contrary,  a  peculiar  "  fixed  air  "  was  expelled  from  them,  which 
rendered  them  lighter  than  before  they  were  burned. 

The  foundation  of  quantitative  chemistry  was  thus  laid,  and  the 
existence  of  "  imponderable  "  agents  in  nature  questioned.  The  dis- 
covery of  "  dephlogisticated  air "  by  Priestley,  the  investigation  of 
gases  by  Cavendish,  of  heat  and  fire  by  Scheele,  and  of  insoluble  min- 
erals by  Bergman — ^by  means  of  the  blow-pipe — were  important  addi- 
tions to  chemical  knowledge,  and  enabled  Lavoisier  to  generalize  the 
facts  already  discovered.  He  announced  a  new  theory  of  combustion, 
and,  by  questioning  the  existence  of  phlogiston,  and  showing  that 
"  principles  should  not  be  assumed  where  they  could  not  be  detected," 
revolutionized  chemistry  and  gave  it  a  new  impulse,  which  has  been 
quickened  by  every  discovery  since  made. 

Analysis  of  inorganic  bodies  increased,  new  facts  accumulated, 
and  new  interpretations  of  phenomena  were  given,  until  the  atomic 
theory,  first  suggested  by  Dalton  in  1804,  was  promulgated  under  the 
great  generalization  known  as  the  law  of  Avogadro  or  Ampere,  which 
makes  "  equal  volumes  of  all  substances,  when  in  a  state  of  gas,  and 
under  like  conditions,  contain  the  same  number  of  molecules." 

This  was  the  birth  of  modern  chemistry,  and,  though  it  received 
attention  when  first  enunciated  in  1811,  its  far-reaching  principles  of 
truth  were  neither  fully  understood  nor  accepted  for  half  a  century 
afterward. 

Chemistry,  free  from  the  errors  of  the  past,  now  seeks  to  discover 
in  the  organic  world  the  relations  of  different  substances,  as  it  has 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  VITAL  FORCE.  765 

sought  to  know  their  relations  in  inorganic  nature,  and  already  the 
evidence  is  prophetic  of  wonderful  results. 

In  physical  philosophy,  "  Stahlism  "  received  its  mortal  wound  at 
the  close  of  the  last  century  by  the  experiments  of  Rumf  ord  and  Davy, 
which  negated  the  theory  of  "  caloric  "  and  demonstrated  heat  to  be  a 
"  mode  of  motion." 

This  new  doctrine,  though  founded  on  a  demonstrated  fact,  was 
not  complete  until  1850,  when  Joule,  having  determined  the  mechani- 
cal equivalent  of  heat  and  established  the  law  of  thermo-dynamics, 
made  possible  the  classification  of  facts  determined  by  Young,  Mel- 
loni,  Faraday,  Liebig,  Mayer,  Grove,  Helmholtz,  Carpenter,  Tyndall, 
Henry,  and  others,  which  enabled  the  deduction  to  be  made  of  the 
universal  laws  of  the  "  correlation  and  conservation  of  energy." 

In  inorganic  nature,  unity,  under  law,  is  an  accepted  fact,  and 
analysis  and  synthesis  harmonize  as  to  causes  and  effects  ;  but  in  the 
organic  world  there  are  yet  many  unknown  quantities,  and  the  prog- 
ress in  solving  the  mysteries  of  life-action  is  necessarily  slow,  because 
of  their  complex  character. 

To  some,  "  vitalism  "  yet  maintains  its  position  in  the  philosophic 
realm  of  organization,  and  a  "  vital  force,"  independent  of  and  antago- 
nistic to  physical  force,  yet  presides  over  the  manifestations  of  organic 
bodies.  This,  if  true,  necessitates  "  two  distinct  sciences  and  two  dis- 
tinct orders  in  nature,"  which,  though  related,  are  not  reciprocal. 
This  view  is  not  in  harmony  with  either  chemical,  physical,  or  biologi- 
cal science  of  the  present  day,  and  stands  in  direct  contradiction  to  the 
accepted  doctrine  of  the  correlation  and  conservation  of  energy. 

Whatever  may  be  the  essential  nature  of  the  ultimate  life-principle 
— with  which  science  has  nothing  to  do — it  can  not  be  denied  that  life- 
phenomena  are  presented  to  us  only  through  forms  of  matter.  Mat- 
ter, or  material  organization,  is,  therefore,  so  far  as  human  knowledge 
goes,  an  absolute  condition  upon  which  all  life-manifestations  depend, 
and  to  assert,  as  do  the  "  vitalists,"  that  this  vital  energy — an  agency 
which  can  not  be  verified,  though  dependent  upon  a  material  condi- 
tion for  a  display  of  its  action — is  not  related  to  it,  but  is  independent 
of  it  and  under  distinct  and  antagonistic  laws,  is  an  assumption  at 
variance  with  scientific  truth  and  reason. 

Doubtless  one  common  source  of  error  in  the  minds  of  the  disciples 
of  "  vitalism "  is  inaccurate  definition,  confounding,  as  they  do,  the 
scientific  meaning  of  a  term  with  its  philosophical  or  metaphysical 
significance.  Thus,  the  term  "  life,"  when  applied  to  the  higher  ani- 
mals, is,  to  the  metaphysical  philosopher,  often  related  to,  or  made 
synonymous  with,  the  "  soul " ;  while  to  the  physiologist  it  refers 
only  to  the  sum  of  phenomena  arising  in  organized  bodies.  If  what 
"  can  not  be  explained  by  chemistry  or  physics  "  constitutes  the  vital 
functions,  then,  by  simply  eliminating  the  known  or  non-vital  factors, 
we  may  easily  learn  the  exact  amount  of  the  vital  element. 


766  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

Science  has  already  "  banished  the  vital  force  from  the  entire  prov- 
ince of  organic  chemical  compounds,  proving  them  to  be  subject  to  the 
same  physical  and  chemical  forces  which  determine  the  composition  of 
mineral  matter,"  and  it  now  remains  to  test  by  analysis  and  synthesis 
the  problem  of  organization  itself. 

It  may  very  properly  be  asked.  If  the  vital  force  has  been  banished 
from  the  entire  province  of  organic  chemical  compounds,  as  asserted 
and  demonstrated,  in  what  it  now  resides,  where  is  it  located  and  what 
are  its  functions  ? 

Chemical  science  has  already  demonstrated  that  all  "proximate 
principles  "  and  tissues  of  an  organized  body  are,  in  an  ultimate  analy- 
sis, reducible  to  some  of  the  elementary  substances  ;  and  as,  in  inor- 
ganic bodies,  morphological  differences  result  from  the  various  com- 
binations of  the  ultimate  elements,  so,  too,  is  it  with  organized  bodies. 
So  far  as  form  alone  is  concerned,  it  is  no  more  difficult  to  understand 
why  organic  compounds,  under  conditions  of  vital  relations,  take  on 
the  special  form  of  a  single  speck  of  bioplasm  in  one  case,  of  a  vege- 
table in  another,  or  of  an  animal  form  in  another  case,  than  it  is  to 
understand  why  the  same  elements  will  produce  substances  either  allo- 
tropic  or  isomeric. 

The  phenomena  are  classified  and  thus  explained,  but  in  neither 
example  is  the  ultimate  nature  or  condition  which  causes  the  morpho- 
logical difference  known.  There  is  no  known  force  in  nature  capable 
of  lifting  the  elements  to  the  plane  of  animal  organisms,  except 
through  the  intermediate  planes  of  the  mineral  and  the  vegetable 
kingdoms.  Chemism  is  sufficient  to  form  the  mineral  kingdom  from 
the  simple  elements,  which  are  under  physical  force  alone.  As  the 
elementary  combinations  necessary  to  form  a  mineral  involve  an  ex- 
penditure of  force,  which  is  transformed  from  a  lower  to  a  higher 
expression,  so,  in  resolving  the  mineral  back  again  to  its  elementary 
state,  the  force  conserved  in  a  higher  state  represents  the  original 
larger  but  weaker  force  of  lower  grade.  The  same  is  true  when 
chemical  compounds,  as  represented  in  the  mineral  kingdom,  are  lifted 
to  the  plane  of  the  vegetable  kingdom,  or  when  the  members  of  this 
class  are  raised  to  the  highest  class  of  the  animal  kingdom.  In  all 
cases  the  higher  conditions  depend  upon  the  conditions  of  the  next 
lower  plane  ;  and  the  conserved  forces  of  the  higher  plane,  when 
liberated  by  decomposition,  represent  the  special  functions  of  the 
organization. 

There  is  not  a  phenomenon  in  animal  life,  from  the  earliest  stage 
of  germ-growth  to  the  final  stage  of  human  development,  but  is  sus- 
ceptible of  classification.  The  monera — mere  specks  of  bioplasm — 
organisms  without  organs,  so  far  as  can  be  determined  in  their  power 
to  move,  to  receive  nourishment,  to  react  on  external  impressions  and 
to  reproduce  their  kind — not  only  manifest  the  fundamental  properties 
of  life,  but  display  them  under  conditions  so  simple,  so  free  from  all 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  VITAL  FORCE.  767 

morphological  complications,  that  the  way  seems  prepared  by  nature 
herself  for  the  inquirer  to  enter  the  portals  which  open  into  the  mys- 
teries of  life.  They  are  on  the  border-land  of  the  living  and  the  not- 
living,  blending  on  the  one  side  with  colloidal  matter  and  on  the  other 
with  vegetable  forms,  all  so  intimately  related  with  simple  "  matter  " 
as  to  justify  if  not  necessitate  the  conclusion  of  genetic  correlation. 

We  see  this  simple  hyaline  particle  of  bioplasm  expand  and  con- 
tract, accompanied  with  chemical  composition  and  decomposition,  and 
the  conclusion  is  irresistible  that  these  simplest  forms  of  motion, 
expansion  and  contraction,  follow  in  orderly  sequence  of  cause  and 
effect. 

Motility,  arising  from  chemical  disintegration  and  reintegration, 
represents,  therefore,  a  fundamental  expression  of  living  organized 
matter,  and  impresses  us  with  the  idea  of  energy  transformed.  Indeed, 
all  the  functions  of  the  higher  organisms  testify  to  the  truth  of  the 
proposition  that  every  manifestation  of  energy  of  organized  bodies  has 
its  mechanical  equivalent,  and  follows  an  orderly  sequence  of  events. 

The  nutrition  of  the  body,  through  all  the  intricate  processes  of 
external  and  internal  digestion  under  the  action  of  the  digestive  fer- 
ments, involves  only  physical  and  chemical  forces  in  the  transforma- 
tion of  the  various  foods  received.  The  entire  animal  body  is  com- 
posed of  modified  protoplasm,  as  represented  in  the  three  classes 
known  as  proteids,  carbohydrates,  and  fats,  with  their  respective 
derivatives. 

The  proteids  are  exceedingly  complex  in  character,  and  are  not  as 
yet  definitely  classified  among  organic  compounds.  They  unite  with 
acids  and  alkalies,  and  yet  "  do  not  play  the  part  of  an  acid  toward 
the  base,"  or  conversely.  They  are  not  crystallizable,  and,  having  no 
combining  equivalent,  do  not  possess  an  absolute  ultimate  constitution, 
and  therefore  their  molecular  reactions  and  changes  in  the  body  can 
not  be  expressed  by  exact  chemical  symbols. 

Here,  then,  we  see  the  formidable  list  of  "  proximate  principles " 
that  are  known  to  belong  to  the  animal  body  as  nutrient  elements,  and 
which  are  necessary  for  tissue  development.  They  are  all  organic 
compounds,  from  which  science  has  "banished  the  vital  force"  by 
"proving  them  to  be  subject  to  the  same  physical  and  chemical  forces 
which  determine  the  composition  of  universal  matter."  Where,  then, 
shall  we  seek  this  "  indefinable  something  "  which  exists  and  acts  in 
the  organism  independent  of  and  antagonistic  to  the  physical  and 
chemical  forces  of  nature,  as  affirmed  by  the  doctrines  of  "  vitalism  " 
taught  by  Stahl  and  Bichat  ? 

The  position  held  by  these  distinguished  men  and  their  followers 
has  been  demonstrated  to  be  untrue,  because,  whatever  may  be  the 
essential  nature  of  this  vital  force,  certain  it  is  that  it  is  known  only 
by  and  through  its  manifestations.  These  present  themselves  to  the 
mind  only  through  organizations  which  immediately  depend  on  chemi- 


768  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

cal  and  physical  forces  for  those  proximate  constituents  which  go  to 
nourish  and  build  up  the  tissues  and  enable  the  organs  of  the  body  to 
perform  their  respective  functions. 

In  nutrient  action,  by  which  lifeless  material  or  pabulum  is  trans- 
formed into  living  tissues,  evidence  of  this  vital  entity  should  be  dis- 
covered, if  anywhere,  for  here  we  have  the  primal  seat  of  life,  the  very 
fountain  of  genetic  power. 

Analysis,  however,  finds  room  for  it  in  nutrient  action  no  more 
than  in  the  mysteries  which  lie  concealed  in  every  expression  of  energy 
throughout  nature's  domain.  Why  will  friction  of  glass  produce  a 
condition  or  property  which  will  repel  pith-balls,  while  friction  of 
sealing-wax  produces  a  condition  which  will  attract  them  ?  Are  these 
movements  caused  by  some  kind  of  life-principle  developed  in  so  sim- 
ple a  way  ?  Ko  ;  they  come  from  positive  and  negative  electricity 
evolved  by  friction,  and,  with  this  answer,  science  asserts  that  the  ex- 
planation is  complete.  When  asked.  What  is  electricity,  beyond  a 
special  display  of  energy  ?  there  is  no  answer. 

If  we  question  the  various  organic  functions  of  the  body,  physical 
and  chemical  forces  alone  confront  us.  A  muscle  contracts  according 
to  mechanical  laws,  and  its  work  is  expressed  in  mechanical  equiva- 
lents. Electric  tension  is  lost,  heat  is  evolved,  carbon  dioxide  appears, 
and  the  muscular  tissue,  before  neutral  in  reaction,  is  now  acid.  What- 
ever may  be  the  nature  of  the  vital  force,  if  such  there  be,  operating 
in  muscular  contraction,  it  at  least  is  not  independent  of  physical  and 
chemical  forces,  and  the  evidence  is  cumulative  that  these  will  alone 
explain  the  phenomenon.  Respiration  is  purely  a  chemical  process,  in 
harmony  with  the  laws  of  gaseous  diffusion.  Circulation,  with  its 
pumps,  pipes,  and  valves,  is  an  hydraulic  operation.  Absorption  is  os- 
motic, and  a  similar  selective  affinity  for  special  things  is  exhibited  in 
inorganic  material  as  well  as  in  animal  membranes. 

There  seems  no  good  reason  why  we  should  hesitate  to  regard  the 
vital  force  as  correlated  with  the  physical  forces  known  to  us  as  heat, 
light,  electricity,  and  actinism.  That  some  relation  exists  there  can 
be  no  doubt,  for  the  effect  of  physical  forces  upon  organic  life  is 
marked,  and  their  energy  is  made  potential  in  the  tissues  of  both  vege- 
tables and  animals.  This  potential  energy  is,  after  a  time,  transformed 
into  active  energy,  and  new  phenomena  result. 

Organic  forms  do  not  generate  energy,  they  simply  transform  or 
evolve  it  from  that  which  has  been  supplied  from  the  outer  world. 
Heat  in  the  body  results  from  combustion  the  same  as  in  a  furnace. 

Contractility  is  a  special  function  of  muscular  tissue,  and  is  inde- 
pendent of  nerve-force.  This  attribute  exists  in  the  tissue  for  a  time 
after  death,  lasting  longer  in  cold-blooded  than  in  warm-blooded  ani- 
mals, because  of  the  slowness  of  the  process  of  the  destructive  assimi- 
lation of  the  tissues.  Longet  demonstrated  that  contractility  is  closely 
related  to  the  supply  of  arterial  blood  in  the  capillary  vessels,  for,  on 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  VITAL  FORCE.  769 

diminishing  the  supply,  contractility  was  lessened,  and  the  temperature 
of  the  muscles  reduced  ;  while  Matteucci  proved  that" increased  heat 
accompanies  muscular  contraction.  The  heat  produced  by  muscular 
contraction  is  divided  into  two  complementary  portions,  one  part  ap- 
pearing as  sensible  heat,  and  the  other  part  being  converted  into  me- 
chanical work. 

It  matters  not  whence  comes  the  heat,  whether  from  the  chemical 
transformations  which  take  place  in  the  body,  or  from  the  sun-force 
which  has  for  ages  lain  locked  in  the  coal-strata  of  the  earth,  when 
liberated  or  made  dynamic,  it  represents  a  definite  amount  of  mechani- 
cal power. 

Nerve-energy  is  transformed  into  motion,  as  evidenced  in  muscular 
action  ;  it  is  also  transformed  into  heat,  but  it  is  not  known  whether 
it  is  an  immediate  or  a  secondary  result.  There  are  some  instances 
recorded  which  seem  to  show  its  transformation  into  light,  and  it  is 
well  known  that  in  certain  animals  electricity  is  the  direct  result  of  its 
metamorphosis. 

From  these  data  the  conclusion  seems  authorized  that  at  least  a 
partial  correlation  exists  between  the  physical  forces  and  the  energy 
resulting  from  nerve-action.  I  say  a  partial  correlation,  because,  while 
the  evidence  may  permit  the  conclusion  that  nerve-force  is  transformed 
into  motion,  heat,  light,  and  electricity,  it  does  not  yet  authorize  the 
assertion  that  these  can  be  reconverted  into  nerve-force. 

This  correlation  doubtless  extends  to  the  higher  manifestations  of 
nerve-energy,  feeling,  and  thought,  for  their  exercise  causes  disin- 
tegration of  nerve-tissue,  as  shown  by  the  excreted  products  of  decom- 
position and  increased  muscular  action,  as  evidenced  in  the  increased 
circulation  of  the  blood.  Physical  conditions,  therefore,  determine 
mental  results.  The  higher  nerve-tissue  of  the  brain  operates  under 
physical  and  chemical  conditions  in  its  nutrition,  the  same  as  does  the 
tissue  of  any  other  organ,  and  hence  its  transformed  energy,  as  ex- 
pressed in  nervous  or  mental  action,  has  its  physiological  representation 
and  measurable  force. 

To  extend  this  subject  further  in  the  line  of  analysis,  though  it 
might  be  interesting,  is  unnecessary  for  the  object  proposed,  which  is 
to  show  that  chemical,  physical,  and  biological  sciences  have  over- 
thrown the  vitalistic  doctrines  of  the  past,  and  demonstrated  by  analy- 
sis a  relationship  between  the  forces  which  rule  the  inorganic  world 
and  the  "  vital  force  "  which  is  manifested  in  living  forms.  At  this 
point  the  question  is  properly  asked,  if  chemical  synthesis  confirms  the 
results  and  conclusions  of  chemical  analysis. 

If  the  morphology  and  physiology  of  organisms  are  the  products^ 
simply  of  physical  molecules  under  chemical  and  physical  forces  which 
are  revealed  by  analysis,  then  the  assumption  seems  justified  that  syn- 
thesis, by  combining  these  same  molecules  and  restoring  these  same 
forces,  should  be  able  to  reproduce  the  forms  and  functions  of  life. 

TOL.  XXIV. — 49 


770  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

Synthesis  requires  exact  knowledge  of  all  the  elements  and  forces 
involved  in  the  object  of  its  investigation,  and  looks  to  the  inductive 
or  analytic  method  to  furnish  these  data.  There  must  be  no  unknown 
quantities  in  the  problem  to  be  solved,  for  synthesis  seeks  not  to  build 
from  the  unknown  but  only  to  re-form  the  known.  Hence  it  properly 
awaits  to  receive  verified  facts  from  chemical  analysis,  which  has  yet 
been  able  to  compass  but  a  fractional  part  of  the  organic  compounds. 

Chemical  elements  are  the  basis  of  chemical  science  ;  they  are 
neither  produced  nor  destroyed,  but  are  the  enduring  and  constant 
factors  in  the  many  series  of  changes  in  the  properties  of  matter, 
which  represent  the  desideratum  of  this  science.  And  yet  the  knowl- 
edge of  molecules  is  very  meager  ;  the  weights  of  but  a  few  are  known, 
even  among  the  commonest  elements  and  compounds  ;  and  but  little 
account  has  been  taken  of  atomic  motion,  which  furnishes  the  most 
perfect  explanation  of  chemical  reaction. 

Of  the  highly  complex  series  of  albuminoid  substances,  which 
neither  crystallize  nor  possess  any  combining  equivalent,  and  therefore 
can  not  be  expressed  by  exact  symbols,  analytic  chemistry  knows  but 
little,  and  hence  it  would  be  in  vain  to  attempt  their  reproduction  by 
synthesis.  Notwithstanding  our  ignorance  of  essential  facts,  the  prog- 
ress of  synthetic  chemistry  has  been  great,  and  the  prospect  is  favor- 
able for  more  brilliant  achievements  in  the  future. 

Wohler,  in  1828,  first,  by  synthesis,  formed  urea  from  ammonia 
cyanate.  It  was  claimed  by  the  critics  that  urea,  being  a  nitrogenous 
metabolite,  a  product  of  animal  decomposition,  was  a  mineral,  rather 
than  an  element  of  the  animal  tissues  ;  but  when  Fownes,  in  1841, 
prepared  cyanogen  itself  direct  from  its  elements,  and,  from  this  salt, 
urea,  the  fact  was  recognized  and  accepted,  although  it  was  afiirmed 
that  a  "  vital  force  "  was  necessary  to  account  for  the  more  complicated 
organic  compounds,  of  which  series  urea  was  a  member  having  only 
simple  combinations.  This  was  disproved  by  Berthelot  in  1856,  when 
he  obtained  the  potassium  salt  of  formic  acid.  Then  followed  the  pro- 
duction of  acetylene,  marsh-gas,  ethylene,  and  other  hydrocarbons, 
from  inorganic  materials.  Marsh-gas  was  converted  into  methyl  alco- 
hol, and  ethylene  into  ethyl  alcohol,  and  from  these  alcohols  formic 
and  acetic  acids  were  made. 

Startling  as  these  results  were,  the  substances  formed  were,  rela- 
tively, simple  in  nature,  and  the  "  vital  force  "  still  ruled  in  the  more 
complicated  bodies  of  organic  origin. 

Synthetic  work  continued  to  achieve  brilliant  results  and  added  to 
its  list  of  vegetable  compounds  oxalic,  valeric,  malic,  citric,  tartaric, 
and  salicylic  acids,  the  oils  of  garlic,  mustard,  and  wintergrcen,  also 
Conine,  alizarine,  and  indigo. 

Of  animal  compounds,  leucin,  crcatin,  sarcosin,  and  taurin  are 
added  to  the  large  and  growing  list  of  substances  from  which  analysis 
and  synthesis  have  banished  the  vital  force,  and  harmonized  the  facts 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  VITAL  FORCE,  771 

of  their  existence  with  the  physical  and  chemical  forces  of  the  inor- 
ganic world. 

Over  one  thousand  organic  compounds,  which  but  a  few  years  since 
were  supposed  to  be  formed  within  the  vegetable  or  animal  body  only 
by  the  action  of  a  "  vital  force,"  are  now  produced  synthetically  from 
the  elements  which  constitute  them,  and  "  there  is  every  reason  to  ex- 
pect," says  the  conservative  but  able  author  of  "  The  New  Chemistry," 
Professor  Cooke,  "  that  in  the  no  distant  future  the  chemist  will  be  able 
to  prepare,  in  his  laboratory,  both  the  material  of  which  the  cell  is 
fashioned  and  the  various  products  with  which  it  becomes  filled  during 
life." 

It  is  true  that  the  knowledge  of  man  has  not  yet  enabled  him  to 
make  a  vegetable  or  an  animal  cell,  but  this  is  no  evidence  in  favor  of 
a  "  vital  force  "  per  se,  but  an  indication  of  ignorance  relative  to  the 
ultimate  constitution  of  the  cell.  Indeed,  pseudo-organic  forms,  which 
resemble  living  cells,  having  heterogeneous  contents,  and  true  inclos- 
ing membranes  possessing  dialyzing  power,  have  already  been  reported 
as  produced  by  Monnier  and  Vogt. 

It  is  well,  however,  to  remind  ourselves  of  the  fact  that  the  "  cell," 
as  commonly  understood,  embracing  a  cell-wall  and  an  internal  nucleus, 
represei;its  in  itself  an  advanced  condition  of  organization,  and  not,  as 
is  so  often  inferred,  the  most  primitive  and  simplest  of  life-forms. 
"  Cell,"  in  biology,  "  is  a  technical  term  used  to  denote  a  unit  of  living 
tissue,"  and  the  fact  that  the  chemist  can  not  make  it  is  not  proof  that 
an  independent  life-principle  resides  in  it,  but  is  proof  of  ignorance  of 
its  organic  formation. 

If  the  fact  of  a  "  vital  force,"  distinct  from  physical  and  chemical 
forces,  is  to  be  established  because  of  inability  to  make  by  synthesis  a 
living  cell,  then,  in  logical  fairness,  should  this  force,  or  some  other 
equally  independent  of  physical  and  chemical  laws,  be  declared  to  pre- 
side over  the  genesis  and  potencies  of  those  inorganic  elements  and 
bodies  which  thus  far  have  defied,  not  synthesis  only,  but  analysis 
also. 

In  germinal  matter  is  found  the  apparent  seat  of  life,  for  this  it  is 
that  transforms  pabulum  to  build  the  tissues  at  first,  and  in  it  lies  the 
potency  of  restoring  to  physical  completeness  portions  of  the  body 
that  may  be  injured  or  diseased.  The  repair  of  living  tissues  after 
mutilation  is  not,  however,  positive  evidence  of  the  existence  of  a 
special  principle,  for  the  same  action  occurs  in  inorganic  materials. 

Pasteur  records  the  fact  that  "  when  a  crystal  is  broken  on  any  one 
of  its  faces,  and  replaced  in  the  fluid  of  crystallization,  we  remark  that 
while  the  crystal  increases  in  all  directions  by  the  deposit  of  crystal- 
line particles,  a  very  decided  simultaneous  action  takes  place  at  the 
broken  or  injured  part,  and  this  action  suffices  in  a  few  hours,  not 
merely  for  the  general,  regular  formation  of  increase  over  all  parts  of 
the  crystal,  but  also  for  the  restoration  of  regularity  in  the  injured 


772  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

part."  Stall  we  ascribe  a  "  vital  principle  "  to  the  unorganized  crystal 
as  well  as  to  the  organized  vegetable  or  animal  tissue  ? 

The  mysteries  of  nature  are  not  all  confined  to  life-expressions. 
Who  shall  explain  the  ultimate  nature  of  crystallization,  which,  under 
the  laws  of  fixed  axial  ratios,  gives  to  each  variety  such  definite  and 
invariable  form  ?  Who  shall  explain  the  flower's  perfume  ?  Where 
is  the  "  vital  force  "  in  the  seed  which  lies  for  ages  in  the  tomb  of 
some  Pharaoh  ?  Does  "  vital  force,"  as  an  independent  entity,  which 
works  contrary  to  physical  and  chemical  laws,  thus  imprison  itself  and 
voluntarily  submit  to  what  must  be,  to  it,  a  death  ?  If  it  acts  independ- 
ently of  the  physical  forces  of  nature,  why  has  it  not  furnished  evi- 
dence thereof  in  some  way  or  at  some  time  ?  How  is  life  made  active 
in  this  seed  so  long  dried  and  practically  dead  ?  Not  by  any  occult 
influence  at  discord  with  organic  growth,  but  simply  by  environing  the 
seed  with  conditions  favorable  to  physical  well-being.  Heat,  light, 
and  moisture — all  physical  and  chemical  agents — soon  revivify  this 
seed,  and  evidence  is  added  to  sustain  the  proposition  that,  while  "  the 
present  state  of  knowledge  furnishes  us  with  no  link  between  the  liv- 
ing and  the  not-living,"  yet  are  both  actuated  by  forces  of  the  same 
kind.  "  Vital  force,"  therefore,  is,  in  reality,  only  another  term  for 
the  properties  of  matter  ;  it  denotes  simply  the  causes  of  certain  great 
groups  of  natural  operations,  as  we  employ  the  terms  "  electricity " 
and  "  electrical  force  "  to  denote  others.  But  to  use  the  term  "  vital- 
ity" or  "vital  force"  in  the  sense  of  an  entity,  which  acts  as  an  effi- 
cient cause  of  vital  phenomena,  is  an  assumption  as  absurd  as  to  assume 
that  "  *  electric,'  *  attractive,'  and  '  chemical '  forces  are  entities  which 
determine  the  phenomena  of  electricity,  chemism,  and  gravitation." 

"  If  we  knew  all  the  laws  of  the  composition  of  matter,  and  all  the 
changes  of  which  it  is  capable,  every  phenomenon  which  any  given 
substance  presents  must  be  caused  either  by  something  taking  place 
in  the  substance  or  by  something  taking  place  out  of  it,  but  acting 
upon  it.  Those  mysterious  forces,  whether  they  be  emanations  from 
matter  or  whether  they  be  merely  properties  of  matter,  must,  in  an 
ultimate  analysis,  depend  either  on  the  internal  arrangement  or  on  the 
external  locality  of  their  physical  antecedents.  However  convenient, 
therefore,  it  may  be,  in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge,  to  speak  of 
vital  principles,  imponderable  fluids,  and  elastic  ethers,  such  terms  can 
only  be  provisional,  and  are  to  be  considered  as  mere  names  for  that 
residue  of  unexplained  facts  which  it  will  be  the  business  of  future 
ages  to  bring  under  generalizations  wide  enough  to  cover  and  include 
the  whole." 

As  mechanical  energy  manifests  different  powers  and  results  as  it 
operates  through  differently  constructed  mechanisms,  so  vital  energy 
becomes  more  complex  in  its  manifestations  as  the  organism  through 
which  its  work  is  displayed  is  more  complicated  in  structure. 

Jevons  has  well  defined  the  physiological  significance  of  "vital 


THE   CHEMISTRY   OF  COOKERY,  773 

force  "  thus  :  "  We  are  at  freedom  to  imagine  the  existence  of  a  new 
agent,  and  to  give  it  an  appropriate  name,  provided  there  are  phe- 
nomena incapable  of  explanation  from  known  causes.  We  may  speak 
of  vital  force  as  occasioning  life,  provided  that  we  do  not  take  it  to  be 
more  than  a  name  for  an  undefined  something  giving  rise  to  inexplica- 
ble facts,  just  as  the  French  chemists  called  iodine  the  substance  ic,  so 
long  as  they  were  unaware  of  its  real  character  and  place  in  chemistry. 
Encke  was  quite  justified  in  speaking  of  the  resisting  medium  in  space 
so  long  as  the  retardation  of  his  comet  could  not  be  otherwise  ac- 
counted for. 

"  But  such  hypotheses  will  do  much  harm  whenever  they  divert  us 
from  attempts  to  reconcile  the  facts  with  known  laws,  or  when  they 
lead  us  to  mix  up  discrete  things. 

"  Because  we  speak  of  vital  force  we  must  not  assume  that  it  is  a 
really  existing  physical  force  like  electricity.  We  do  not  know  what 
it  is  ;  we  have  no  right  to  confuse  Encke's  supposed  resisting  medium 
with  the  bases  of  light  without  distinct  evidence  of  identity.  The 
name  protoplasm,  now  so  familiarly  used  by  physiologists,  is  doubtless 
legitimate  so  long  as  we  do  not  mix  up  different  substances  under  it, 
or  imagine  that  the  name  gives  us  any  knowledge  of  the  obscure  ori- 
gin of  life.  To  name  a  substance  protoplasm  no  more  explains  the 
infinite  variety  of  forms  of  life  which  spring  out  of  the  substance  than 
does  the  vital  force  which  may  be  supposed  to  reside  in  the  proto- 
plasm. Both  expressions  are  mere  names  for  an  inexplicable  series  of 
causes  which,  out  of  apparently  similar  conditions,  produce  the  most 
diverse  results." 


THE  CHEMISTEY  OF  COOKEEY. 

By  W.  MATTIEU  WILLIAMS. 
XXVI. 

THERE  is  one  more  constituent  of  animal  food  that  demands  at- 
tention before  leaving  this  part  of  the  subject.  This  is  the  fat. 
We  all  know  that  there  is  a  considerable  difference  between  raw  fat 
and  cooked  fat ;  but  what  is  the  rationale  of  this  difference  ?  Is  it 
anything  beyond  the  obvious  fusion  or  semi-fusion  of  the  solid  ? 

These  are  very  natural  and  simple  questions,  but  in  no  work  on 
chemistry  or  technology  can  I  find  any  answer  to  them,  or  even  any 
attempt  at  an  answer.  I  will  therefore  do  the  best  I  can  toward 
solving  the  problem  in  my  own  way. 

All  the  cookable  and  eatable  fats  fall  into  the  class  of  "  fixed  oils," 
so  named  by  chemists  to  distinguish  them  from  the  "  volatile  oils," 
otherwise  described  as  "  essential  oils."  The  distinction  between  these 
two  classes  is  simple  enough.     The  volatile  oils  (mostly  of  vegetable 


774  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

origin)  may  be  distilled  or  simply  evaporated  away  like  water  or 
alcohol,  and  leave  no  residue.  The  fixed  oils  similarly  treated  are 
dissociated  more  or  less  completely. 

Otherwise  expressed,  the  boiling-point  of  the  volatile  oils  is  below 
their  dissociation-point.  The  fixed  oils  are  those  which  are  dissociated 
at  a  temperature  below  their  boiling-point. 

My  object  in  thus  expressing  this  difference  will  be  understood 
upon  a  little  reflection.  These  volatile  oils,  when  heated,  being  dis- 
tilled without  change  are  uncookable  ;  while  the  fixed  oils  if  similarly 
heated  suffer  various  degrees  of  change  as  their  temperature  is  raised, 
and  may  be  completely  decomposed  by  steady  application  of  heat  in  a 
closed  vessel  without  the  aid  of  any  other  chemical  agent  than  the 
heat  itself.  This  "  destructive  distillation "  converts  them  into  solid 
carbon  and  hydrocarbon  gases,  similar  to  those  we  obtain  by  the  de- 
structive distillation  of  coal. 

If  we  watch  the  changes  occurring  as  the  heat  advances  to  this 
complete  dissociation-point,  we  may  observe  a  gradation  of  minor 
or  partial  dissociation  proceeding  gradually  onward,  resembling  that 
which  I  have  already  described  as  occurring  when  sugar  is  similarly 
treated  (see  Ko.  XIII  of  this  series). 

But  in  ordinary  cooking  we  do  not  go  so  far  as  to  carbonize  the 
fat  itself,  though  we  do  brown  or  partially  carbonize  the  membrane 
which  envelops  the  fat.  What,  then,  is  the  nature  of  this  minor  dis- 
sociation, if  such  occurs  ? 

Before  giving  my  answer  to  this  question,  I  must  explain  the 
chemical  constitution  of  fat.  It  is  a  compound  of  a  very  weak  base 
with  very  weak  acids.  The  basic  substance  is  glycerine,  the  acids 
(not  sour  at  all,  but  so  named  because  they  combine  with  bases  as  the 
actually  sour  acids  do)  are  stearic  acid,  palmitic  acid,  oleic  acid,  etc., 
and  bear  the  general  name  of  fatty  acids.  They  are  solid  or  liquid, 
according  to  temperature.  When  solid,  they  are  pearly,  crystalline 
substances  ;  when  fused,  they  are  oily  liquids. 

To  simplify,  I  will  take  one  of  these  as  a  type,  and  that  the  one 
which  is  the  chief  constituent  of  animal  fats,  viz.,  stearic  acid.  I  have 
a  lump  of  it  before  me.  Newly  broken  through,  it  might  at  a  distance 
be  mistaken  for  a  piece  of  Carrara  marble.  It  is  granular  like  the 
marble,  but  not  so  hard,  and,  when  rubbed  with  the  hand,  differs  from 
the  marble  in  betraying  its  origin  by  a  small  degree  of  unctuousness, 
but  can  scarcely  be  described  as  greasy. 

I  find  by  experiment  that  this  may  be  mixed  with  glycerine  with- 
out combination  taking  place  ;  that  when  heated  with  glycerine  just  to 
its  fusing-point,  and  the  two  are  agitated  together,  the  combination  is 
by  no  means  complete.  Instead  of  obtaining  a  soft,  smooth  fat,  I  ob- 
tain a  granular  fat,  small  stearic  crystals  with  glycerine  among  them. 
It  is  a  mixture  of  stearic  acid  and  glycerine,  not  a  chemical  compound  ; 
it  is  stearic  acid  and  glycerine,  but  not  a  stearate  of  glycerine. 


THE   CHEMISTRY   OF   COOKERY.  775 

A  similar  separation  is  what  I  suppose  to  occur  in  the  cooking  of 
animal  fat.  I  find  that  mutton-fat,  beef -fat,  or  other  fat  when  raw, 
is  perfectly  smooth,  as  tested  by  rubbing  a  small  quantity,  free  from 
membrane,  between  the  finger  and  thumb,  or  by  a  still  more  delicate 
test  of  rubbing  it  between  the  tip  of  the  tongue  and  the  palate.  But 
dripping,  whether  of  beef,  or  mutton,  or  poultry,  is  granular,  as  any- 
body who  has  ever  eaten  bread  and  dripping  knows  well  enough,  and 
the  manufacturers  of  "  butterine,"  or  "  bosch,"  know  too  well,  as  the 
destruction  or  prevention  of  this  granulation  is  one  of  the  difficulties 
of  their  art. 

My  theory  of  the  cookery  of  fat  is  simply  that  heat,  when  continued 
long  enough,  or  raised  sufficiently  high,  effects  an  incipient  dissocia- 
tion of  the  fatty  acids  from  the  glycerine,  and  thus  assists  the  digest- 
ive organs  by  presenting  the  base  and  the  acids  in  a  condition  better 
fitted  (or  advanced  by  one  stage)  for  the  new  combinations  demanded 
by  assimilation.  Some  physiologists  have  lately  asserted  that  the  fat 
of  our  food  is  not  assimilated  at  all — not  laid  down  again  as  fat,  but 
is  used  directly  as  fuel  for  the  maintenance  of  animal  heat.  If  this  is 
correct,  the  advantage  of  the  preliminary  dissociation  is  more  decided, 
for  the  combustible  portion  of  the  fat  is  its  fatty  acids  ;  the  glycerine 
is  an  impediment  to  combustion,  so  much  so  that  the  modern  candle- 
maker  removes  it,  and  thereby  greatly  improves  the  combustibility  of 
his  candles. 

It  may  be  that  the  glycerine  of  the  fat  we  eat  is  assimilated  like 
sugar,  while  the  fatty  acids  act  directly  as  fuel.  This  view  may  recon- 
cile some  of  the  conflicting  facts  (such  as  the  existence  of  fat  in  the 
carnivora)  that  stand  in  the  way  of  the  theory  of  the  uses  of  fat  food 
above  referred  to,  according  to  which  fat  is  not  fattening,  and  those 
who  would  "  Bant "  should  eat  fat  freely  to  maintain  animal  heat,  while 
very  abstemious  in  the  consumption  of  sugar  and  farinaceous  food. 

The  difference  between  tallow  and  dripping  is  instructive.  Their 
origin  is  the  same  ;  both  are  melted  fats — beef  or  mutton  fats — and 
both  contain  the  same  fatty  acids  and  glycerine,  but  there  is  a  visible 
and  tangible  difference  in  their  molecular  condition.  Tallow  is  smooth 
and  homogeneous,  dripping  decidedly  granular. 

I  attribute  this  difference  to  the  fact  that,  in  rendering  tallow,  the 
heat  is  maintained  no  longer  than  is  necessary  to  effect  the  fusion  ; 
while,  in  the  ordinary  production  of  dripping,  the  fat  is  exposed  in 
the  dripping-pan  to  a  long  continuance  of  heat,  besides  being  highly 
heated  when  used  in  basting.  Therefore  the  dissociation  is  carried 
further  in  the  case  of  the  dripping,  and  the  result  becomes  sensible. 
I  have  observed  that  home-rendered  lard,  that  obtained  in  English 
farm-houses,  where  the  "  scratchings  "  (i.  e.,  the  membranous  parts) 
are  frizzled,  is  more  granular  than  the  lard  we  now  obtain  in  such 
abundance  from  Chicago  and  other  wholesale  hog-regions.  I  have 
not  witnessed  the  lard-rendering  at  Chicago,  but  have  little  doubt  that 


-j-je  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

economy  of  fuel  is  practiced  in  conducting  it,  and  therefore  less  disso- 
ciation would  be  effected  than  in  the  domestic  retail  process. 

Some  of  the  early  manufacturers  of  "  bosch  "  purified  their  fat  by 
the  process  recommended  and  practiced  by  the  French  Academicians 
MM.  Dubrunfaut  and  Fua  (see  "  Comptes  Rendus,"  vol.  Ixxi)  during  the 
siege  of  Paris,  when  they  and  others  read  papers  on  the  manufacture 
of  "siege-butter"  without  the  aid  of  the  dairy.  This  consisted  in 
frying  the  refuse  fat  from  slaughter-houses  until  the  membranous 
matter  and  other  impurities  were  carbonized,  and  thus  could  be  strained 
away.  I  wrote  about  it  in  1871,  and  consequently  received  some  sam- 
ples of  artificial  butter  thus  made  in  the  midlands.  It  was  pure  fat, 
perfectly  wholesome,  but,  although  colored  to  imitate  butter,  had  the 
granular  character  of  dripping.  Since  that  time  great  progress  has 
been  made  in  this  branch  of  industry.  I  have  lately  tasted  samples  of 
pure  "  bosch "  or  "  oleomargarine "  undistinguishable  from  churned 
cream  or  good  butter,  though  offered  for  sale  at  8Jc?.  per  pound  in 
wholesale  packages.  In  the  preparation  of  this  I  understand  high  tem- 
peratures are  carefully  avoided,  and  by  this  means  the  smoothness  of 
pure  butter  is  obtained.  I  mention  this  now  merely  in  confirmation 
of  my  theory  of  the  rationale  of  fat-cookery,  but  shall  return  to  this 
subject  of  "  bosch  "  or  "  butterine  "  again,  as  it  has  considerable  intrin- 
sic interest  in  reference  to  our  food-supplies,  and  should  be  better  un- 
derstood than  it  is. 

XXVII. 

The  cookery  of  milk  is  very  simple,  but  by  no  means  unimportant. 
That  there  is  an  appreciable  difference  between  raw  and  boiled  milk 
may  be  proved  by  taking  equal  quantities  of  each  (the  boiled  sample 
having  been  allowed  to  cool  down),  adding  them  to  equal  quantities 
of  the  same  infusion  of  coffee,  then  critically  tasting  the  mixtures. 
The  difference  is  sufficient  to  have  long  since  established  the  practice 
among  all  skillful  cooks  of  scrupulously  using  boiled  milk  for  making 
cafe  au  lait.  I  have  tried  a  similar  experiment  on  tea,  and  find  that 
in  this  case  the  cold  milk  is  preferable.  Why  this  should  be,  why 
boiled  milk  should  be  better  for  coffee  and  raw  milk  for  tea,  I  can  not 
tell.  If  any  of  my  readers  have  not  done  so  already,  let  them  try 
similar  experiments  with  condensed  milk,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that 
the  verdict  of  the  majority  will  be  that  it  is  passable  with  coffee,  but 
very  objectionable  in  tea.  This  is  milk  that  has  been  very  much 
cooked. 

The  chief  definable  alteration  effected  by  the  boiling  of  milk  is 
the  coagulation  of  the  small  quantity  of  albumen  which  it  contains. 
This  rises  as  it  becomes  solidified,  and  forms  a  skin-like  scum  on  the 
surface,  which  may  be  lifted  with  a  spoon  and  eaten,  as  it  is  perfectly 
wholesome  and  very  nutritious. 

If  all  the  milk  that  is  poured  into  London  every  morning  were  to 


THE   CHEMISTRY   OF   COOKERY.  -jyj 

flow  down  a  single  channel,  it  would  form  a  respectable  little  rivulet. 
An  interesting  example  of  the  self-adjusting  operation  of  demand  and 
supply  is  presented  by  the  fact  that,  without  any  special  legislation  or 
any  dictating  official,  the  quantity  required  should  thus  flow  with  so 
little  excess  that,  in  spite  of  its  perishable  qualities,  little  or  none  is 
spoiled  by  souring,  and  yet  at  any  moment  anybody  may  buy  a  penny- 
worth within  two  or  three  hundred  yards  of  any  part  of  the  great 
metropolis.  There  is  no  record  of  any  single  day  on  which  the  supply 
has  failed,  or  even  been  sensibly  deficient. 

This  is  effected  by  drawing  the  supplies  from  a  great  number  of 
independent  sources,  which  are  not  likely  to  be  simultaneously  dis- 
turbed in  the  same  direction.  Coupled  with  this  advantage  is  a  serious 
danger.  It  has  been  unmistakably  demonstrated  that  certain  microbia 
(minute  living  abominations)  which  disseminate  malignant  diseases 
may  live  in  milk,  feed  upon  it,  increase  and  multiply  therein,  and  by 
it  be  transmitted  to  human  beings  with  very  serious  and  even  fatal 
results. 

I  speak  the  more  feelingly  on  this  subject,  having  very  recently  had 
painful  experience  of  it.  One  of  my  sons  went  for  a  holiday  to  a 
farm-house  in  Shropshire,  where  many  happy  and  health-giving  holi- 
days have  been  spent  by  all  the  members  of  my  family.  At  the  end 
of  two  or  three  weeks  he  was  attacked  by  scarlet  fever,  and  suffered 
severely.  He  afterward  learned  that  the  cow-boy  had  been  ill,  and 
further  inquiry  proved  that  his  illness  was  scarlet  fever,  though  not 
acknowledged  to  be  such  ;  that  he  had  milked  before  the  scaling  of 
the  skin  that  follows  the  eruption  could  have  been  completed,  and  it 
was  therefore,  most  probable,  that  some  of  the  scales  from  his  hands 
fell  into  the  milk.  My  son  drank  freely  of  uncooked  milk,  the  other 
inmates  of  the  farm  drinking  home-brewed  beer,  and  only  taking  milk 
in  tea  or  coffee  hot  enough  to  destroy  the  vitality  of  fever-germs.  He 
alone  suffered.  This  infection  was  the  more  remarkable,  inasmuch  as 
a  few  months  previously  he  had  been  assisting  a  medical  man  in  a 
crowded  part  of  London  where  scarlet  fever  was  prevalent,  and  had 
come  in  frequent  contact  with  patients  in  different  stages  of  the 
disease. 

Had  the  milk  from  this  farm  been  sent  to  London  in  the  usual 
manner  in  cans,  and  the  contents  of  these  particular  cans  mixed  with 
those  of  the  rest  received  by  the  vender,  the  whole  of  his  stock  would 
have  been  infected.  As  some  thousands  of  farms  contribute  to  the 
supplying  of  London  with  milk,  the  risk  of  such  contact  with  infected 
hands  occurring  occasionally  in  one  or  another  of  them  is  very  great, 
and  fully  justifies  me  in  urgently  recommending  the  manager  of  every 
household  to  strictly  enforce  the  boiling  of  every  drop  of  milk  that 
enters  the  house.  At  the  temperature  of  212°  the  vitality  of  all  dan- 
gerous germs  is  destroyed,  and  the  boiling-point  of  milk  is  a  little 
above  212°.     The  temperature  of  tea  or  coffee,  as  ordinarily  used, 


778  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

may  do  it,  but  is  not  to  be  relied  upon.  I  need  only  to  refer  gener- 
ally to  the  cases  of  wholesale  infection  that  have  recently  been  traced 
to  the  milk  of  particular  dairies,  as  the  particulars  are  familiar  to  all 
who  read  the  newspapers. 

It  is  an  open  question  whether  butter  may  or  may  not  act  as  a  dan- 
gerous carrier  of  such  germs  ;  whether  they  rise  with  the  cream,  sur- 
vive the  churning,  and  flourish  among  the  fat.  The  subject  is  of  vital 
importance,  and  yet,  in  spite  of  the  research-fund  of  the  Royal  Society, 
the  British  Association,  etc.,  we  have  no  data  upon  which  to  base  even 
an  approximately  sound  conclusion. 

We  may  theorize,  of  course  ;  we  may  suppose  that  the  bacteria, 
bacilli,  etc,  which  we  see  under  the  microscope  to  be  continually 
wriggling  about  or  driving  along,  are  doing  so  in  order  to  obtain  fresh 
food  from  the  surrounding  liquid,  and  therefore  that,  if  imprisoned  in 
butter,  they  would  languish  and  die.  We  may  point  to  the  analogies 
of  ferment-germs  which  demand  nitrogenous  matter,  and  therefore 
suppose  that  the  pestiferous  wanderers  can  not  live  upon  a  mere  hydro- 
carbon like  butter.  On  the  other  hand,  we  know  that  the  germs  of 
such  things  can  remain  dormant  under  conditions  that  are  fatal  to 
their  parents,  and  develop  forthwith  when  released  and  brought  into 
new  surroundings.  These  speculations  are  interesting  enough,  but  in 
such  a  matter  of  life  and  death  to  ourselves  and  our  children  we  re- 
quire positive  facts,  direct  microscopic  evidence. 

In  the  mean  time  the  doubt  is  highly  favorable  to  hosch.  To  illus- 
trate this,  let  us  suppose  the  case  of  a  cow  grazing  on  a  sewage-farm 
manured  from  a  district  on  which  enteric  fever  has  existed.  The  cow 
lies  down  and  its  teats  are  soiled  with  liquid  containing  the  germs 
which  are  so  fearfully  malignant  when  taken  internally.  In  the  course 
of  milking,  a  thousandth  part  of  a  grain  of  the  infected  matter  con- 
taining a  few  hundred  germs  enters  the  milk,  and  these  germs  increase 
and  multiply.  The  cream  that  rises  carries  some  of  them  with  it,  and 
they  are  thus  in  the  butter,  either  dead  or  alive,  we  know  not  which, 
but  have  to  accept  the  risk. 

Now,  take  the  case  of  bosch.  The  cow  is  slaughtered.  The  waste 
fat,  that  before  the  days  of  palm-oil  and  vaseline  was  sold  for  lubri- 
cating machinery,  is  skillfully  prepared,  made  up  into  two-pound  rolls, 
delicately  wrapped  in  special  muslin  or  prettily  molded  and  fitted 
into  "  Normandy  "  baskets.     What  is  the  risk  in  eating  this  ? 

None  at  all,  provided  always  the  bosch  is  not  adulterated  with 
cream-butter.  The  special  disease-germs  do  not  survive  the  chemistry 
of  digestion,  do  not  pass  through  the  glandular  tissues  of  the  follicles 
that  secrete  the  li^-ing  fat,  and  therefore,  even  though  the  cow  should 
have  fed  on  sewage-grass,  moistened  with  infected  sewage- water,  its 
fat  would  not  be  poisoned. 

What  we  require  in  connection  with  this  is  commercial  honesty, 
that  the  thousands  of  tons  of  bosch  now  annually  made  be  sold  as 


THE   CHEMISTRY   OF   COOKERY,  779 

bosch,  or,  if  preferred,  as  "oleomargarine,"  or  "butterine,"  or  any- 
other  name  that  shall  tell  the  truth.  In  order  to  render  such  commer- 
cial honesty  possible  to  shopkeepers,  more  intelligence  is  demanded 
among  their  customers.  A  dealer,  on  whom  I  can  rely,  told  me  lately 
that  if  he  offered  the  bosch  or  butterine  to  his  other  customers  as  he 
was  then  offering  it  to  me  at  Q^d.  per  pound  in  twenty-four-pound 
box,  or  9c7.  retail,  he  could  not  possibly  sell  it,  and  his  reputation 
would  be  injured  by  admitting  that  he  kept  it  ;  but  that  the  same 
people  who  would  be  disgusted  with  it  at  M,  will  buy  it  freely  at 
double  the  price  as  prime  Devonshire  fresh  butter  ;  and  he  added, 
significantly,  "  I  can  not  afford  to  lose  my  business  and  be  ruined  be- 
cause my  customers  are  foob."  To  pastry-cooks  and  others  in  business, 
it  is  sold  honestly  enough  for  what  it  is,  and  used  instead  of  butter. 

Before  leaving  the  subject  of  animal  food  I  may  say  a  few  words 
on  the  latest  and  perhaps  the  greatest  triumph  of  science  in  reference 
to  food-supply — i.  e.,  the  successful  solution  of  the  great  problem  of 
preserving  fresh  meat  for  an  almost  indefinite  length  of  time.  It  has 
long  been  known  that  meat  which  is  frozen  remains  fresh.  The 
Aberdeen  whalers  were  in  the  habit  of  feasting  their  friends  on  re- 
turning home  on  joints  that  were  taken  out  fresh  from  Aberdeen  and 
kept  frozen  during  a  long  Arctic  voyage.  In  Norway,  game  is  shot 
at  the  end  of  autumn,  and  kept  in  a  frozen  state  for  consumption  dur- 
ing the  whole  winter  and  far  into  the  spring. 

The  early  attempts  to  apply  the  freezing  process  for  the  carriage 
of  fresh  meat  from  South  America  and  Australia  by  using  ice,  or 
freezing  mixtures  of  ice  and  salt,  failed,  but  now  all  the  difiiculties 
are  overcome  by  a  simple  application  of  the  great  principle  of  the 
conservation  of  energy,  whereby  the  burning  of  coal  may  be  made  to 
produce  a  degree  of  cold  proportionate  to  the  amount  of  heat  it  gives 
out  in  burning. 

Carcasses  of  sheep  are  thereby  frozen  to  stony  hardness  immedi- 
ately they  are  slaughtered  in  New  Zealand  and  Australia,  and  then 
packed  in  close  refrigerated  cars,  carried  to  the  ship,  and  there  stowed 
in  chambers  refrigerated  by  the  same  means,  and  thus  brought  to 
England  in  the  same  state  of  stony  hardness  as  that  originally  pro- 
duced. I  dined  to-day  on  one  of  the  legs  of  a  sheep  that  I  bought  a 
week  ago  and  which  was  grazing  at  the  antipodes  three  months  be- 
fore.    I  prefer  it  to  any  English  mutton  ordinarily  obtainable. 

The  grounds  of  this  preference  will  be  understood  when  I  explain 
that  English  farmers  who  manufacture  mutton  as  a  primary  product 
kill  their  sheep  as  soon  as  they  are  full  grown,  when  a  year  old  or 
less.  They  can  not  afford  to  feed  a  sheep  for  two  years  longer  merely 
to  improve  its  flavor  without  adding  to  its  weight.  Country  gentle- 
men who  do  not  care  for  expense  occasionally  regale  their  friends  on 
a  haunch  or  saddle  of  three-year-old  mutton,  as  a  rare  and  costly 
luxury. 


78o  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

The  antipodean  graziers  are  wool-growers.  Until  lately,  mutton 
was  merely  used  as  manure,  and  even  now  it  is  but  a  secondary  prod- 
uct. The  wool-crop  improves  year  by  year  until  the  sheep  is  three 
or  four  years  old ;  therefore,  it  is  not  slaughtered  until  this  age  is 
attained,  and  thus  the  sheep  sent  to  England  are  similar  to  those  of 
the  country  squire,  and  such  as  the  English  farmer  could  not  send  to 
market  under  eighteen  pence  per  pound. 

There  is,  however,  one  drawback  ;  but  I  have  tested  it  thoroughly, 
having  supplied  my  own  table  during  the  last  six  months  with  no 
other  mutton  than  that  from  New  Zealand,  and  find  it  so  trifling  as  to 
be  imperceptible  unless  critically  looked  for.  It  is  simply  that,  in 
thawing,  a  small  quantity  of  the  juice  of  the  meat  oozes  out.  This  is 
more  than  compensated  by  the  superior  richness  and  fullness  of  flavor 
of  the  meat  itself,  which  is  much  darker  in  color  than  young  mutton. 
— Knowledge. 


A  DEFEI^SE  OF  MODEEN  THOUGHT  * 

By  WILLIAM  D.  LE  SUEUE,  B.  A. 

FROM  the  point  of  view  of  the  present  writer,  there  are  good 
reasons  for  believing  that  a  general  readjustment  of  thought  is 
now  in  progress,  and  that  it  is  destined  to  go  on  until  old  forms  of 
belief,  inconsistent  with  a  rational  interpretation  of  the  w^orld,  have 
been  completely  overthrown.  This  progressive  readjustment  is  not  a 
thing  of  yesterday  ;  it  is  simply  that  gradual  abandonment  of  the 
theological  stand-point  which  has  been  taking  place  throughout  the 
ages.  As  a  modern  philosopher  has  remarked,  the  very  conception  of 
miracle  marks  the  beginnings  of  rationalism,  seeing  that  it  recognizes 
an  established  order  of  things,  a  certain  "reign  of  law,"  with  which 
only  supernatural  power  can  interfere.  The  progress  beyond  this 
point  consists  in  an  increasing  perception  of  the  universality  of  law, 
and  an  increasing  disposition  to  be  exacting  as  to  the  evidences  of 
miracle.  No  candid  person  can  read  the  history  of  modern  times 
without  arriving  at  the  conclusion  that  the  whole  march  of  civilization 
illustrates,  above  everything  else,  this  gradual  change  of  intellectual 
stand-point.  Man's  power  keeps  pace  ever  with  his  knowledge  of  nat- 
ural law  and  his  recognition  of  the  uniformity  of  its  operations.  What 
we  see  to-day  is  simply  the  anticipation  by  thousands  of  the  conclusion 
to  which  all  past  discoveries  and  observations  have  been  pointing,  that 
the  reign  of  law  is  and  always  has  been  absolute.  This  is  really  what 
"  agnosticism,"  so  called,  means.  It  means  that  thinking  men  are  tired 
of  the  inconsistencies  of  the  old  system  of  belief,  and  that  they  de- 

*  From  a  pamphlet  reply  to  a  lecture  on  "  Agnosticism,"  delivered  by  the  Lord  Bishop 
of  Ontario. 


A  DEFENSE   OF  MODERN  THOUGHT,  781 

sire  to  rest  in  an  order  of  conceptions  not  liable  to  disturbance.  The 
great  Faraday,  who  had  not  brought  himself  to  this  point,  used  to  say 
that  when  he  had  to  deal  with  questions  of  faith  he  left  all  scientific 
and  other  human  reasonings  at  the  door,  and  that  when  he  had  to  deal 
with  questions  of  science  he  discarded  in  like  manner  all  theological 
modes  of  thought.  The  region  of  science  was  one  region,  that  of 
faith  was  another  ;  and  between  these  he  placed  a  wall  so  high  that 
once  on  either  side  he  could  see  nothing  that  lay  on  the  other.  He 
did  not  attempt  to  reconcile  faith  with  science,  as  some  do  ;  he  sepa- 
rated them  utterly,  feeling  them  apparently  to  be  irreconcilable. 
Thus  he  virtually  lived  in  two  worlds — one  in  which  no  miracles  took 
place,  but  in  which  everything  flowed  in  an  orderly  manner  from  rec- 
ognized antecedents,  and  another  in  which  the  chain  of  causation 
might  be  broken  at  any  moment  by  supernatural  power.  Since  Fara- 
day's time,  however,  men  of  science  have  grown  bolder.  They  have 
renounced  the  attempt  to  live  a  divided  life.  They  do  not  believe  in 
insuperable  barriers  between  one  field  of  thought  and  another.  They 
believe  in  the  unity  of  the  human  mind  and  in  the  unity  of  truth. 
They  have  made  their  choice — those  of  them  at  least  whom  the  Bishop 
of  Ontario  designates  as  agnostics — in  favor  of  a  world  in  which  cause 
and  effect  maintain  constant  relations.  In  doing  so  they  do  not  act 
willfully,  but  simply  yield  to  the  irresistible  weight  of  evidence.  Miracle 
is  a  matter  of  more  or  less  uncertain  testimony,  while  the  unchangeable- 
ness  of  natural  law  is  a  matter  of  daily  observation.  Miracles  never 
happen  in  the  laboratory.  Supernatural  apparitions  do  not  haunt  the 
museum.  Distant  ages  and  countries  or  lonely  road-sides  reap  all  the 
glory  of  these  manifestations.  What  wonder,  then,  that  the  man  of 
science  prefers  to  trust  in  what  his  eyes  daily  see  and  his  hands  handle, 
rather  than  in  narratives  of  perfervid  devotees,  or  in  traditions  handed 
down  from  centuries  whose  leading  characteristic  was  an  omnivorous 
credulity  ?  There  is  nothing  negative  in  this  attitude  of  mind.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  positive  in  the  highest  degree.  The  true  man  of 
science  wants  to  know  and  believe  as  much  as  possible.  He  desires 
to  know  what  is  and  to  adapt  his  thoughts  to  that  ;  and  the  universe 
is  to  him  simply  an  inexhaustible  treasure-house  of  truths,  all  of  more 
or  less  practical  import. 

It  is  right,  however,  before  proceeding  further,  to  examine  this 
word  "agnosticism"  a  little,  to  see  whether  it  is  one  that  is  really  ser- 
viceable in  the  present  controversy.  That  some  have  been  willing  to 
apply  the  term  to  themselves  and  to  regard  it  as  rather  hen  trovato,  I 
am  quite  aware  ;  but  I  think  there  are  good  reasons  why  serious 
thinkers  should  decline  to  call  themselves  by  such  a  name,  and  should 
object  to  its  application  to  them  by  others. 

A  question  proposed  for  discussion  either  can  or  can  not  be  settled  ; 
it  either  lies  within  or  beyond  the  region  in  which  verification  is  pos- 
sible.     If  it  lies  within  that  region,  no  man  should  call  himself  an 


782  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

agnostic  in  regard  to  it.  He  may  withhold  his  judgment  until  the 
evidence  is  complete,  but  suspension  of  judgment  is  not  agnosticism, 
which,  if  it  means  anything,  means  a  profession  of  hopeless  and,  so  to 
speak,  invincible  ignorance  in  regard  to  certain  matters.  But  if  it 
would  be  absurd  for  a  man  to  profess  himself  an  agnostic  in  regard  to 
problems  admitting  or  believed  to  admit  of  solution,  is  it  not  idle  for 
any  one  to  accept  that  designation  because  he  believes  that  there  are 
other  problems  or  propositions  which  do  not  admit  of  solution  ?  All 
one  has  to  do  in  relation  to  the  latter  class  of  problems  is  to  recognize 
their  unreal  or  purely  verbal  character.  It  is  the  nature  of  the  prob- 
lem that  requires  to  be  characterized,  not  our  mental  relation  thereto. 
The  latter  follows  as  a  matter  of  course  from  the  former.  Moreover, 
why  should  any  one  wish  or  consent  to  be  designated  by  a  term  purely 
negative  in  its  meaning  ?  It  is  what  we  know,  not  what  we  do  not 
know,  that  should  furnish  us  with  a  name,  if  it  is  necessary  to  have 
one.  The  little  that  a  man  knows  is  of  vastly  more  consequence  to  him 
than  all  the  untrodden  continents  of  his  ignorance.  The  chemist  calls 
himself  so  because  he  professes  to  have  a  knowledge  of  chemistry :  he 
does  not  invent  for  himself  a  name  signifying  his  ignorance  of  political 
economy  or  metaphysics.  Why,  then,  should  any  man  adopt  a  name 
which  defines  his  relation  not  to  things  that  he  knows  or  to  questions 
to  which  he  attributes  a  character  of  reality,  but  to  things  that  he 
does  not  know  and  to  questions  which,  so  far  as  he  can  see,  have  no 
character  of  reality  ?  Let  others  give  him  such  a  name  if  they  will, 
but  let  no  man  voluntarily  tie  himself  to  a  negation. 

There  are  some,  as  I  believe,  who  have  adopted  the  appellation  of 
agnostic  thoughtlessly  :  some  through  indolence,  as  appearing  to  ex- 
empt them  from  the  necessity  of  a  decision  in  regard  to  certain  diffi- 
cult and,  in  a  social  sense,  critical  questions  ;  and  some  possibly  for 
the  reason  hinted  at  by  the  Bishop  of  Ontario,  namely,  lack  of  the 
courage  necessary  to  take  up  a  more  decided  position.  Whatever  the 
motive  may  be,  however,  I  am  persuaded  that  the  term  is  a  poor  one 
for  purposes  of  definition  ;  and  I  should  advise  all  earnest  men,  who 
think  more  of  their  beliefs  than  of  their  disbeliefs,  to  disown  it  so  far 
as  they  themselves  are  concerned.  If  it  be  asked  by  what  appellation 
those  who  do  not  believe  in  "  revealed  religion  "  are  to  be  known,  I 
should  answer  that  it  is  not  their  duty  to  coin  for  themselves  any  sec- 
tarian title.  They  are  in  no  sense  a  sect.  They  believe  themselves 
to  be  on  the  high-road  of  natural  truth.  It  is  they  w^ho  have  cast 
aside  all  limited  and  partial  views,  and  who  are  opening  their  minds 
to  the  full  teaching  of  the  universe.  Let  their  opponents  coin  names 
if  they  will :  they  whom  the  truth  has  made  free  feel  that  their  creed 
is  too  wide  for  limitation. 

The  Bishop  of  Ontario  stands  forth  in  the  pamphlet  before  us  sim- 
ply as  the  champion  of  the  two  great  doctrines  of  God  and  immortal- 
ity.    In  reality,  however,  he  is  the  champion  of  much  more,  for  he 


A  DEFENSE   OF  MODERN  THOUGHT.  783 

does  not  profess  that  these  doctrines  can  stand  by  themselves  apart 
from  a  belief  in  revelation.  The  issue  between  the  bishop  and  those 
whom  he  styles  agnostics  is  not  really  as  to  these  two  abstract  doc- 
trines, but  as  to  the  validity  of  the  whole  miraculous  system  of  which 
his  lordship  is  a  responsible  exponent.  If  we  can  imagine  a  person 
simply  holding,  as  the  result  of  his  own  individual  reasonings  or  other 
mental  experiences,  a  belief  in  God  as  a  spiritual  existence  animating 
and  presiding  over  the  works  of  Nature,  and  a  further  belief  in  a  fu- 
ture existence  for  the  human  soul,  I  do  not  see  that  there  would  neces- 
sarily be  any  conflict  between  him  and  the  most  advanced  representa- 
tives of  modern  thought.  No,  the  trouble  does  not  begin  here.  The 
trouble  arises  when  these  beliefs  are  presented  as  part  and  parcel  of  a 
supernatural  system  miraculously  revealed  to  mankind,  and  embracing 
details  which  bring  it  plainly  into  conflict  with  the  known  facts  and 
laws  of  Nature.  To  detach  these  two  doctrines,  therefore,  from  the 
system  to  which  they  belong,  and  put  them  forward  as  if  the  whole 
stress  of  modern  philosophical  criticism  was  directed  against  them  in 
particular,  is  a  controversial  artifice  of  a  rather  unfair  kind. 

We  are  reminded  by  the  right  reverend  author  that  no  chain  is 
stronger  than  its  weakest  link,  and  we  are  asked  to  apply  the  principle 
to  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  some  of  the  links  of  which  his  lordship 
has  tested  and  found  unable  to  bear  the  proper  strain.  The  principle 
is  undoubtedly  a  sound  one  ;  but  has  it  occurred  to  his  lordship  that  it 
is  no  less  applicable  to  the  net-work  of  doctrine  in  which  he  believes 
than  to  the  doctrine  of  evolution  ?  Some  links  of  that  net-work  are 
snapping  every  day  under  no  greater  strain  than  the  simple  exercise  of 
common  sense  by  ordinary  men.  It  is  a  beautiful  and  well-chosen 
position  that  his  lordship  takes  up  as  champion  of  the  doctrines  of 
God  and  immortality  against  "  agnostic  "  science  ;  but  it  would  have 
argued  greater  courage  had  the  banner  been  planted  on  the  miraculous 
narratives  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament.  A  gallant  defense  of  the 
scriptural  account  of  the  taking  of  Jericho,  of  the  arresting  for  a  some- 
what sanguinary  purpose  of  the  earth's  rotation,  of  the  swallowing  of 
Jonah  by  a  whale,  and  his  restoration  to  light  and  liberty  after  three 
days  and  nights  of  close  and  very  disagreeable  confinement,  of  the 
comfortable  time  enjoyed  by  Shadrach,  Meshach,  and  Abednego  in 
the  fiery  furnace,  of  the  feeding  of  five  thousand  men  with  five  loaves 
and  two  fishes  and  the  gathering  up  of  twelve  basketfuls  of  the  frag- 
ments— a  gallant  defense,  I  say,  of  these  things  would  be  very  much 
more  in  order  ;  for  these  are  the  links  that  criticism  has  attacked  and 
which  the  common  judgment  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  daily  invali- 
dating. Modern  philosophy  in  its  negative  aspect  is  simply  a  revolt 
against  the  attempt  to  force  such  narratives  as  these  upon  the  adult 
intelligence  of  mankind — against  the  absurdity  of  assigning  to  Hebrew 
legends  of  the  most  monstrous  kind  a  character  of  credibility  which 
would  be  scornfully  refused  to  similar  productions  of  the  imagination 


784  TEE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

of  any  other  race.  Let  there,  then,  be  no  misunderstanding  :  science  is 
not  concerned  to  prove  that  there  is  no  God,  nor  even  that  a  future 
life  is  an  impossibility  ;  it  simply  obeys  an  instinct  of  self-preservation 
in  seeking  to  repel  modes  of  thought  and  belief  which,  in  their  ulti- 
mate issues,  are  destructive  of  all  science. 

One  has  only  to  reflect  for  a  moment,  in  order  to  see  how  much 
theological  baggage  the  orthodox  disputant  throws  away,  when  he 
confines  his  arguments  to  the  two  points  of  God  and  a  future  life. 
Were  it  thrown  away  in  sincerity,  argument  might  cease  ;  but  no,  the 
manoeuvre  is  first  to  make  a  formidable  demonstration  as  champion  of 
two  cardinal  doctrines  which  in  themselves  arouse  little  opposition, 
even  where  they  do  not  commend  assent,  and  then  to  apply  the  results 
of  the  proceeding  to  the  benefit  of  those  parts  of  the  system  which 
had  been  kept  in  the  background.  It  is  not  in  the  interest  of  a  simple 
theistic  belief,  unconnected  with  any  scheme  of  theology,  that  the 
Bishop  of  Ontario  writes  :  what  he  has  at  heart,  I  venture  to  say,  is 
that  men  may  believe  as  he  does.  The  theism  of  Francis  Newman,  or 
of  Victor  Hugo,  or  Mazzini — all  convinced  theists — would  be  very 
unsatisfactory  in  his  eyes,  and  it  may  be  doubted  whether  he  would 
take  up  his  pen  for  the  purpose  of  promoting  theism  of  this  type.  It 
should,  therefore,  be  thoroughly  understood  that,  while  his  lordship  is 
professedly  combating  agnosticism,  he  is  really  waging  war  on  behalf 
of  that  elaborate  theological  system  of  which  he  is  an  exponent — that 
system  which  bids  us  look  to  the  Bible  for  an  account  of  the  creation 
of  the  world  and  of  man  ;  and  which  requires  us  to  believe  that  the 
Creator  found  it  necessary  in  former  times,  for  the  right  government 
of  the  world,  to  be  continually  breaking  through  the  laws  of  physical 
succession  which  he  himself  had  established.  In  arguing  against  the 
doctrine  of  evolution,  he  labors  to  establish  the  opposite  doctrine  of 
the  creation  and  government  of  the  world  by  miracle. 

The  question  therefore  is.  Can  science  be  free  and  yet  accommo- 
date itself  to  the  whole  elaborate  scheme  of  Christian  orthodoxy? 
The  great  majority  of  those  who  are  most  entitled  to  speak  on  behalf 
of  science  say  No  ;  and  it  is  this  negative  which  his  lordship  of  On- 
tario converts  into  a  denial  of  the  two  doctrines  above-mentioned. 
But  let  those  who  are  at  all  familiar  with  the  course  of  modern  thought 
ask  themselves  if  they  recall  in  the  writings  of  any  leading  philosopher 
of  the  day  arguments  specially  directed  against  the  hypothesis  of  God, 
or  even  against  that  of  a  possible  future  state  of  existence  for  human- 
ity. What  every  one  can  at  once  remember  is,  that  the  writers  who 
are  called  "  agnostics,"  the  Spencers,  Iluxleys,  Tyndalls,  and  Darwins, 
plead  for  the  universality  of  Nature's  laws  and  the  abiding  uniformity 
of  her  processes.  That  is  what  they  are  concerned  to  maintain,  be- 
cause it  is  upon  that  that  all  science  depends.  Scientific  men  in  gen- 
eral are  but  little  disposed  to  disturb  any  one's  faith  in  God  or  immor- 
tality, so  long  as  these  doctrines  are  not  associated  with  or  put  for- 


A   DEFENSE   OF  MODERN  THOUGHT,  785 

ward  as  involving  others  which  really  invade  the  domain  of  science 
and  tend  to  cast  uncertainty  upon  its  methods  and  results. 

In  seeking  to  account  for  "  the  modern  spread  of  agnosticism,"  the 
bishop  finds  that  it  is  to  "  the  widely-spread  popularity  of  the  theory 
of  evolution,  leading  as  it  does  to  materialism,"  that  the  phenomenon 
is  to  be  attributed.  Consequently  the  theory  of  evolution  must  be  de- 
stroyed. The  Episcopal  edict  has  gone  forth,  and  the  Episcopal  bat- 
teries are  raised  against  this  later  Carthage  of  infidelity.  But,  alas  !  it 
does  not  sufficiently  appear  that  the  right  reverend  director  of  the 
siege  understands  either  the  nature  of  the  task  he  has  undertaken  or 
the  significance  which  would  attach  to  success  could  he  achieve  it.  To 
take  the  latter  point  first :  science  was  making  very  rapid  progress 
before  the  evolution  theory  had  acquired  any  wide  popularity,  before 
in  fact  anything  was  known  of  it  outside  of  one  or  two  speculative 
treatises  ;  and  already  the  opposition  of  science  to  a  scheme  which 
makes  this  earth  the  theatre  of  miracle-working  power  was  well 
marked.  Twenty-two  years  ago,  when  "  The  Origin  of  Species  "  was 
but  two  years  old,  and  had  still  a  great  deal  of  opposition  to  encounter 
even  from  men  of  science,  before  even  the  term  evolution  had  any 
currency  in  the  special  sense  it  now  bears,  a  leading  prelate  of  the 
Church  of  England,  Bishop  Wilberforce,  discerned  a  skeptical  move- 
ment "  too  wide-spread  and  connecting  itself  with  far  too  general  con- 
ditions "  to  be  explained  otherwise  than  as  "  the  first  stealing  over  the 
sky  of  the  lurid  lights  which  shall  be  shed  profusely  around  the  great 
Antichrist."  *  To  charge  the  present  intellectual  state  of  the  world, 
therefore,  on  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  to  ignore  that  general  move- 
ment of  thought  which,  before  the  idea  of  evolution  was  a  factor  of 
any  importance  in  modern  speculation,  had  already,  as  the  Bishop  of 
Oxford  testified,  carried  thousands  away  from  their  old  theological 
habitations,  and  which,  with  or  without  the  theory  of  evolution,  was 
quite  adapted  to  produce  the  state  of  things  which  we  see  to-day  in 
the  intellectual  world. 

The  doctrine  of  evolution  is  simply  the  form  in  which  the  domi- 
nant scientific  thought  of  the  day  is  cast.  As  a  working  hypothesis 
it  presents  very  great  advantages  ;  and  the  thinkers  of  to-day  would 
find  it  hard  to  dispense  with  the  aid  it  affords.  But  supposing  it 
could  be  shown  that  the  doctrine,  as  at  present  conceived,  was  untena- 
ble— what  then  ?  Would  men  of  science  at  once  abandon  their  belief 
in  the  invariability  of  natural  law  and  fly  back  to  mediaeval  supersti- 
tions ?  By  no  means.  If  there  is  any  class  of  men  who  have  learned 
the  lesson  that  the  spider  taught  to  Bruce,  it  is  the  class  of  scientific 
workers.  Destroy  one  of  their  constructions  and  they  set  to  work 
again,  with  unconquerable  industry,  to  build  another.  In  fact,  they 
are  always  testing  and  trying  their  own  constructions  ;  and  we  may 
be  sure  that  if  the  evolution  theory  is  ever  to  be  swept  away  it  will 

*  Vide  preface  to  "  Replies  to  Essays  and  Reviews." 
VOL.  XXIV. — 50 


786  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

be  by  scientific  not  theological  hands.  It  holds  its  ground  now,  be- 
cause it  is  a  help  to  thought  and  investigation  ;  if  it  should  ever  be- 
come so  beset  with  difficulties  as  to  be  no  longer  serviceable,  it  will  be 
withdrawn  from  use,  as  many  a  theory  has  been  before  it,  and  as  many 
a  one  will  be  in  the  days  to  come.  Among  contemporary  men  of 
science  there  is  probably  none  who  believes  more  strongly  in  the  doc- 
trine in  question  than  the  editor  of  "  The  Popular  Science  Monthly  "  ; 
yet  in  a  recent  number  of  his  magazine  he  has  marked  his  attitude 
toward  it  in  a  manner  which  for  our  present  purpose  is  very  instructive. 
"  It  is  undeniable,"  he  writes,  "  that  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  are  many  and  formidable,  and  it  will  no  doubt 
take  a  long  time  to  clear  them  up  ;  while  the  solution  of  still  unresolved 
problems  will  very  possibly  result  in  important  modifications  of  the 
theory  as  now  entertained.  But  the  establishment  of  the  doctrine  of 
evolution,  as  a  comprehensive  law  of  nature,  is  no  longer  dependent 
upon  its  freedom  from  embarrassments,  or  that  absoluteness  of  proof 
which  will  only  become  possible  with  the  future  extension  of  knowl- 
edge. Notwithstanding  these  drawbacks,  the  evidence  for  it  is  so 
varied,  so  consistent,  and  so  irresistible,  as  to  compel  its  broad  accept- 
ance by  men  of  science,  who,  while  disagreeing  upon  many  of  its 
questions,  find  it  indispensable  as  a  guide  to  the  most  multifarious  in- 
vestigations." 

We  now  come  to  the  further  question  of  the  validity  of  the  criti- 
cisms directed  in  the  pamphlet  before  us  against  the  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion, in  discussing  which  the  competency  of  the  critic  for  his  self-im- 
posed task  will  necessarily  come  more  or  less  under  consideration.  Let 
us  first  notice  the  quotations  which  his  lordship  brings  forward,  remem- 
bering that  the  doctrine  of  evolution  in  its  present  shape  may  be  said 
to  be  the  work  of  the  last  twenty  years.  Well,  his  lordship  quotes 
three  leading  scientific  authors — Owen,  Agassiz,  and  Lyell ;  but  it  is 
noticeable  that  in  no  case  does  he  give  the  date  of  his  quotation,  and 
in  the  case  of  the  first  two  does  not  even  mention  the  work  in  which 
the  passage  he  refers  to  is  to  be  found.  The  quotations  are  intended 
to  show  that  these  eminent  authors  rejected  the  doctrine  of  the  "  origin 
of  species  by  natural  selection."  As  regards  Agassiz,  who  died  ten 
years  ago,  every  one  knows  that  this  was  the  case  ;  and  most  are  also 
aware  that  the  great  Swiss  naturalist  left  behind  him  a  son,  a  natu- 
ralist almost  equally  great,  w^ho  supports  the  Darwinian  theory  as  strong- 
ly as  his  father  opposed  it.  Owen,  though  not  a  Darwinian  in  the  full 
sense,  held  views  which  were  clearly  in  the  direction  of  natural  selec- 
tion. It  is,  however,  when  we  come  to  Lyell  that  we  have  cause  for 
astonishment.  Here  we  have  the  most  eminent  of  English  geologists, 
whose  adhesion  to  the  Darwinian  theory,  announced  for  the  first  time 
in  1863 — the  date  of  the  publication  of  the  first  edition  of  his  "An- 
tiquity of  Man" — created  such  a  sensation  in  the  scientific  world, 
quoted,  at  this  time  of  day,  as  an  anti-Darwinian !     What  are  we  to 


A  DEFENSE    OF  MODERN  THOUGHT,  787 

think  of  this  ?  I  can  not  and  do  not  believe,  nor  would  I  wish  to  sug- 
gest, that  the  Right  Reverend  the  Bishop  of  Ontario  was  carried  so 
far  in  his  zeal  against  evolution  as  deliberately  to  misrepresent  Sir 
Charles  Lyell's  attitude  toward  that  doctrine.  The  only  other  hy- 
pothesis, however,  is  that  of  extreme  ignorance.  Of  this  his  lordship 
must  stand,  not  only  accused,  but  convicted.  The  fact  of  Sir  Charles 
Lyell's  conversion  to  the  views  of  Darwin  on  the  origin  of  species  was 
one  of  which  the  whole  reading  world  took  note  at  the  time,  and  which 
has  been  known  to  every  tyro  in  general  science  from  that  day  to  this. 
His  lordship,  quoting  from  the  "  Principles  of  Geology,"  but  without 
any  mention  of  edition,  represents  Sir  Charles  as  holding  "  that  spe- 
cies have  a  real  existence  in  nature,  and  that  each  was  endowed  at  the 
time  of  its  creation  with  the  attributes  and  organization  by  which  it 
is  now  distinguished."  That  these  were  Sir  Charles  Lyell's  views  when 
the  earlier  editions  of  his  "  Principles  "  were  published  every  one  is 
aware  ;  but  it  is  a  most  extraordinary  thing  that  any  one  should  have 
quoted  them  as  his  full  twenty  years  after  he  had  distinctly  abandoned 
them.  The  preface  to  the  fourth  edition  of  the  "  Antiquity  of  Man  " 
opens  as  follows  :  "  The  first  edition  of  the  '  Antiquity  of  Man '  was 
published  in  1863,  and  was  the  first  work  in  which  I  expressed  my 
opinion  of  the  prehistoric  age  of  man,  and  also  my  belief  in  Mr.  Dar- 
win's theory  of  the  '  Origin  of  Species '  as  the  best  explanation  yet 
offered  of  the  connection  between  man  and  those  animals  which  have 
flourished  successively  on  the  earth."  In  the  tenth  edition  of  his 
"  Principles,"  published  in  1868,  he  says  (page  492)  that  "  Mr.  Darwin, 
without  absolutely  proving  this  (theory),  has  made  it  appear  in  the 
highest  degree  probable,  by  an  appeal  to  many  distinct  and  inde- 
pendent classes  of  phenomena  in  natural  history  and  geology."  Dar- 
win himself  would  not  have  claimed  more  for  his  theory  than  this. 
Professor  Huxley  would  not  claim  more  for  it  to-day.  Enough  for 
either  of  them  the  admission  that,  by  arguments  drawn  from  many 
quarters,  it  had  been  rendered  "  in  the  highest  degree  probable."  In 
his  "  Antiquity  of  Man,"  *  Sir  Charles  Lyell  expressly  acknowledges 
the  inconclusiveness  of  the  arguments  he  had  used  at  an  earlier  date 
to  prove  that  "  species  were  primordial  creations  and  not  derivative." 
His  reasonings,  he  frankly  confesses,  could  not  hold  their  ground  "  in 
the  light  of  the  facts  and  arguments  adduced  by  Darwin  and  Hooker." 
As  regards  the  "descent  of  man,"  after  quoting  a  passage  from  Dar- 
win to  the  effect  that  "  man  is  the  co-descendant  with  other  mammals 
of  a  common  progenitor,"  he  observes  that  "we  certainly  can  not 
escape  from  such  a  conclusion  without  abandoning  many  of  the 
weightiest  arguments  which  have  been  urged  in  support  of  variation 
and  natural  selection  considered  as  the  subordinate  causes  by  which 
new  types  have  been  gradually  introduced  into  the  world."  On  every 
point,  therefore,  the  real  views  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  as  formed  in  the 
*  See  fourth  edition,  p.  469. 


788  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

light  of  the  facts  adduced  by  Darwin  and  of  his  own  maturer  reason- 
ings, were  totally  opposed  to  those  quoted  in  the  bishop's  pamphlet. 
Is  it  not  remarkable,  such  being  the  case,  that  not  one  member  of  the 
reverend  and  learned  clergy  of  the  diocese  of  Kingston,  by  whose 
special  request  this  document  was  given  to  the  world,  should  have 
suggested  a  correction  on  this  point  ?  Was  there  not  a  lay  delegate 
who  could  have  done  it ;  or  were  they  all — bishop,  clergy,  and  laymen 
— equally  in  the  dark  ?  It  would  really  seem  so.  Who  can  wonder 
that  the  doctrine  of  evolution  does  not  make  much  progress  in  certain 
quarters  ? 

Sir  Charles  Lyell  unfortunately  is  not  the  only  author  misrepre- 
sented. Huxley  is  said  to  "  discredit "  the  origin  of  life  from  non- 
living matter.  Huxley  does  nothing  of  the  kind  ;  he  simply  says  that 
the  experiments  heretofore  made  to  show  that  life  can  be  so  developed 
have  not  been  successful.  On  the  page  of  the  pamphlet  immediately 
preceding  that  on  which  this  statement  is  made  in  regard  to  Huxley, 
we  are  informed,  correctly,  that  the  same  great  naturalist  professes  "  a 
philosophic  faith  in  the  probability  of  spontaneous  generation."  Surely 
his  lordship  could  not  have  understood  the  force  of  these  words,  or  he 
would  not  have  said,  almost  immediately  after,  that  "  the  origin  of  life 
on  earth  ...  is  not  only  discredited  *  by  Huxley  but  by  many  other 
great  scientists."  A  writer  who  finds  such  comparatively  simple  lan- 
guage beyond  his  comprehension  is  not,  one  would  judge,  very  well 
fitted  to  enter  the  lists  against  the  leading  thinkers  of  the  day,  except 
perhaps  for  strictly  diocesan  purposes. 

That  his  lordship  is  really  hopelessly  at  sea  in  discussing  this  ques- 
tion is  evident  by  many  signs.  Such  sentences  as  the  following  speak 
volumes  for  the  mental  confusion  of  their  author  :  "Agnosticism  takes 
refuge  in  evolution  in  order  to  get  rid  of  the  idea  of  God  as  unthink- 
able and  unknowable."  Here,  again,  inaccuracies  of  language.  An 
idea  may  be  unthinkable  in  the  sense  of  not  admitting  of  being  thought 
out^  but  can  an  idea  be  said  to  be  "  unknowable  "  ?  What  is  an  un- 
knowable idea  ?  An  idea  must  be  known  in  order  to  be  an  idea  at  all. 
But  this  mere  verbal  inaccuracy  is  not  the  worst.  We  had  been  told 
that  agnosticism  was  a  form  of  opinion  according  to  which  nothing 
could  be  known  of  God.  Now,  it  seems  that  agnosticism  has  to  fall 
back  on  evolution,  "  in  order  to  get  rid  of  the  idea  of  God  as  unthink- 
able and  unknowable."  Now,  the  so-called  agnosticism  could  not  have 
been  agnosticism  in  reality,  otherwise  it  would  not  have  required  the 
help  of  evolution  in  such  a  matter.  If  we  ask  how  evolution  helps 
agnosticism  to  regard  "  the  idea  of  God  as  unthinkable  and  unknow- 
able," we  shall  only  find  the  confusion  growing  worse  confounded. 

*  His  lordship  means  "  discredited  not  only  by  Huxley,  but  by  etc."  The  inaccuracy 
of  expression  observable  here  is  paralleled  in  many  other  passages  of  the  pamphlet.  For 
example,  his  lordship  says,  page  5,  "  They  are  not  content  to  speak  for  themselves,  but 
for  all  the  world  besides."     A  bishop  should  write  better  English  than  this. 


A  DEFENSE   OF  MODERN  THOUGHT,  789 

Evolution  has  nothing  to  do  with  such  questions  :  it  is  a  simple  theory 
as  to  the  mode  of  generation  and  order  of  succession  of  different  forms 
of  existences. 

It  is,  however,  when  his  lordship  comes  to  discuss  the  doctrine  of 
the  survival  of  the  fittest  that  his  sad  want  of  acquaintance  with  the 
whole  subject  shows  itself  most  conspicuously.  Let  me  quote  :  "By 
some  means  or  other  *  the  survival  of  the  fittest  in  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence '  is  assumed  to  be  a  law  of  Kature,  and  if  it  be  so  our  faith  is 
severely  taxed.  Survival  of  the  fittest — fittest  for  what  ?  If  the  an- 
swer be,  fittest  for  surviving,  we  argue  in  a  circle,  and  get  no  informa- 
tion whatever.  The  only  rational  answer  must  be,  they  survive  who 
are  fittest  for  their  environments  in  size,  strength,  and  vigor."  Let 
me  here  ask  what  sense  the  learned  author  can  possibly  attach  to  these 
last  words  except  the  very  one  he  had  just  discarded  as  meaningless — 
"  fitness  to  survive  "  ?  How  is  fitness  to  environment  proved  except  by 
the  actual  fact  of  survival  ?  Do  environments  always  require  "  size  " 
as  an  element  of  fitness  ?  By  no  means,  they  sometimes  require  small- 
ness.  When  a  mouse  escapes  into  a  hole,  where  the  cat  can  not  follow, 
it  survives  not  by  reason  of  its  size,  but  by  reason  of  its  smallness. 
Strength,  again,  is  one  element  of  adaptation  to  environment,  but  only 
one  ;  and  it  may  fall  far  below  some  other  element,  swiftness,  for  ex- 
ample, or  cunning,  in  practical  importance.  The  fact,  however,  that 
the  learned  author  sees  no  meaning  in  the  answer  "fitness  to  sur- 
vive," tells  the  whole  story  of  his  own  unfitness  for  the  special  envi- 
ronment in  which  he  has  placed  himself  in  attempting  to  discuss  the 
doctrine  of  evolution,  and  rather  tends  to  create  doubt  as  to  the  sur- 
vival of  the  work  he  has  given  to  the  world.  This  is  a  matter  in 
which  no  aptitude  in  quoting  Horace  is  of  any  avail.  The  road  to  an 
understanding  of  the  terms  and  conceptions  of  modern  science  lies  in  a 
careful  study  at  first  hand  of  the  works  in  which  these  terms  and  con- 
ceptions are  expounded.  His  lordship  assumes  that,  if  we  say  that 
those  survive  who  are  fit  to  survive,  we  utter  a  barren  truism.  It  is  a 
truism  we  may  grant,  but  not  a  barren  one,  any  more  than  the  axioms 
of  geometry  are  barren.  The  simple  word  "  fitness  "  implies  a  definite 
external  something,  adaptation  to  which  is  the  price  of  existence.  The 
definiteness  of  the  mold  involves  the  definiteness  of  that  which  is 
molded  ;  and  all  the  miracles  of  life  and  organization  we  see  around 
us  are  in  the  last  resort  merely  examples  of  adaptation  to  fixed  condi- 
tions of  existence.  "  Born  into  life  we  are,"  says  Matthew  Arnold, 
"  and  life  must  be  our  mold."  By  " life  "  understand  the  universe,  and 
we  have  a  poetical  version  of  the  doctrine  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
It  so  happens,  and  this  is  a  further  truth  which  it  would  not  be  well  to 
pass  over,  that  adaptation  does  more  or  less  imply  excellence  even  from 
the  human  stand-point.  All  those  adaptations  that  favor  human  life 
and  happiness  we  of  course  call  excellent,  even  though  they  may  not  be 
favorable  to  the  life  and  happiness  of  other  living  creatures.     And  as 


790  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

man  has  thriven  mightily  and  prevailed,  adaptation  in  general  presents 
itself  to  him  in  a  favorable  light.  Occasionally,  when  his  crops  are 
destroyed  by  some  insect-pest  wonderfully  adapted  for  its  work,  or 
when  his  cattle  are  infested  with  deadly  parasites,  or  when  some  germ 
of  disease  is  multiplying  a  million-fold  in  his  own  frame,  he  sees  that 
all  adaptations  are  not  yoked  to  his  especial  service. 

His  lordship  seems  to  suppose  that  the  believers  in  the  doctrine  of 
the  survival  of  the  fittest  are  bound  to  show  that  there  has  been  a 
steady  improvement  of  type  from  the  first  dawn  of  life.  To  show  how 
gross  and  inexcusable  a  misunderstanding  this  is,  I  need  only  quote 
two  sentences  from  Sir  Charles  Lyell's  "Antiquity  of  Man":  "One 
of  the  principal  claims,"  observes  the  great  geologist,  "of  Mr.  Dar- 
win's theory  to  acceptance  is  that  it  enables  us  to  dispense  with  a  law 
of  progression  as  a  necessary  accompaniment  of  variation.  It  will 
account  equally  well  for  what  is  called  degradation  or  a  retrograde 
movement  toward  a  simpler  structure,  and  does  not  require  Lamarck's 
continual  creation  of  monads  ;  for  this  was  a  necessary  part  of  his  sys- 
tem in  order  to  explain  how,  after  the  progressive  power  had  been  at 
work  for  myriads  of  ages,  there  were  as  many  beings  of  the  simplest 
structure  in  existence  as  ever."  * 

Writing  thus  in  ignorance  of  what  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the 
fittest,  as  formulated  by  Darwin,  and  accepted  by  modem  men  of  sci- 
ence, really  means,  his  lordship  is  able  to  ask  such  pointless  questions 
as  whether  the  law  is  illustrated  in  the  slaughtering  of  the  flower  of  a 
nation  in  war,  and  whether  it  is  the  fittest  who  survive  famines,  pesti- 
lences, shipwrecks,  etc.  His  lordship  evidently  does  not  himself  be- 
lieve there  is  any  provision  for  the  survival  of  the  fittest  in  the  provi- 
dential government  of  the  world  ;  yet,  strange  to  say,  he  taunts 
evolutionists  with  this  lack  in  the  general  scheme  of  things.  If  it  be 
an  embarrassment  to  their  theory,  how  much  more  should  it  be  to  the 
bishop's  theology  !  The  evolutionist  might,  however,  turn  round  and 
instruct  the  divine  out  of  his  own  pocket  Bible,  where  it  is  expressly 
stated  that  the  wicked  shall  not  live  out  half  his  days  ;  and  then  out 
of  the  newspapers  which  continually  show  us  what  happens  to  the 
violent  and  bloody  man,  to  the  intemperate,  and  to  various  other  classes 
of  evil-doers.  The  evolution  philosophy  does  not  guarantee,  as  has 
been  already  shown,  continuous  progress  in  what,  from  the  human 
stand-point,  may  seem  the  best  directions  ;  but  evolutionists  are  able 
to  note,  and  do  note  with  satisfaction,  that  the  qualities  which  the 
moral  sense  of  mankind  most  approves  do  in  point  of  fact  tend  to  the 
survival  of  their  possessors.  "War  itself  illustrates  the  principle  ;  see- 
ing that  the  most  important  element  of  strength  abroad  is  cohesion  at 
borne,  a  condition  which  must  depend  on  a  relatively  high  develop- 
ment of  social  justice.  To  take  an  example  from  our  own  history  : 
English  arms  would  not  have  been  so  successful  as  they  have  been 

*  Fourth  edition,  p.  459. 


A  DEFENSE   OF  MODERN  THOUGHT.  791 

abroad,  had  there  not  been  a  united  country  behind  them.  It  was 
the  virtues,  not  the  vices,  of  the  Roman  people  that  enabled  them  to 
conquer  the  world.  It  was  their  vices,  not  their  virtues,  that  led  to  their 
fall.  Fitness  to  survive  is  a  quality  the  import  of  which  varies  accord- 
ing to  circumstances.  In  shipwrecks  (to  pursue  his  lordship's  illustra- 
tions) the  fit  to  survive  are  those  who  can  swim,  or  who  have  readiness 
of  resource  or  strength  of  constitution.  In  famines  and  pestilences 
the  physically  stronger  will  as  a  rule  survive  ;  though  here  prudence 
and  self-control  become  also  most  important  elements  of  safety.  Let 
it  always  be  remembered  that  the  problem  with  which  evolutionary 
philosophy  has  to  grapple  is  not  how  to  account  for  a  perfect  world, 
or  a  perfect  state  of  society,  but  how  to  account  for  just  such  a 
mingling  of  good  and  evil  (accompanied  by  general  tendencies 
toward  good)  as  we  actually  witness.  This  once  settled,  most  of 
the  objections  of  the  theologians  would  be  seen  to  fall  wide  of  the 
mark. 

To  persons  unfamiliar,  or  but  slightly  familiar,  with  the  present 
subject,  it  is  possible  that  the  Bishop'  of  Ontario  may  appear  to  have 
touched  a  weak  point  in  the  doctrine  under  discussion  where  he  says  : 
"  Laws  of  nature  should  be  obeyed  and  co-operated  with,  not  fought 
against  and  thwarted  ;  and,  if  the  survival  of  the  fittest  be  one  of  those 
laws,  we  ought  to  abolish  all  hospitals  and  asylums  for  the  blind,  the 
deaf,  the  drunkard,  the  idiot,  and  the  lunatic,  and  we  ought  to  expose 
to  death  all  sickly,  puny,  and  superfluous  infants."  A  word,  therefore, 
in  regard  to  this  objection  may  not  be  thrown  away.  The  first  obser- 
vation to  make  is,  that  there  is  nothing  whatever  in  the  law  of  the 
survival  of  the  fittest,  as  understood  by -men  of  science  to-day,  which 
could  possibly  be  converted  into  a  rule  of  conduct.  The  scientific 
world  is  not  aware  that  Nature  has  any  ends  in  view,  or  is  capable  of 
having  any  ends  in  view,  which  she  needs  the  help  of  man  to  enable 
her  to  realize.  Science  does  not  attribute  purpose  to  Nature.  Science 
has  simply  obtained  a  glimmering  of  how,  in  point  of  fact,  Nature 
works.  It  sees  that  survival  is  a  question  of  fitness,  in  other  words  a 
question  of  the  fulfillment  of  the  conditions  on  which  continued  exist- 
ence depends.  In  some  cases,  as  is  well  known,  superiority  of  type 
becomes  an  impediment,  not  a  help,  to  the  preservation  of  life  ;  and 
in  a  vast  number  of  cases  the  differentiations  on  which  survival  de- 
pends imply  neither  progress  nor  retrogression.*  "What  moral  guid- 
ance, therefore,  can  possibly  be  found  in  a  simple  perception  of  the 
fact  that  in  the  realm  of  Nature  there  are  conditions  attached  to  sur- 
vival ?  We  may  ask,  in  the  next  place,  whether  there  is  any  single 
law  of  Nature  which  men  "  obey,"  or  ever  have  obeyed,  in  the  sense  in 
which  his  lordship  bids  us  obey  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 

*  Vide  Spencer,  "  Principles  of  Sociology,"  vol.  i,  pp.  106,  107 ;  and  Haeckel,  "  His- 
tory of  Creation,"  vol.  i,  p.  285. 


792  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

When  a  conflagration  rages,  do  we  "  obey "  and  "  co-operate  "  with 
Nature  by  adding  fuel  to  the  flames  ?  When  pestilence  is  abroad,  do 
we  try  to  increase  its  deadly  activity  ?  When  we  stumble,  do  we 
make  a  point  of  yielding  to  the  law  of  gravitation  and  throwing  our- 
selves headlong  ?  When  the  winter  winds  are  howling,  do  we  throw 
open  doors  and  windows  that  we  may  feel  all  the  force  and  bitterness 
of  the  blast  ?  Or  do  we,  in  these  and  all  other  cases,  seek  to  modify 
the  action  of  one  law  by  that  of  another — a  process  his  lordship  calls 
"  thwarting  " — in  order  that  their  combined  or  balanced  action  may 
yield  us,  as  nearly  as  possible,  the  results  we  desire  ?  .We  throw  water 
on  the  fire.  We  use  disinfectants  and  prophylactics  against  the  plague. 
We  set  muscular  force  against  that  of  gravitation.  We  oppose  warmth 
to  cold.  In  none  of  these  cases  do  we  ask  what  Nature  wants  ;  we  are 
content  to  know  what  we  want.  We  don't  really  believe  that  Nature 
wants  anything  ;  so  we  have  no  hesitation  or  compunction  in  letting 
our  wants  rule.  In  the  matter  of  the  weak  and  sickly,  they  might  per- 
ish if  unconscious  forces  alone  were  at  work,  or  even  in  certain  con- 
ditions of  human  society  ;  but  it  does  not  suit  our  interests,  for  very 
obvious  reasons,  to  let  them  perish.  To  do  so  would  strike  at  all  hu- 
man affections,  and  would  so  far  weaken  the  bonds  of  society  and  ren- 
der the  whole  social  fabric  less  secure.  Moreover,  a  sick  man  is  very 
different  from  a  sick  animal.  The  latter  is  inevitably  inferior  as  an 
animal,  whereas  the  former  may  not  only  not  be  inferior,  but  may  be 
superior  as  a  man,  and  capable  of  rendering  much  service  to  society. 
Two  instances  occur  to  me  as  I  write — that  of  the  late  Professor 
Cairnes,  in  England,  and  of  the  late  Professor  Ernest  Bersot,  in 
France,  both  smitten  with  cruel  and  hopeless  maladies,  but  both  ful- 
filling, in  an  eminent  degree,  the  highest  intellectual  and  moral  offices 
of  men.  What  the  well  do  for  the  sick  is  of  course  obvious,  and  at- 
tracts sufiicient  attention  ;  but  what  the  sick  do  for  the  well,  not  being 
so  obvious,  attracts  less  attention  than  it  deserves.  Yet  how  many 
lessons  of  patience,  fortitude,  and  resignation — lessons  that  all  require 
— come  to  us  from  the  sick-bed,  or  at  least  from  those  whom  weakness 
of  constitution  or  perhaps  some  unhappy  accident  has  robbed  of  a 
normal  activity  and  health  !  At  times  we  see  superiority  of  intellectual 
and  moral  endowment  triumphing  over  the  most  serious  physical  disa- 
bilities ;  as  in  the  case  of  the  present  Postmaster- General  of  England, 
who  accidentally  lost  his  sight  when  quite  a  youth.  The  late  M.  Louis 
Blanc,  a  man  of  splendid  talents,  never  advanced  beyond  the  stature 
of  a  child.  The  ancient  Spartans  might  have  exposed  one  of  so  feeble 
a  frame  on  Taygetus  ;  for  with  them  every  man  had  to  be  a  soldier  ; 
but,  in  modern  life,  with  its  greatly  diversified  interests,  many  a  man 
too  weak  to  be  a  soldier  can  yet  render  splendid  service  to  the  commu- 
nity. It  will,  therefore,  I  trust,  be  sufficiently  obvious,  first,  that  Na- 
ture has  no  commands  to  give  us  in  this  matter  ;  and,  secondly,  that 
there  are  excellent   reasons  why  we  should  not  treat  the  sick  and 


THE  FACULTY  OF  SPEECH.  793 

weakly,  as  the  lower  animals  commonly,  but  not  universally,  treat  the 
sick  and  weakly  of  their  own  kind.* 

There  is,  however,  another  view  of  this  question  which  should  not 
be  overlooked.  While  human  beings  in  civilized  countries  manifest, 
and  always  have  manifested,  more  or  less  sympathy  with  the  physically 
afflicted,  their  steadfast  aim  has  been  to  get  rid  of  physical  evil  in  all 
its  forms.  No  care  that  is  taken  of  the  sick  has  for  its  object  the  per- 
petuation of  sickness,  but  rather  its  extirpation.  We  do  not  put  idiots 
to  death ;  but  when  an  idiot  dies  there  is  a  general  feeling  of  relief 
that  so  imperfect  an  existence  has  come  to  an  end.  Were  idiots  per- 
mitted to  marry,  the  sense  of  decency  of  the  whole  community  would 
be  outraged.  Public  opinion  blames  those  who  marry  knowing  that 
there  is  some  serious  taint  in  their  blood  ;  and  commends,  on  the  other 
hand,  those  who  abstain  from,  or  defer,  marriage  on  that  account. 
There  is  probably  room  for  a  further  development  of  sentiment  in  this 
direction.  We  need  to  feel  more  strongly  that  all  maladies  and  ail- 
ments are  in  their  nature  preventable,  inasmuch  as  they  all  flow  from 
definite  physical  antecedents.  As  long  as  our  views  on  this  subject 
are  tinged  in  the  smallest  degree  with  supernaturalism,  so  long  will 
our  efforts  to  track  disease  to  its  lair  and  breeding-grounds  be  but  half- 
hearted. How  can  we  venture  to  check  abruptly,  or  at  all,  the  course 
of  a  sickness  sent  expressly  for  our  chastisement  ?  Is  it  for  us  to  say 
when  the  rod  has  been  sufficiently  applied  ?  How  do  we  dare  to  for- 
tify ourselves  in  advance  against  disease,  as  if  to  prevent  the  Almighty 
from  dealing  with  us  according  to  our  deserts  ?  We  vaccinate  for 
small-pox,  we  drain  for  malaria,  we  cleanse  and  purify  for  cholera,  we 
ventilate  and  disinfect,  we  diet  and  we  exercise — and  all  for  what  ? 
Precisely  to  avoid  the  paternal  chastenings  which  we  have  been  taught 
are  so  good  for  us,  and  the  origin  of  which  has  always  been  attributed 
by  faith  to  the  Divine  pleasure.  Evidently  our  views  are  undergoing 
a  change.  We  all  wish  to  be  fit  to  survive,  and  all  more  or  less  believe 
that  it  is  in  our  power  to  be  so  and  to  help  others  to  be  so.  We  be- 
lieve in  sanitary  science,  and,  if  we  attribute  any  purpose  in  the  mat- 
ter to  the  Divine  mind,  it  is  that  all  men  should  come  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  truth,  as  revealed  by  a  study  of  Nature,  and  live. 


THE  FACULTY  OF  SPEECH.f 

By  E.  F.  brush,  M.D. 

~1"TNTIL  the  beginning  of  this  nineteenth  century,  the  mind  was 

v_J     considered  as  a  unit.     Early  in  the  century,  Gall,  a  distinguished 

German  physician,  noted  the  fact  that  those  students  whose  super- 

*  See  Romanes,  "  Animal  Intelligence,"  pp.  471,  4'75,  as  to  the  sympathy  exhibited  by 
the  monkey  tribe  toward  their  sick. 

f  Read  at  a  meeting  of  the  Mount  Vernon  AthentEum,  January  24,  1883. 


794  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

orbital  plates  were  depressed  sufficiently  to  produce  protruding  eyes 
and  baggy  under-lids  excelled  in  memory,  oratory,  philology,  and  the 
ability  to  acquire  languages.  This  observation  may  be  called  the 
foundation  of  phrenology,  for  it  led  Gall  to  divide  the  mind  into 
faculties,  and  to  locate  the  faculty  of  speech  in  the  anterior  lobes  of 
the  cerebral  hemisphere.  This  was  the  basis  of  his  system.  But  the 
enthusiasm  with  which  he  constructed  this  system,  and  the  sweeping 
deductions  which  he  and  his  follower,  Spurzheim,  drew  from  this  one 
prominent  fact,  failed  to  interest  the  scientific  mind.  Soon  after  this, 
without  paying  any  regard  to  the  conclusions  of  Gall  and  Spurzheim, 
the  pathologists  discovered  how  frequently  the  loss  of  speech  co- 
existed with  diseases  or  injuries  of  the  anterior  lobes  of  the  brain,  and 
that  sometimes  the  only  symptom  of  cerebral  lesions  was  a  loss  of  the 
power  of  articulate  language.  These  observations  led  Bouillaud,  in 
1825,  to  divide  the  faculty  of  speech  into  two  phenomena,  internal 
speech — the  faculty  to  create  and  to  represent  ideas — and  external 
speech,  or  the  co-ordinating  power  necessary  to  articulate  the  words 
created.  In  medical  literature,  the  loss  of  the  faculty  of  speech  is 
termed  aphasia,  and  when  it  affects  the  internal  speech  it  is  designated 
as  amnesic  aphasia,  and  when  external  speech  is  affected  the  term 
ataxic  aphasia  expresses  it. 

But  without  going  into  detail  respecting  the  weighty  jpros  and  cons 
in  the  discussion  of  this  subject  during  the  last  fifty  years  up  to  the  pres- 
ent time,  it  is  safe  to  state  that  the  power  of  speech  is  twofold,  namely, 
mental  and  motor.  N'ow,  as  a  mental  fact,  the  faculty  of  articulate  lan- 
guage implies  perception,  intellectual  distribution  of  perception,  excita- 
tion of  emotion,  will  to  enunciate.  As  an  illustration  :  we  see  a  man 
across  the  street;  we  recognize  him  as  John  Jones,  from  Johnsonville  ; 
we  experience  pleasure,  and  say,  "  My  dear  friend,  I  am  glad  to  see  you." 
Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  mind  as  regards  speech  can  be  divided  into 
perception,  intellect,  emotion,  and  will.  These  are  the  mental  attri- 
butes, and  the  impairment  of  any  one  of  them  will  interfere  with  the 
culminating  act  of  speech.  The  perception  may  be  impaired,  then  the 
friend  across  the  street  would  not  start  the  mental  train.  Further- 
more, if  perception  was  perfect  and  the  intellect  impaired,  we  would 
see  the  man,  perceive  the  color  of  his  hair  and  eyes,  the  style  of  his 
clothing,  and  so  forth,  but  not  be  conscious  that  we  had  met  him 
before,  and  that  he  was  a  friend.  Still  further,  if  the  emotion  was 
impaired  and  the  two  other  faculties  normal,  we  would  see  the  man, 
know  he  was  a  friend,  but  not  be  stimulated  to  further  action.  Again, 
if  the  three  above  faculties  were  normal  and  will-power  wanting,  we 
would  see,  recognize,  and  wish  to  speak  to  him,  but  be  powerless  to 
do  so.  All  the  best  evidence  of  recent  times  indicates  that  these 
faculties  reside  in  the  gray  matter  which  is  spread  over  the  surface 
of  the  cerebral  hemispheres,  with  their  manifold  sulci  and  convolu- 
tions, and  the  depth  of  which  is  an  index  of  the  intellectual  power. 


THE  FACULTY  OF  SPEECH.  795 

rather  than  the  mere  mass  of  the  brain,  as  was  previously  supposed. 
Now,  this  gray  matter  may  be  intact  and,  consequently,  all  the  func- 
tions above  enumerated  may  be  perfect,  and  still  the  ability  to  articu- 
late may  be  wanting,  because  the  motor  power  which  is  supposed  to 
reside  in  the  white  matter,  and  to  preside  over  the  co-ordinating  power, 
controlling  the  nerves  and  muscles  of  articulation,  may  be  impaired, 
and  then,  although  our  ideas  may  be  correct,  the  ability  to  express 
them  would  be  wanting.  Medical  literature  abounds  with  cases  which 
illustrate  this  condition.  I  select  the  following  instance  as  a  perfect 
illustration  of  this  state  :  An  intelligent  man,  sixty  years  old,  sud- 
denly became  incoherent  and  quite  unintelligible  to  those  around  him. 
He  had  forgotten  the  names  of  every  object  in  nature  ;  his  recollec- 
tion of  things  seemed  to  be  unimpaired,  but  the  words  by  which  men 
and  things  were  designated  were  entirely  obliterated  from  his  mind, 
or  rather  he  had  lost  the  faculty  by  which  they  were  called  up  at  the 
control  of  will.  He  was,  however,  by  no  means  inattentive  to  what 
was  going  on,  and  he  recognized  friends  and  acquaintances  quickly, 
but  their  names,  or  even  his  own,  or  his  wife's  name,  or  the  names  of 
any  of  his  domestics  appeared  to  have  no  place  in  his  recollection. 
One  morning,  much  against  the  wishes  of  his  family,  he  went  to  his 
workshop,  and,  when  visited  by  his  physician,  gave  him  to  understand 
by  a  variety  of  signs  that  he  was  perfectly  well  in  every  respect,  with 
the  exception  of  some  slight  sensations  referable  to  the  eyes  and  eye- 
brows. He  was  so  well  in  bodily  health  that  he  could  not  be  confined 
to  the  house,  and  his  judgment,  so  far  as  an  estimate  could  be  formed 
of  it,  was  unimpaired,  but  his  memory  of  words  was  so  much  a  blank 
that  the  monosyllables  of  affirmation  and  negation  were  the  only  two 
words  of  the  language  the  use  and  signification  of  which  he  never 
entirely  forgot.  He  comprehended  perfectly  every  word  that  was 
spoken  or  addressed  to  him,  and,  although  he  had  ideas  adequate  to 
form  a  full  reply,  the  words  by  which  these  ideas  are  expressed  seemed 
entirely  obliterated  from  his  mind.  By  way  of  experiment,  the  name 
of  a  person  or  thing  was  mentioned  to  him,  his  own  name  for  example, 
or  that  of  one  of  his  domestics  ;  he  would  repeat  it  once  or  twice  dis- 
tinctly, but  generally  before  he  could  do  so  a  third  time  the  word  was 
gone  from  him  as  completely  as  though  he  had  never  heard  it  pro- 
nounced. When  any  one  read  to  him  from  a  book  he  had  no  difficulty 
in  perceiving  the  meaning  of  the  passage,  but  he  could  not  himself 
then  read.  He  had  forgotten  the  elements  of  written  language.  He 
became  very  expert  in  the  use  of  signs,  and  his  convalescence  was 
marked  by  his  imperceptibly  acquiring  some  general  terms  which  were 
with  him  at  first  of  very  extensive  and  varied  application.  All  future 
events  and  objects  before  him  were,  as  he  expressed  it,  "  next  time  "  ; 
but  past  events  and  objects  behind  him  were  designated  "  last  time." 
One  day  being  asked  his  age,  he  pointed  to  his  wife  and  uttered  the 
words  "Many  times"  repeatedly,  as  if  he  meant  that  he  had  often 


796  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

told  her  his  age.  When  she  said  "  Sixty,"  he  answered  in  the  affrma- 
tive.  Some  months  afterward  he  suddenly  became  paralyzed  on  the 
right  side,  and  a  few  months  later  died  from  an  attack  of  apoplexy. 
His  brain  was  found  extensively  diseased  in  the  white  portion  of  the 
anterior  lobe  of  the  left  hemisphere. 

This  case  was  purely  and  simply  an  impairment  of  external  speech. 
On  looking  over  the  medical  literature  on  the  subject  I  have  been  un- 
able to  find  as  striking  a  case  of  impairment  of  internal  speech,  and 
this  fact  can  be  readily  understood  when  we  consider  that  a  lesion 
necessary  to  produce  this  condition  would  be  a  destruction  of  the  gray 
or  cortical  matter  of  the  brain,  and  when  this  is  injured  the  whole  in- 
tellect becomes  disjointed,  as  we  see  in  the  maniac,  where  the  simple 
mechanical  power  of  speech  is  perfect,  but  the  incoherency  and  the 
wrong  interpretation  of  external  impressions  are  evident.  I  have  said 
that  these  cases  of  the  derangement  of  the  faculties  of  internal  speech 
are  chiefly  found  in  lunatic  asylums.  But,  when  I  think,  I  remember 
to  have  met  many  mild  cases  outside  of  asylums,  cases  which  can  be 
best  described  by  our  Americanism  of  "  talking  too  much  with  their 
mouth." 

I  have  said  the  faculty  of  speech  resides  in  the  anterior  lobes  of  the 
brain.  But  the  evidence  gleaned  from  pathology  is  convincing  that 
the  faculty  is  confined  to  a  comparatively  limited  portion  of  the.  fron- 
tal lobe  of  the  left  cerebral  hemisphere.  This  localization  of  a  func- 
tion to  a  single  side  of  the  brain  is  a  curiously  interesting  fact.  But 
when  it  is  known  that  the  left  side  of  the  brain  presides  over  the  mo- 
tions and  sensations  of  the  right  side  of  the  body,  it  may  be  conceived 
that  because  we  are  right-handed  we  are  left-minded.  Why  we  are 
right-handed  involves  a  discussion  which  would  be  beyond  the  limits 
of  the  present  essay.  But  that  the  left  side  of  the  brain  is  almost 
always  larger  than  the  right  is  a  well-known  fact,  and  this  asymmetry 
of  the  encephalon  was  prominently  brought  before  the  public  during 
the  Guiteau  trial,  with  its  prominent,  ghastly  rhombo-cephalic. 

A  curiously  complicated  and  wonderful  adaptation  is  this  faculty 
of  speech,  sometimes  bearing  weighty  loads  of  truth,  at  other  times 
the  veriest  dregs  of  gorged  society — words,  windy  words.  The  high- 
est and  best  result  of  education  is  to  form  our  ideas  into  words,  to 
crystallize  them  into  speech.  We  all  feel  that  here  we  fail.  Our 
thoughts  well  up  and  almost  burst  their  limits,  but  faulty  speech  will 
not  give  the  color  and  glow  which  the  soul  infuses  into  the  thoughts. 
We  can  all  say  with  the  poet : 

"  Our  whitest  pearls  we  never  find, 
Our  ripest  fruit  we  never  reach ; 
The  flowering  moments  of  the  mind 
Drop  half  their  petals  in  our  speech." 


BIBLICAL  AND  MODERN  LEPROSY.  797 


BIBLICAL  Al^D  MODEEN^  LEPEOSY. 

By  GEOEGE  HENRY  FOX,  M.D., 

CLINICAL    PBOFESSOB    OF    DISEASES    OF    THE    SKIN,   COLLEGE   OF  PHYSICIANS  AND  8UEGE0NS, 

NEW  YORK. 

THE  diseases  which  prevailed  among  the  children  of  Israel  were 
doubtless  as  numerous  and  as  varied  as  those  which  now  exist, 
and  to  a  great  extent  they  were  probably  identical  with  those  affecting 
humanity  at  the  present  time.  The  most  notable  one  spoken  of  in  the 
Old  Testament  is  called  leprosy.  As  there  exists  at  the  present  day 
a  disease  called  by  the  same  name,  a  consideration  and  comparison  of 
the  two  may  prove  of  interest. 

The  leprosy  of  the  present  day  is  found  not  only  in  distant  parts 
of  the  world,  but  also  in  our  own  country.  In  Egypt,  where  it  doubt- 
less originated,  and  has  prevailed  for  several  thousand  years,  it  still 
occurs.  In  Syria,  India,  China,  and  Japan,  it  is  quite  common.  In 
Europe  it  is  endemic  chiefly  along  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean 
and  in  Norway,  although  occasional  cases  are  met  with  from  time  to 
time  in  many  of  the  larger  cities.  In  the  "West  Indies  and  portions  of 
South  America  it  is  also  common,  and  in  the  Sandwich  Islands  it  has 
increased  rapidly  in  recent  years,  and  now  afflicts  a  large  proportion 
of  the  native  population.  Coming  nearer  home,  we  find  the  disease 
existing  among  the  Chinese  in  California,  among  the  Norwegians  in 
Minnesota,  among  the  French  and  negroes  in  Louisiana,  and  among 
certain  French  Canadians  in  New  Brunswick  and  Nova  Scotia.  Dur- 
ing the  past  ten  or  fifteen  years  there  have  constantly  been  from 
one  to  a  half-dozen  or  more  cases  in  the  hospitals  of  New  York  city, 
while  other  cases  have  been  reported  from  Boston,  Philadelphia,  Bal- 
timore, and  other  cities.  Most  of  these  cases  have  occurred  among 
sailors  or  others,  who  have  spent  considerable  time  in  the  tropics  or  in 
regions  where  leprosy  is  common,  and  there  contracted  the  disease. 
In  New  York  there  has  occurred  but  one  case  in  a  person  who  had  not 
been  outside  of  the  State,  and  in  this  case  the  origin  of  the  disease 
could  not  be  explained.  It  is  an  extremely  difficult  matter  to  deter- 
mine beyond  all  doubt  whether  leprosy  spreads  only  through  heredi- 
tary transmission,  or  only  through  direct  contagion,  or  in  both  ways. 
The  disease  is  considered,  by  many  who  have  had  the  best  opportunities 
for  studying  it,  to  be  hereditary  in  some  cases,  and  at  the  same  time 
capable  of  being  propagated  through  inoculation.  When  leprosy  once 
becomes  prevalent  in  a  community  where  vice,  ignorance,  and  filth 
abound,  it  usually  tends  to  increase,  but  it  is  far  from  being  a  highly 
contagious  disease,  as  is  commonly  imagined.  Physicians  and  hos- 
pital nurses  have  no  hesitancy  in  caring  for  leprous  patients,  and  the 
fear  of    the  disease  spreading  through  an  intelligent  community  is 


798  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

based  mainly  upon  sensational  reports  which  have  appeared  from  time 
to  time  in  the  newspapers. 

I  will  not  enter  upon  a  detailed  description  of  this  dread  malady. 
It  is  one  which  profoundly  affects  the  constitution  of  its  victim,  and 
usually  terminates  fatally  in  from  five  to  fifteen  years.  It  can  not  be 
said  to  be  an  absolutely  incurable  disease,  although  the  most  that 
medical  skill  has  succeeded  in  accomplishing,  save  in  a  few  exceptional 
instances,  has  been  to  cause  a  temporary  disappearance  of  the  symp- 
toms at  the  outset,  or  to  mitigate  the  suffering  of  the  patient  in  the 
later  stages.  In  some  cases,  the  disease  appears  in  the  form  of  dull, 
brownish  spots  upon  the  skin,  with  loss  of  its  natural  sensibility. 
This  is  the  macular  form  of  leprosy.  In  other  cases  the  disease  is 
characterized  by  the  formation  of  dark,  reddish-brown  lumps  upon  the 
face  and  other  parts  of  the  body,  which  give  the  leper  a  peculiarly 
unsightly  expression.  This  constitutes  the  more  severe  or  tubercular 
form  of  the  disease.  In  all  cases  the  nerve-trunks  are  more  or  less 
affected,  and  the  sense  of  touch  in  the  extremities  is  greatly  impaired. 
The  hands  shrivel,  the  fingers  become  bent  like  claws,  ulceration  takes 
place  in  some  cases,  and  the  joints  drop  off  one  by  one.  The  leper 
now  becomes  an  utterly  helpless  and  pitiable  object. 

Such  is  leprosy  as  met  with  at  the  present  day,  and  at  once  the 
interesting  question  arises,  "Is  this  the  leprosy  of  olden  time — the 
tsaraath  of  the  Old  Testament  ?  "  Without  doubt  the  disease  of  which 
I  have  been  speaking  existed  among  the  Egyptians  and  the  Israelites 
in  Moses's  day,  and  from  Egypt  gradually  made  its  way  along  the 
coasts  of  the  Mediterranean  to  Greece  and  later  to  Italy.  There  is 
doubt,  however,  as  to  whether  Moses  was  perfectly  familiar  with  the 
leprosy  which  we  now  recognize,  and  distinguished  it  from  other  affec- 
tions of  a  severe  and  contagious  character.  Certainly  there  are  no 
scriptural  references  to  any  disease  which  is  unmistakably  the  leprosy 
of  the  present  day.  We  read  that  when  Moses  put  his  hand  into  his 
bosom  and  took  it  out  again  at  the  command  of  the  Lord,  "  Behold  his 
hand  was  leprous  as  snow."  When  the  anger  of  the  Lord  was 
kindled  against  the  sister  of  Moses,  "  Behold,  Miriam  became  leprous, 
white  as  snow."  Again,  Gehazi,  the  servant  of  Elisha,  was  told  by 
the  prophet :  "  The  leprosy,  therefore,  of  Kaaman  shall  cleave  unto  thee 
and  unto  thy  seed  forever.  And  he  went  out  from  his  presence  a 
leper  as  white  as  snow."  Now,  there  are  certain  affections  of  the 
skin,  met  with  at  the  present  day,  to  which  the  expression  "  white  as 
snow  "  would  be  applicable,  but  leprosy  is  not  one  of  them.  Indeed, 
in  this  disease,  the  skin  usually  becomes  dark  rather  than  light  in  color, 
and  in  none  of  the  few  score  of  cases  which  I  have  had  the  oppor- 
tunity of  observing  would  the  phrase  "  white  as  snow  "  be  other  than 
highly  inappropriate. 

The  somewhat  detailed  description  of  leprosy  which  is  found  in  the 
thirteenth  chapter  of  Leviticus  is  almost  unintelligible  in  the  light  of 


BIBLICAL  AND  MODERN  LEPROSY,  799 

our  present  knowledge,  and,  after  making  due  allowance  for  the  neces- 
sarily imperfect  translation  of  the  Hebrew  scriptures,  we  are  forced  to 
believe  that  Moses  associated  leprosy  with  other  diseases,  as  many  dis- 
tinguished medical  writers  have  done  in  later  years.  Indeed,  it  is  only 
during  the  past  few  decades  that  the  disease  has  been  carefully  studied 
in  various  parts  of  the  world  and  its  identity  thoroughly  established. 

In  studying  the  Mosaic  laws  respecting  leprosy,  we  find  statements 
made  and  directions  given  for  its  recognition  by  the  priests  who 
could  not  have  referred  to  the  disease  which  we  now  call  leprosy.  For 
instance,  it  is  stated  that  if  the  leprosy  cover  the  whole  skin  of  him 
that  hath  the  plague,  the  priest  shall  pronounce  him  clean.  This  would 
hardly  apply  to  modern  leprosy,  which  never  involves  the  whole  skin, 
as  far  as  my  observation  goes.  But  there  are  other  cutaneous  affec- 
tions which  frequently  do  cover  the  afflicted  subject  "  from  his  head 
even  to  his  foot."  Why  the  leper  should  have  been  pronounced  un- 
clean while  the  disease  was  spreading,  and  clean  when  it  had  reached 
that  point  where  further  spreading  was  impossible,  I  will  leave  for 
others  to  determine,  merely  remarking  that  a  law  which  permitted 
only  such  lepers  within  the  camp  as  were  covered  by  the  disease  from 
head  to  foot  could  certainly  not  have  had  a  sanitary  origin.  Further- 
more, the  rule  that  the  leper  should  be  shut  up  for  seven  days,  and 
then  examined  by  the  priest,  with  a  view  to  noting  the  change  that  had 
taken  place  in  the  mean  time,  would  seem  to  indicate  some  other  dis- 
ease than  modern  leprosy,  for  the  latter  is  extremely  chronic  in  its 
course,  and  never  presents  any  noticeable  change  in  so  short  a  time 
even  under  the  most  active  treatment.  What  was  meant  by  the  ref- 
erence to  leprosy  of  clothing  and  of  houses  is  now  difficult  to  under- 
stand. There  are  infectious  diseases  at  the  present  day,  the  germs  of 
which  may  dwell  for  a  time  in  clothing  and  the  walls  of  houses,  but 
there  is  nothing  in  connection  with  the  modern  leprosy  which  would 
justify  us  in  believing  that  it  ever  infects  an  inanimate  object. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  we  assume  that  the  leprosy  of  ancient  times 
was  identical  with  that  of  the  present  day,  it  seems  strange  that  Moses 
failed  to  mention  the  loss  of  sensation,  the  deformity  of  the  hands,  and 
other  features  which  are  the  most  striking  characteristics  of  the  dis- 
ease. That  the  leprosy  which  I  have  described  has  not  changed  its 
type  in  the  course  of  centuries,  as  other  diseases  have  done  in  a  com- 
paratively short  time,  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  some  of  the  earliest 
medical  descriptions  are  so  correct  that  they  might  answer  their  pur- 
pose in  a  modern  text-book,  and  we  are  therefore  led  to  the  conclusion 
that  Moses,  though  possessing  all  the  learning  of  the  Egyptian  priests, 
including  the  highest  medical  knowledge  of  his  age,  did  not  note  the 
distinctive  characteristics  of  leprosy,  but  classed  it  under  one  name 
with  other  prevalent  diseases. 

In  this  connection,  it  may  be  of  interest  to  consider  very  briefly 
the  character  of  the  disease  mentioned  as  leprosy  in  the  New  Testa- 


8oo  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

ment.  However  uncertain  we  may  be  as  to  the  precise  nature  of 
the  Mosaic  disease,  it  appears  to  me  to  be  almost  certain  that  the 
leprosy  cured  by  our  Saviour,  after  his  sermon  on  the  mount,  was  not 
the  leprosy  of  the  present  day,  but  a  far  more  common  disease  which 
is  now  known  as  psoriasis.  The  earliest  Greek  writers  on  medicine 
were  unacquainted  with  Egyptian  leprosy,  except  by  hearsay.  Hip- 
pocrates, writing  over  four  hundred  years  before  Christ,  speaks  of  it 
as  "  the  Phoenician  disease,"  and  even  at  the  time  of  the  Septuagint 
translation  of  the  Pentateuch  this  leprosy  was  practically  unknown 
to  the  Greeks.  The  Hebrew  word  tsaraath  was  translated  by  the 
Greek  word  lepra,  which  was  the  name  of  a  disease  characterized  by 
white  scaly  patches  upon  the  skin.  This  differed  totally  in  its  nature 
from  the  disease  which  is  now  called  leprosy,  and  which  prevailed  at 
that  time  in  Egypt  and  Palestine.  This  disease,  being  subsequently 
introduced  into  Greece,  was  designated  by  a  different  name,  elephan- 
tiasis. At  the  time  when  the  Gospels  were  written,  the  Greek  medi- 
cal writers  recognized  two  distinct  diseases  under  these  names,  lepra 
and  elephantiasis.  The  former  was  the  psoriasis,  or  white,  scaly  dis- 
ease of  the  present  day;  the  latter  was  the  modern  leprosy.  The 
description  of  each  of  these  diseases  by  Greek  writers  is  explicit  and 
readily  recognizable,  and  the  Gospels  of  Matthew  and  Mark  agree  in 
the  statement  that  it  was  lepra  and  not  elephantiasis  which  was  cured 
by  our  Saviour.  In  other  words,  it  was  psoriasis,  and  not  the  modern 
leprosy. 


THE    KEMEDIES   OF   N^ATUEE. 

By  FELIX  L.  OSWALD,  M.  D. 
MISCELLANEOUS  REMEDIES. 

ANAESTHETICS.  — The  inductive  study  of  Nature  has  often 
proved  the  shortest  way  to  discoveries  which  other  methods  can 
reach  only  by  a  circuitous  route.  The  ancient  Greeks,  recognizing  the 
significance  of  the  fact  that  malarial  complaints  vanish  at  the  approach 
of  winter,  cured  their  fever-patients  by  refrigeration,  and  this  century 
of  research  will  perhaps  close  before  some  experimenting  Pasteur 
stumbles  upon  the  fact  that  the  proximate  cause  of  ague  and  yellow 
fever  can  be  traced  to  the  agency  of  microscopic  parasites  whose  de- 
velopment may  be  arrested  by  the  influence  of  a  low  temperature.  More 
than  two  thousand  years  ago  the  movement-cure,  the  fasting-cure,  and 
other  reactions  against  the  baneful  tendencies  of  the  drug-delusion, 
were  anticipated  by  the  school  of  the  natural  philosopher  Asclepiades. 
The  principle  of  the  best  natural  ancesthetic,  too,  was  practically 
applied,  if  not  theoretically  understood,  by  our  rude  ancestors.  No  one 
who  has  watched  the  contest  of  a  pair  of  rough-and-tumble  fighters — 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE,  801 

biped  or  quadruped — or  participated  in  a  scuffle  of  that  sort,  can  doubt 
that  the  excitement  of  the  fight  temporarily  blunts  the  feeling  of  pain. 
Count  Ranzau,  the  "  Streit-Hans  " — "  Rowdy  Jack,"  as  his  comrades 
used  to  call  him — once  received  three  dagger-stabs  before  he  knew 
that  he  was  wounded  at  all.  Soldiers,  storming  a  battery,  have  often 
suddenly  broken  down  from  the  effects  of  wounds  which  they  had 
either  not  felt,  or  suspected  only  from  a  growing  feeling  of  exhaustion. 
Olaf  Rygh,  the  N^orwegian  Herodotus,  tells  us  that,  when  the  old 
Baresarks  felt  the  approach  of  their  end,  they  robbed  death  of  its  sting 
by  drifting  out  to  sea  in  a  scuttled  or  burning  boat,  and  thus  expired, 
"  screaming  the  wild  battle-songs  of  their  tribe."  The  Roman  gladia- 
tors shouted  and  laughed  aloud  while  their  wounds  were  being  dressed. 
A  scalded  child  sobs  and  gasps  for  a  therapeutical  purpose  :  instinct 
teaches  it  the  readiest  way  to  benumb  the  feeling  of  pain.  The  physi- 
ological rationale  of  all  this  is  that  rapid  breathing  is  an  anaesthetic. 
In  a  paper  read  before  the  Philadelphia  Medical  Society,  May  12, 1880, 
Dr.  W".  A.  Bon  will  ascribes  that  effect  to  the  influence  of  the  surplus 
of  oxygen  which  is  thus  forced  upon  the  lungs,  just  as  by  the  inhala- 
tion of  nitrous-oxide  gas  (which  is  composed  of  the  same  elements  as 
common  air,  but  with  a  larger  proportion  of  oxygen),  and  mentions  a 
large  variety  of  cases  in  his  own  practice  where  rapid  breathing  pro- 
duced all  the  essential  effects  of  a  chemical  pain-obtunder,  without 
appreciably  diminishing  the  consciousness  of  the  patient.  Persons 
who  object  to  the  use  of  chloroform  (perhaps  from  an  instinctive  dread 
that  in  their  case  the  ether-slumber  might  prove  a  sleep  that  knows  no 
waking),  can  benumb  their  nerves  during  the  progress  of  a  surgical 
operation  by  gasping  as  deeply  and  as  rapidly  as  possible.  "  One  of 
the  most  marked  proofs  of  its  efficacy,"  says  Dr.  Bon  will,  "was  the 
case  of  a  boy  of  eleven  years  of  age  for  whom  I  had  to  extract  the 
upper  and  lower  first  permanent  molars  on  both  sides.  He  breathed 
rapidly  for  nearly  a  minute,  when  I  removed  in  about  twenty  seconds 
all  four  of  the  teeth.  He  declared  there  was  no  pain,  and  we  needed  no 
such  assertion,  for  there  was  not  the  slightest  indication  that  he  was 
undergoing  a  severe  operation." 

The  administration  of  chloroform  often  produces  distressing  after- 
effects, nausea  and  sick-headaches,  that  sometimes  continue  for  days 
together  ;  and  I  remember  two  instances  in  the  records  of  a  French 
military  hospital  where  it  resulted  fatally  in  the  case  of  patients  who 
had  in  vain  protested  and  offered  to  forego  the  benefits  of  the  anaes- 
thetic— perhaps  actually  from  an  instinctive  consciousness  of  some 
constitutional  peculiarity  which  in  their  case  increased  the  risks  of  its 
use.  Ether-spray,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  legitimate  application  of  the 
principle  that  cold  benumbs  the  feeling  of  pain.  Death  by  freezing  is 
preceded  by  an  absolute  anaesthesia  ;  and  the  painfulness  of  bruises, 
wasp-stings,  etc.,  can  be  diminished  by  the  topical  application  of  an 
ice-poultice. 

YOL.  XXIV. — 51 


8o2  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

Apoplexy. — The  proximate  cause  of  apoplexy  is  due  to  a  con- 
gestion of  the  cerebral  blood-vessels,  induced  by  alcoholism,  dietetic 
excesses,  combined  with  the  influence  of  sedentary  habits.  Conscious- 
ness, at  least,  can  generally  be  restored  by  lessening  the  tendency  of 
the  circulation  toward  the  head.  The  patient  should  be  propped  up 
in  a  sitting  posture,  with  his  head  erect,  his  neck  bared,  and  his  tem- 
ples and  occiput  moistened  with  cold  water,  while  friction  or  a  warm 
foot-bath  should  determine  the  circulation  toward  the  extremities. 
Open  every  window  of  the  sick-room,  and,  after  the  patient  has  suffi- 
ciently recovered  to  sit  up  in  his  bed,  direct  him  to  turn  his  face 
toward  the  cool  draught,  and  now  and  then  cool  his  temples  with  a 
cataplasm  of  crushed  ice.  For  the  first  twenty-four  hours  let  him  ab- 
stain from  all  solid  food. 

Persons  with  an  apoplectic  diathesis  should  adopt  a  frugal  and 
aperient  diet,  and  avoid  prolonged  sedentary  occupations,  especially  in 
a  heated  room.  They  should  also  avoid  superfluous  bedclothing,  and 
open  their  bedroom- windows  in  all  but  the  stormiest  nights.  The  feet, 
however,  ought  to  be  kept  warm  under  all  circumstances.  Plethoric 
gourmands  ought  at  least  to  renounce  late  suppers  and  alcoholic  stimu- 
lants. 

BuENS  AND  Scalds. — Loose  cotton,  slightly  moistened  with  lin- 
seed-oil, has  an  almost  magical  effect  in  relieving  the  pain  of  severe 
burns.  When  inflammation  has  supervened,  the  feverish  condition  of 
the  patient  requires  cooling  ablutions  and  the  free  use  of  ice-water, 
both  topically  and  as  a  sedative  beverage.  Slight  burns  can  be  treated 
with  any  emollient  application,  and  a  piece  of  common  court-plaster  is 
sufficient  to  protect  the  sore  till  a  new  skin  has  formed  under  the 
blister. 

Chilblains.  —  The  effect  of  frost-bites  is  often  aggravated  by  a 
too  sudden  change  of  temperature,  or  rather  by  the  application  of 
the  wrong  kind  of  caloric.  The  restoring  warmth  should  come  from 
within  rather  than  from  without.  It  is  not  necessary  to  scrape  a  frost- 
bitten person  with  icicles,  after  the  Russian  plan  ;  friction  of  any  kind 
above  or  around  the  affected  part  will  restore,  as  far  as  possible,  the 
suspended  circulation  of  the  blood,  and  thus  initiate  the  remedial  func- 
tions of  Nature.  Deep  foot-sores  should  be  bandaged  with  linen  rags 
and  clean,  warm  tallow.' 

Dropsy. — It  is  a  suggestive  fact  that  the  prevalence  of  dropsy 
has  decreased  since  bleeding  has  gone  out  of  fashion.  There  was  a 
time  when  venesection  was  resorted  to  in  nine  out  of  ten  kinds  of  dis- 
eases, and  at  that  time  a  complaint  which  in  its  chronic  form  appears 
now  almost  only  as  a  consequence  of  outrageous  dietetic  abuses  was 
nearly  as  frequent  as  consumption.  Bleeding  impoverishes  the  blood, 
and  dropsy,  in  any  of  its  forms,  can  nearly  always  be  traced  to  a  dep- 
ravation of  the  humors  by  unwholesome  food  or  drink,  or  a  disorder 
of  the  blood-making  organs.     As  a  symptomatic  complaint,  for  in- 


THE  REMEDIES,    OF  NATURE.  803 

stance,  dropsy  frequently  appears  in  the  last  stage  of  pulmonary  con- 
sumption, when  the  wasted  lungs  have  become  unable  to  fulfill  the 
chief  purpose  of  respiration.  Next  to  the  alcohol-habit,  the  habitual 
breathing  of  impure  air  is  the  present  main  cause  of  dropsy,  for  air  is 
gaseous  food,  and  a  sufficient  supply  of  oxygen  a  chief  preliminary  in 
the  conditions  of  the  blood-making  process.  Malarial  diseases  likewise 
impoverish  the  blood  by  a  direct  process  of  disintegration  ;  *  and 
dropsy  appears  as  an  occasional  after-effect  of  a  long-continued  ague. 
Remedies  :  Mountain-air,  a  light  but  nourishing  diet,  and  strict  ab- 
stinence from  alcoholic  stimulants. 

Emetics. — Tepid  water  is  a  prompt,  and  the  most  harmless,  emetic. 
In  urgent  cases  (poisonings,  etc.)  add  a  modicum  of  white  mustard 
{Sinapis  alba),  and  tickle  the  fauces  with  the  wing-feather  of  a  pigeon, 
or  any  similar  object.  Excessive  vomiting  can  be  checked  by  stimu- 
lating applications  to  the  pit  of  the  stomach  and  the  extremities. 

Epilepsy. — Epilepsy,  or  the  falling-sickness,  is  a  complication  of 
nervous  derangements,!  and  results  more  frequently  from  sexual  ex- 
cesses than  from  all  other  causes  combined.  In  young  children,  how- 
ever, epilepsy  is  sometimes  a  consequence  of  teething-difficulties,  of 
acidity  in  the  stomach,  and  of  worms,  and  in  such  cases  can  be  readily 
cured  by  a  change  of  regimen,  J  or,  in  malignant  cases,  by  a  protracted 
fast.  For  adults,  strict  continence  and  out-door  exercise  is  the  best 
prophylactic.  Excessive  heat,  however,  should  be  carefully  guarded 
against,  as  well  as  all  exciting  passions. 

Excoriation. — Infants  are  apt  to  become  "  galled "  in  particular 
parts  of  their  bodies,  about  the  groins,  the  lower  part  of  the  neck,  and 
under  the  arms — especially  in  consequence  of  the  condemnable  prac- 
tice of  tight  swaddling.  To  dry  up  such  sores,  "  galling-plasters " 
(acetate  of  lead,  etc.)  often  lead  to  worse  complications,  and  the  best 
remedy  is  cleanliness,  and  fine  lint,  smeared  with  spermaceti-ointment 
or  warm  tallow. 

Fainting-Fits,  or  Syncope.  —  Syncope,  or  "  fainting,"  "  Ohn- 
7nacht,'^  "  Desmayo^''  as  three  nations  have  called  it  with  a  correct 
appreciation  of  its  chief  cause,  as  distinct  from  that  of  apoplexy  and 
convulsions,  results  from  a  general  deficiency  of  vital  strength.  Cold 
water,  applied  to  the  neck,  the  feet,  and  the  palms  of  the  hands,  by 
means  of  a  bathing-brush,  is  the  best  restorative.  In  severe  cases  in- 
flation of  the  lungs  by  mechanical  means  has  often  proved  effective. 
Dr.  Engleman  mentions  the  case  of  a  lady  in  child-bed,  who,  "  after 
being  happily  delivered,  suddenly  fainted  and  lay  upward  of  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  apparently  dead.  A  physician  had  been  sent  for  ;  her  own 
maid,  in  the  mean  while,  being  out  of  patience  at  his  delay,  attempted 
to  assist  her  herself,  and,  extending  herself  upon  her  mistress,  applied 

*  "  Climatic  Fevers,"  "  Popular  Science  Monthly,"  vol.  xxiii,  p.  4YY. 
\  "  Nervous  Maladies,"  "  Popular  Science  Monthly,"  vol.  xxiv,  p.  454. 
\  "Enteric  Disorders,"  "Popular  Science  Monthly,"  vol.  xxiv,  p.  196. 


8o4  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

her  mouth  to  hers,  blew  in  as  much  breath  as  she  possibly  could,  and 
in  a  very  short  time  the  exhausted  lady  awakened  as  out  of  a  deep 
slumber,  when,  proper  things  being  given  her,  she  soon  recovered. 
The  maid  being  asked  how  she  came  to  think  of  this  expedient,  said 
she  had  once  seen  it  practiced  by  a  midwife  with  the  happiest  effect." 

A  little  stream  of  water  falling  from  a  height  on  the  face  and 
neck,  the  irritation  of  the  olfactory  nerves  by  means  of  snuff  or  pun- 
gent smells  (burned  pepper,  etc.),  the  motion  of  a  rumbling  cart,  have 
now  and  then  sufficed  to  restore  suspended  animation.  Persons  sub- 
ject to  fainting-fits  can  use  no  better  prophylactic  than  gymnastics  in 
winter,  and  cold  baths  and  pedestrian  excursions  in  summer-time. 

Febrile  Affections. — In  all  disorders  of  a  malarial  and  typhoid 
character,  as  well  as  in  scarlet  fever,  measles,  small-pox,  and  epidemic 
erysipelas,  refrigeration  *  is  more  efficacious  than  any  medicine.  In 
several  zymotic  diseases,  besides  cholera  and  yellow  fever,  the  action 
of  antiseptic  drugs  is  annulled  by  the  inversion  of  the  digestive  proc- 
ess :  the  chyle  is  forced  back  upon  the  stomach,  and,  mingled  with  the 
red  corpuscles  of  the  disintegrated  blood,  is  voided  in  that  discharge 
of  cruor  known  as  the  black-vomit.  Bleeding,  instead  of  reducing  the 
virulence  of  the  fever,  is  apt  to  exhaust  the  little  remaining  strength 
of  the  patient.  Lord  Byron,  for  instance,  was  bled  to  death  as  surely 
as  if  the  surgeon  had  cut  his  throat. 

Gout. — A  paroxysm  of  this  dread  penalty  of  idleness  and  intem- 
perance is  preceded  by  certain  characteristic  symptoms  —  lassitude, 
eructations,  a  dull  headache,  involuntary  tears,  a  shivering  sensation 
about  the  groins  and  thighs.  If  the  lassitude  has  not  yet  taken  the 
form  of  an  unconquerable  lethargy,  the  patient  may  obviate  the  crisis 
of  his  affection  by  severe  and  unremitting  physical  exercise,  a  prophy- 
lactic which,  though  doubly  grievous  in  a  debilitated  condition,  is  in- 
comparably preferable  to  the  hellish  alternative.  I  knew  an  old  army 
officer  who  kept  a  spade  in  his  bedroom,  and,  at  the  slightest  premoni- 
tory symptoms,  fell  to  work  upon  a  sandy  hill-side,  and  once  dug  a  deep 
trench  of  forty -five  feet  in  a  single  night,  and  toward  morning  stag- 
gered to  his  quarters  and  had  barely  time  to  reach  his  bed  before  he 
sank  down  in  a  deliquium  of  exhaustion,  and  awakened  late  in  the 
afternoon  as  from  a  fainting-fit,  with  sore  knees  and  sorer  hands,  but 
without  a  trace  of  the  gout  from  which  his  compact  with  the  powers  of 
darkness  proved  to  have  respited  him  for  a  full  month.  The  racking 
pain  can  be  somewhat  relieved  by  such  counter-irritants  as  blisters, 
violent  friction  with  hot  flannel,  etc.,  or  actual  cautery  and  the  topical 
application  of  opiates.  The  experiments  of  sixteen  carnivorous  and 
alcohol-drinking  nations  have  revealed  dozens  of  similar  palliatives, 
but  only  two  radical  remedies — frugality  and  persistent  exercise. 

Headache. — Chronic  headache  is  generally  a  symptom  of  dis- 
ordered digestion.  To  attempt  the  suppression  of  the  effect  while  the 
*  "  Climatic  Fevers,"  "Popular  Science  Monthly,"  vol.  xxiii,  p.  477. 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE.  805 

cause  remains  can  bring  only  temporary  relief,  or  even  increases  the 
subsequent  malignity  of  the  disorder.  Strong  black  tea  may  thus  act 
as  a  charm — for  a  day  or  so  ;  but  with  the  next  morning  the  trouble 
not  only  returns,  but  returns  aggravated  by  the  supposed  remedy,  for 
chronic  headache  has  no  more  potent  single  cause  than  the  habitual  use 
of  narcotic  drinks.  A  frugal,  non-stimulating  regimen,  on  the  other 
hand,  brings  help  more  slowly  but  permanently,  unless  the  patient 
abuses  the  restored  vigor  of  his  digestive  organs.  Acute  headaches  can 
generally  be  traced  to  influences  which  tend  to  obstruct  the  free  circu- 
lation of  the  blood — tight  clothing,  coldness  of  the  extremities,  op- 
pressive atmospheric  conditions,  etc. — and  can  be  cured  only  by  a 
direct  removal  of  the  cause.  As  a  symptomatic  result  of  a  vitiated 
state  of  the  humors,  as  in  scrofula  and  venereal  diseases,  headaches 
that  defy  all  medicine  often  yield  to  a  grape-cure.* 

Heart-buen,  or  Caedialgia. — Both  words  are  misnomers,  the 
seat  of  the  pain  being  the  pit  of  the  stomach,  and  the  cause  gastric 
acidity  ;  remedies — fasting  and  "  passive  exercise,"  a  ride  in  a  jolting 
cart,  kneading  of  the  abdomen,  etc. 

Htpochondeia,  Cheonic  Melancholy,  Spleen. — Robert  Burton, 
in  his  "Anatomy  of  Melancholy,"  enumerates  some  six  thousand 
causes  of  chronic  despondency,  and  about  as  many  different  remedies, 
of  which  only  six  or  seven  are  apt  to  afford  permanent  relief  :  fru- 
gality, temperance,  early  rising,  life  with  a  rational  object  (altruistic, 
if  egotism  palls),  constructive  exercise  in  the  open  air,  a  sunny  cli- 
mate, and  social  sunshine — the  company  of  children  and  optimists. 

Insomnia. — The  proximate  cause  of  sleeplessness  is  plethora  of 
the  cerebral  blood-vessels,  and  a  palliative  cure  can  be  effected  by 
anything  that  lessens  the  tendency  of  the  circulation  toward  the  head.. 
But  a  permanent  cure  may  require  time  and  patience.  By  night-stud* 
ies  brain-workers  sometimes  contract  chronic  insomnia  in  that  worst 
form  which  finds  relief  only  in  the  stupor  of  a  low  fever,  alternating 
with  consecutive  days  of  nervous  headaches.  Reforming  topers  often 
have  to  pass  through  the  same  ordeal,  before  the  deranged  nervous 
system  can  be  restored  to  its  normal  condition.  Fresh  air,  especially 
of  a  low  temperature,  pedestrian  exercise,  and  an  aperient  diet,  are 
the  best  natural  remedies.  Under  no  circumstances  should  sleepless^ 
ness  be  overcome  by  narcotics.  An  opium  torpor  can  not  fulfill  the 
functions  of  refreshing  sleep  ;  we  might  as  well  benumb  the  patient 
by  a  whack  on  the  skull. 

Jaundice.  —  Jaundice  and  chlorosis  are  kindred  affections,  and 
the  yellow  tinge  of  the  skin  is  often  in  both  cases  due  to  an  impover- 
ished state  of  the  blood — especially  a  deficiency  in  the  proportion  of 
the  red  blood-corpuscles — rather  than  to  a  diffusion  of  bilious  secre- 
tions. Jaundice,  as  a  consequence  of  obstinate  agues,  is  evidently  the 
result  of  a  catalytic  process  which  disintegrates  the  constituent  parts 
*  "  Enteric  Disorders,"  "  Popular  Science  Monthly,"  vol.  xxiv,  p.  457. 


8o6  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

of  the  blood.  The  bite  of  poisonous  animals  has  often  a  similar  ef- 
fect. The  most  frequent  predisposing  cause,  however,  is  want  of  sun- 
light and  out-door  exercise.  Jaundice  and  chronic  melancholy  are 
often  concomitant  affections,  and  both  a  penalty  of  our  dreary,  sedent- 
ary modes  of  life.  The  ancients,  indeed,  ascribed  both  complaints  to 
the  same  cause,  for  melancholy  is  derived  from  a  word  which  means 
literally  "  atrabilious,"  or  black-biled.  But  the  truth  seems  to  be  that 
functional  disorders  of  the  liver  are  the  result  rather  than  the  cause 
of  a  general  torpor  of  the  vital  process.  Remedy — outdoor  sports, 
combined  with  as  much  fun  and  sunshine  as  possible.  Alcoholic 
jaundice-cures  may  restore  the  ruddiness  of  the  complexion  by  keep- 
ing the  system  under  the  influence  of  a  stimulant  fever ;  but  we 
might  as  well  congratulate  ourselves  on  the  return  of  health  when 
pulmonary  affections  mimic  its  color  with  their  hectic  glow. 

Mental  Disorders. — The  Lalita  Vistara  says  that  on  the  day 
when  Buddha,  the  savior,  was  born,  all  the  sick  regained  their  health 
and  the  insane  their  AnemoTy.  Insanity  might,  indeed,  be  defined  as 
a  partial  derangement  or  suspension  of  the  faculty  of  recollection. 
Nature  takes  that  method  of  obliterating  the  memory  of  impressions 
w^hich  the  soul  is  unable  Jto  bear,  and  thus  preserves  life  at  the  expense 
of  its  intellectual  continuity.  Lunatics  are  generally  monomaniacs  y 
their  judgment  may  be  sound  in  many  respects,  but,  at  the  mention 
of  a  special  topic,  betrays  ithe  partial  eclipse  of  its  light.  It  may  be 
possible  that  people  have  been  killed  by  the  sudden  announcement  of 
good  news,  but,  for  one  person  who  has  lost  his  reason  from  an  excess 
of  joy,  :millions  have  lost  it  from  an  excess  of  sorrow — a  crushing  ca- 
lamity, or  the  oppressive  and  2(t  last  unbearable  weight  of  the  dreari- 
ness, the  soul-stifling  tedium  of  modern  life  in  many  of  its  phases. 
The  sick  soul  may  have  stilled  its  hunger  with  a  long-hoarded  hope, 
till  the  evident  exhaustion  of  that  hoard  leaves  only  the  alternative  of 
despair  or  refuge  in  the  Lethe  of -dementation.  Where  insanity  is  at 
all  curable  it  can  be  cured  by  thcTemoval  of  itschidf  cause — sorrow  ; 
and  the  best  remedies  are  kindness,  miirth,  and  .a  pleasant  occupation. 
In  the  middle  ages,  when  both  'lunacy  and  the  love  of  earthly  happi- 
ness were  ascribed  to  the  machinations  of  the  devil,  lunatics  were 
chained  and  horsewhipped  for  the  double  benefit  of  their  souls,  and 
with  results  which  almost  justified  the  demon  hypothesis.  Breughel's 
best  illustra;tions  for  Dante's  hell  were  made  after  studies  in  an  Aus- 
trian mad-"house.  The  extreme  antithesis  of  such  infernos  is  perhaps 
the  State  Lunatic  Asylum  at  Tuscaloosa,  Alabama,  where  the  shadow 
of  gloom  has  been  so  successfully  banished  that  the  happiest  results  of 
the  cure  have  almost  been  anticipated  by  its  methods  :  the  restora- 
tion of  reason  itself  could  hardly  give  the  patients  an  additional  rea- 
son for  being  happy.  They  have  a  park,  a  flower-garden,  and  a  pet 
nursery  of  their  own  ;  they  have  books  and  music,  gymnasia,  bath- 
rooms, and  amateur  workshops.     Wherever  their  road  leads,  they  can 


THE  REMEDIES    OF  NATURE.  807 

travel  it  in  sunshine,  even  on  hobby-back  if  they  choose,  for  they 
have  a  philosophical  weekly  of  their  own,  with  full  permission  to  ex- 
plain the  revelation  of  St.  John. 

Myopia — short-sightedness,  and  far-sightedness  (presbyopia),  were 
formerly  regarded  as  absolutely  incurable  affections,  because  they 
were  evidently  not  amenable  to  the  influence  of  any  known  drug. 
But  "  drug "  and  "  remedy  "  have  at  last  ceased  to  be  synonymous 
terms  ;  and,  though  constitutional  defects  of  the  eye  may  preclude  the 
possibility  of  a  complete  cure,  there  is  no  doubt  that  those  defects 
can  be  modified  by  a  judicious  treatment,  especially  by  a  mode  of  life 
tending  to  restore  the  general  vigor  of  the  system,  by  out-door  exer- 
cise, and  by  rambles  in  green,  sunny  woods,  for  the  colors  of  the  sum- 
mer forest  are  as  beneficial  to  the  eye  as  its  atmosphere  to  the  lungs. 
Weak  eyes  can  be  strengthened  by  gradually  exercising  the  capacity 
of  the  optic  nerve,  scrutinizing  small  objects,  first  at  a  moderate  and 
by-and-by  at  a  greater  distance,  but  withal  guarding  against  a  fa- 
tiguing effort  of  the  eye. 

Pimples. — The  best  cosmetic  is  a  grape-cure,  i.  e.,  a  frugal,  sac- 
charine, and  sub-acid  diet,  combined  with  out-door  exercise  in  the 
bracing  air  of  a  highland  country. 

Rheumatism. — Rheumatism,  like  gout,  is  a  consequence  of  dietetic 
abuses.  Counter-irritants,  hot  baths,  etc.,  can  effect  a  brief  respite, 
but  the  only  permanent  specific  is  fasting.  Before  the  end  of  the  sec- 
ond day  a  hunger-cure  benumbs  the  pain  ;  the  organism,  on  being 
obliged  to  feed  upon  its  own  tissues,  seems  to  undergo  a  process  of 
renovation  which  alone  can  reach  the  root  of  the  complaint.  Ex- 
ercise and  great  abstemiousness  will  prevent  a  relapse. 

Scrofula. — A  scrofulous  taint  is  in  some  cases  hereditary,  and 
yields  only  to  years  of  dietetic  reform,  but,  on  the  whole,  there  is  no 
more  perfectly  curable  disease.  In  all  but  its  most  malignant  forms 
it  yields  readily  to  the  influence  of  pure  air  and  pure  food — out-door 
life,  and  a  wholesome,  vegetable  diet.  Skin-cleaning  nostrums  only 
change  the  form  of  the  disease  by  driving  it  from  the  surface  to  the 
interior  of  the  body. 

Toothache. — The  extraction  of  every  unsound  tooth  and  the 
insertion  of  a  "  new  set "  would  certainly  remove,  in  ipsa  radice,  the 
seat,  if  not  the  cause,  of  the  evil.  But  the  trouble  is,  that  the  func- 
tion of  proper  mastication  is  an  indispensable  preliminary  of  diges- 
tion, and  that  for  practical  efficacy  the  last  stump  of  a  natural  tooth 
is  infinitely  preferable  to  the  best  artificial  substitute.  The  best 
plan  would,  therefore,  be  to  let  the  stumps  remain,  and  get  rid  of  the 
pain,  and  the  latter  end  can  be  attained  by  a  slow  but  infallible 
method.  Within  half  a  year  after  the  change  of  regimen,  absolute 
abstinence  from  hot  drinks  (especially  %oiling  hot,  sweet  tea)  and  a 
very  sparing  use  of  animal  food  ^Vmnewamh  the  sensitiveness  of  the 
irritated  nerves.   I  knew  an  old  Mestizo  who  had  learned  to  chew  apples 


8o8  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

with  his  bare  gums,  but  only  after  necessity  had  reduced  him  to  a 
frugal  regimen.  A  saccharine  diet  in  the  form  of  sweet  ripe  fruit  has 
certainly  nothing  to  do  with  the  decay  of  the  teeth,  and  it  is  a  sug- 
gestive fact  that  toothache  is  almost  exclusively  an  affliction  of  the 
northern  nations. 

Warts  and  Coens. — ^The  predisposing  cause  of  warts  is  unknown, 
and  the  popular  remedies  are  rarely  permanent.  I  have  known 
warts  to  reappear  after  they  had  been  thoroughly  removed  by  the 
use  of  corrosive  acids.  The  popular  belief  that  they  "spread"  if 
the  operation  involves  bleeding  seems  not  to  be  wholly  unfounded, 
and  large  warts  can  be  more  effectually  cured  by  means  of  a  tight 
ligature  that  gradually  deadens  the  tissue.  Warts  on  the  upper  side 
of  the  fingers  can  generally  be  atrophied  by  exerting  a  long-continued 
strain  upon  the  adjoining  muscles,  as  in  holding  up  a  heavy  weight, 
or  seizing  the  rings  of  a  grapple-swing  and  dangling  by  one  hand  as 
long  as  the  fingers  can  support  the  strain.  A  callous  skin  is  thus  formed 
under  the  wart,  and  before  long  the  excrescence  disappears.  Corns  are 
entirely  owing  to  the  pressure  of  tight  shoes,  and  can  be  cured  by  the 
use  of  more  commodious  foot-wear.  To  suppress  the  symptom,  while 
the  cause  remains,  is  of  little  avail,  and,  before  a  chiropodist  could 
keep  his  promise  to  "  remove  corns  with  the  root,"  he  would  have  to 
eradicate  the  folly  of  heeding  the  mandates  of  fashion  rather  than  the 
appeals  of  Nature. 


THE  MOEALITY  OF  HAPPINESS. 

By  THOMAS  FOSTER. 
EVOLUTION   OF   CONDUCT. — (CONTINUED.) 

THERE  is  only  one  way  of  escape  from  the  conclusion  reached  in 
our  last — that  conduct  is  good  or  bad  according  as  its  total  ef- 
fects are  pleasurable  or  painful — in  which  statement  be  it  understood 
the  word  total  meatis  total,  and  is  not  limited  in  its  application  to  the 
person  whose  conduct  is  spoken  of.  If  it  is  supposed  that  men  were 
created  to  suffer,  that  a  power  which  they  were  bound  to  obey  had 
planned  such  suffering,  so  that  any  attempt  either  to  take  pleasure  or 
to  avoid  pain  was  an  offense,  then  of  course  the  conclusion  indicated 
is  an  erroneous  one. 

No  system  of  religion  has  ever  definitely  taught  so  hideous  a  doc- 
trine. Even  where  sorrow  and  suffering  are  recognized  as  the  lot  of 
man,  and  even  where  self-inflicted  anguish  and  misery  are  enjoined 
as  suitable  ways  of  pleasing  Deity,  it  is  never  said  that  such  sufferings 
are  the  ultimate  desire  of  the  Supreme  Power.  These  tribulations 
are  all  intended  for  our  good  :  we  are  to  torture  ourselves  here  and 


THE  MORALITY   OF  HAPPINESS,  809 

now,  that  hereafter  we  may  avoid  much  greater  pains  or  enjoy  much 
greater  pleasures  than  here  and  now  we  could  possibly  experience. 

Yet  underlying  this  doctrine  of  greater  and  longer-lasting  happi- 
ness as  the  result  of  temporary  suffering  or  privation,  there  has  been 
and  is  in  many  so-called  religions  the  doctrine  that  pain  and  suffering 
are  pleasing  to  the  gods  of  inferior  creeds  and  even  to  the  Supreme 
Power  of  higher  beliefs.  The  offerings  made  systematically  by  some 
races  to  their  deities  imply  obviously  the  belief  that  the  gods  are 
pleased  when  men  deprive  themselves  of  something  more  or  less  val- 
ued. Sacrifices  involving  slaughter,  whether  of  domestic  animals  or 
of  human  beings,  mean  more,  for  they  imply  that  suffering  and  death 
are  essentially  pleasing  to  Deity.  Even  when  such  gross  ideas  are 
removed  and  religion  has  been  purified,  the  symbolization  of  sacrifice 
in  most  cases  takes  the  place  of  sacrifice  itself.  The  conception  may 
and  often  does  remain  as  an  actually  vital  part  of  religious  doctrine 
that  pleasure  is  offensive  to  the  Supreme  Power  and  pain  pleasing. 

If  this  conception  is  really  recognized,  and  any  men  definitely  hold 
that  to  enjoy  or  to  give  pleasure  is  sinful,  because  displeasing  to  God, 
while  the  suffering  or  infliction  of  pain  is  commendable,  then  for  them 
— but  for  them  only — the  doctrine  is  not  established  that  conduct  is 
good  or  bad  according  as  its  total  effects  are  pleasurable  or  painful. 
But  if  there  are  such  men,  then  they  are  mentally  and  morally  the 
direct  descendants  of  the  savage  of  most  brutal  type,  who,  because 
he  himself  delights  to  inflict  pain,  deems  his  gods  to  be  of  kindred 
nature  and  immolates  victims  to  them  (or,  if  necessary  to  gain  his 
ends,  shows  the  reality  of  his  belief  by  self-torture)  to  obtain  their 
assistance  against  his  enemies. 

If  there  are  such  men  among  us  still,  then,  as  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer 
says,  "  we  can  only  recognize  the  fact  that  devil- worshipers  are  not 
yet  extinct."  The  generality  of  our  conclusions  is  no  more  affected 
by  such  exceptions  as  these  than  it  is  by  the  ideas  which  prevail  in 
Bedlam  or  Earlswood. 

But  on  the  one  hand  the  doctrine  thus  reached  may  be  passed  over 
as  a  truism  (which  it  ought  to  be  and  indeed  is,  though,  like  many 
truisms,  unrecognized) ;  and  on  the  other  it  may  be  scouted  as  Epi- 
curean (which  is  unmeaning  nonsense,  however)  and  as  mere  pig- 
philosophy.  For  it  sets  happiness  as  the  aim  of  conduct,  and,  whether 
self -happiness  or  the  happiness  of  others  is  in  question,  many  find  in 
the  mere  idea  of  pleasure  as  a  motive  for  conduct  something  unworthy 
— thereby  unconsciously  adopting  the  religious  doctrine  which  has 
been  justly  compared  with  devil-worship. 

This  expression — Pig-philosophy — has  indeed  been  applied  to  the 
doctrine  we  are  considering,  by  a  philosopher  who,  with  Mr.  Ruskin 
and  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  may  be  regarded  as  chief  among  the  won- 
ders of  our  age — and  standing  proof  of  the  charm  which  the  British 
race  finds  in  Constant  Grunt,  Continual  Growl,  and  Chronic  Groan. 


8io  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

It  must  be  considered,  therefore,  as  certain  that  to  some  minds  a 
philosophy  which  sets  the  happiness  of  self  and  others  as  a  worthy- 
end  must  appear  unworthy.  Such  minds  find  something  pig-like  in 
the  desire  to  see  the  happiness  of  the  world  increased.  Yet  grunting 
and  groaning  are  at  least  as  characteristic  of  the  porcine  race  as  any 
desire  to  increase  the  comfort  of  their  fellow-creatures  or  even  their 
own.  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's  lightsome  pleasure-doctrine,  the  essence 
of  which  is  that  we  should  strive  to  diminish  pain  and  sorrow  (our 
own  included)  and  to  increase  joy  and  happiness,  is  less  suggestive 
of  porcine  ways  (at  least  to  those  who  have  noted  what  such  ways 
are)  than — for  instance — the  following  cheerful  address  to  Man  : 
"  Despicable  biped  !  what  is  the  sum  total  of  the  worst  that  lies  be- 
fore thee  ?  Death  ?  Well,  Death  ;  and  say  the  pangs  of  Tophet, 
too,  and  all  that  the  Devil  and  Man  may,  will,  or  can  do  against 
thee !  Hast  thou  not  a  heart ;  canst  thou  not  suffer  whatsoever  it 
be  ;  and,  as  a  Child  of  Freedom,  though  outcast,  trample  Tophet 
itself  under  thy  feet,  while  it  consumes  thee  ?  "  Were  this  but  stern 
resolution  to  endure  patiently,  and  even  cheerfully,  such  sorrows  as 
befall  man,  it  were  well.  Nay,  it  would  fall  in  with  the  philosophy 
of  happiness,  which  enjoins  that  for  their  own  sake  as  for  the  sake  of 
those  around  them  men  should  bear  as  lightly  as  they  may  their  burden 
of  inevitable  sorrow.  But  what  Carlyle  calls  the  New-birth  or  Ba- 
phometic  Fire-baptism  is  not  Patience  but  Indignation  and  Defiance. 
This  is  the  veritable  Pig-philosophy  :  the  "  Everlasting  No  "  {das 
ewige  Nein)  is  in  truth  the  Everlasting  Grunt  of  dyspeptic  disgust, 
the  constant  Oh-Goroo-Goroo  of  a  jaundiced  soul. 

Are  the  teachings  of  living  professors  of  the  Everlasting  Groan 
school  brighter  than  those  of  the  gloomy  Scotsman  ?  Here  are  some 
of  the  latest  utterings  of  the  chief  among  them  :  "  Loss  of  life  !  " 
exclaims  Mr.  Ruskin,  cheerfully.  "  By  the  ship  overwhelmed  in  the 
river,  shattered  on  the  sea ;  by  the  mine's  blast,  the  earthquake's 
burial — you  mourn  for  the  multitude  slain.  You  cheer  the  life-boat's 
crew  ;  you  hear  with  praise  and  joy  the  rescue  of  one  still  breathing 
body  more  at  the  pit's  mouth  ;  and  all  the  while,  for  one  soul  that  is 
saved  from  the  momentary  passing  away  (according  to  your  creed,  to 
be  with  its  God),  the  lost  souls  yet  locked  in  their  polluted  flesh 
haunt,  with  worse  than  ghosts,  the  shadows  of  your  churches  and  the 
corners  of  your  streets  ;  and  your  weary  children  watch,  with  no 
memory  of  Jerusalem,  and  no  hope  of  return  from  their  captivity,  the 
weltering  to  the  sea  of  your  Waters  of  Babylon."  Oh!  Goroo ! 
GoROO-oo  ! 

Any  philosophy  which  hopes  for  other  than  misery  and  disgust  in 
life  must  indeed  seem  strange  doctrine  to  teachers  such  as  these — 
even  as  the  smiles  of  the  cheerful  seem  unmeaning  and  offensive  to 
those  whose  souls  are  overcast  with  gloom  and  discontent.  Sir  Walter 
Scott  tells  a  story  of  his  childhood  which  well  illustrates  the  unreason? 


THE  MORALITY   OF  HAPPINESS,  811 

ing  hatred  felt  by  the  Everlasting  Growl  school  for  the  doctrine  that 
conduct  should  be  directed  to  the  increase  of  happiness.  One  day, 
his  healthy  young  appetite  made  him  enjoy  very  heartily  the  brose 
or  porridge  of  the  family  breakfast.  Unluckily,  he  was  tempted  to 
say  aloud  how  good  he  found  his  food.  His  father  at  once  ordered 
a  pint  of  cold  water  to  be  thrown  in,  to  spoil  the  taste  of  it !  Possibly 
he  meant  to  inculcate  what  he  regarded  as  a  high  moral  habit ;  but 
rather  more  probably  Mr.  Walter  Scott,  Sen.,  objected  to  his  son's 
enjoying  what  he  had  no  taste  for  himself.  Much  of  the  sourness  of 
the  Growl  Philosophy  may  be  thus  interpreted. 

V. — SELF    VERSUS   OTHERS. 

We  teach  our  children,  the  preacher  tells  his  flock,  but  few  follow 
the  precept — Care  more  for  others  than  for  self.  It  sounds  a  harsh 
doctrine  to  say,  instead — Each  must  care  for  himself  before  others. 
Yet  it  is  not  only  true  teaching,  it  is  a  self-evident  truth.  It  would 
not  be  even  worth  saying,  so  obviously  true  is  it,  were  it  not  that  in 
putting  aside  the  doctrine  because  of  its  seeming  harshness  men  over- 
look, or  try  to  overlook,  the  important  consequences  which  follow 
from  it. 

If  a  man's  whole  soul — nay,  let  me  speak  for  a  moment  in  my  proper 
person — if  my  whole  soul  were  filled  with  the  thought  that  my  one 
chief  business  in  life  is  to  make  those  around  me,  as  far  as  I  can  make 
my  influence  felt,  as  happy  as  possible,  to  increase  in  every  possible 
way  the  stock  of  human  (nay,  also  of  animal)  happiness,  I  must  still 
begin  by  taking  care  of  myself.  For  if,  through  want  of  care,  I  my- 
self should  cease  to  exist,  I  can  no  longer,  in  any  way,  serve  others  ; 
nay,  it  is  even  conceivable  that  my  immature  disappearance  from  the 
scene  of  my  proposed  exertions  for  others'  benefit  might  cause  some 
diminution  of  the  totality  of  happiness. 

If  the  very  thought  of  care  for  self  should  suggest  that  there  can 
be  no  real  love  or  care  for  others  where  self -care  comes  first  (self-evi- 
dent though  the  proposition  be  that  care  of  self  must  come  first),  let  us 
replace  the  case  rejected  as  imaginary  by  a  concrete  and  familiar  illus- 
tration. 

None  can  question  the  unselfishness  of  the  love  which  a  mother  feels 
for  her  infant  babe.  None  can  doubt  that,  if  question  arose  between 
the  babe's  life  and  hers,  her  own  life  would  be  willingly  sacrificed.  Of 
course  there  are  exceptions,  perhaps  many,  but  no  one  can  doubt,  and 
multitudes  of  cases  have  proved,  that  the  rule  holds  generally.  Now, 
the  nursing  mother  not  only  has,  in  her  very  love  for  her  babe,  to  take 
care  of  herself,  but  to  care  for  herself  first,  and  to  take  more  care  of 
herself  than,  but  for  her  pure,  unselfish  love  for  her  child,  she  would 
have  troubled  herself  to  take. 

Let  this  case  suflice  to  show  that  care  of  self  before  others  (not, 
therefore,  necessarily  more  than  others),  besides  being  a  self-evident 


812  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

duty  (which  many  may  regard  as  a  mere  trifle),  may  be  not  only  per- 
fectly consistent  with  regard  for  others,  and  even  with  devotion  to 
others,  but  may  be  absolutely  essential  to  the  proper  discharge  of  our 
duties  toward  others.  In  fact,  it  is  little  more  than  a  truism,  instead 
of  being,  as  many  would  at  a  first  view  imagine,  a  paradox,  that  the 
more  earnest  our  wish  to  increase  the  happiness  of  others,  the  more 
carefully  must  we  look  after  our  own  welfare. 

If  we  take  a  wider  view,  and,  instead  of  considering  a  single  life, 
study  the  development  of  families  and  races,  we  still  find  the  same  les- 
son. As  the  man  who  wishes  his  life  to  be  useful  to  his  fellows  and  to 
increase  their  happiness  must  take  care  of  that  life,  so  he  who  would 
wish  to  benefit  humanity  through  his  family  or  race  must  not  only 
nourish  his  own  life  and  strength,  but  must  develop  those  activities 
which  advance  his  own  welfare  and  the  welfare  of  his  family.  Other- 
wise come,  inevitably,  the  dwindling  of  the  faculties  on  which  his 
own  value  depends,  and  the  loss  in  his  descendants  of  good  qualities 
which  they  might  otherwise  have  inherited  from  him.  Or  it  may  be 
that  such  qualities  are  inherited  in  less  degree  than  had  he  duly  exer- 
cised powers  and  capacities  which  were  in  a  sense  held  in  trust  for  them. 
We  are  apt  to  overlook  the  importance  of  individual  action  in  such 
cases,  not  noticing  that  the  progress  of  a  race  depends  on  the  aggre- 
gate of  acts  by  the  individual  members  of  the  race. 

To  take  a  concrete  instance  here,  as  of  the  simpler  case :  If  a  num 
ber  of  persons  in  any  nation  or  at  any  epoch,  impelled  by  a  desire  to 
benefit  their  fellows,  devote  their  lives  to  celibacy,  they  influence  in 
important  degree  the  qualities  of  the  next  and  succeeding  generations. 
They  diminish  the  proportion  in  which  their  personal  qualities — pre- 
sumably valuable — will  appear  in  future  generations,  and  relatively 
increase  the  proportion  of  other  and  less  desirable  qualities.  This  is 
obvious  enough.  It  should,  however,  be  almost  as  clear  that,  in  what- 
ever degree  such  persons  in  a  community  as  possess  the  best  qualities 
fail  to  advance,  in  all  things  just,  their  personal  interests,  they  dimin- 
ish the  influence  of  the  better  qualities,  not  only  in  their  own  time,  but 
in  times  to  come.  If,  to  take  another  concrete  example,  all  persons  of 
the  better  sort,  forgetting  their  duties  to  themselves  and  their  race, 
enter  of  set  purpose  on  lives  of  poverty,  asceticism,  and  dreariness, 
they  not  only  diminish  in  large  degree  the  good  they  might  do  during 
life,  but  they  injure  their  offspring,  and,  through  them,  posterity.* 

Under  its  biological  aspect,  then,  the  doctrine  that  care  of  self 
must  necessarily  take  precedence  of  care  and  thought  for  others,  is 
incontestable — it  is  the  merest  truism — though  many  speak,  and  some 
act,  as  if  the  doctrine  were  iniquitous. 

*  Many  would  probably  be  startled  if  a  just  estimate  could  be  formed  of  the  degree  in 
which  the  qualities  of  the  civilized  races  of  the  world  have  suffered  through  the  well- 
meant  but  mistaken  zeal  which  led  large  classes  of  men  in  former  ages  to  sacrifice  their 
power  to  do  good  in  order  to  do  good. 


WB:Y  eyes    of  animals  shine  in  the  dark,  813 

But  this  doctrine  has  its  moral  aspect  also.  The  question  of  duty 
comes  in  at  once  and  very  obviously  so  soon  as  the  actual  consequences 
of  conduct  have  been  shown  to  be  good  or  bad.  But  it  may  be  well 
to  show  more  definitely  what  the  true  line  of  duty  is  in  regard  to  self. 
I  shall,  therefore,  next  consider  cases  where  self-abnegation  leads 
directly  to  the  diminution  of  general  happiness. — Knowledge. 


WHY  THE  EYES  OF  ANIMALS  SHINl]  IN  THE  DAEK. 

By  swan  M.  BUENETT,  M.  D. 

THAT  the  eyes  of  some  animals,  particularly  the  cat,  are  luminous 
when  they  are  in  the  dark,  is  a  fact  established  from  time  imme- 
morial. It  is  surprising,  however,  to  find  the  exact  nature  of  the 
phenomenon  entirely  misunderstood  even  by  scientists  whose  lines  of 
investigation  lie  in  the  particular  field  to  which  it  belongs.  In  con- 
versing, not  long  ago,  for  instance,  with  one  of  the  first  physicists  of 
this  country,  who  is  at  the  same  time  an  ardent  sportsman,  he  gave 
me  a  graphic  description  of  a  "  still  hunt  "  for  deer.  This  method  of 
hunting,  as  is  well  known,  consists  in  placing  a  bright  light  in  the  bow 
of  a  boat  and  propelling  it  noiselessly  through  the  water.  The  deer  is 
attracted  by  the  light  and  goes  toward  it,  but  is  prevented  by  its  glare 
from  seeing  his  enemies  who  are  concealed  in  the  shadow.  The 
hunter,  looking  straight  ahead,  sees  in  the  outer  darkness — rendered 
Egyptian  by  contrast  with  the  bright  light  immediately  in  front  of  his 
own  eyes — two  large,  luminous  bodies,  like  balls  of  fire.  These  are 
the  eyes  of  his  victim  ;  and,  making  his  calculation  as  to  the  distance 
from  the  eyes  down  to  the  breast,  the  valiant  sportsman  (who  proba- 
bly is  also  a  strong  anti-vivisectionist)  fires,  intending  to  send  his  bul- 
let through  the  heart.  The  eminent  physicist,  in  speaking  of  this 
luminosity,  referred  to  it  as  due  to  the  phosphorescence  of  the  eyes,  in 
that  final  way  in  which  we  are  accustomed  to  speak  of  things  beyond 
dispute. 

But  it  is  hardly  less  surprising  to  read  in  the  article  "  Light,"  in 
the  ninth  edition  of  the  "  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,"  the  following 
remarkable  statement  by  Professor  P.  G.  Tait,  on  the  sources  of  light ; 
"  3.  A  third  source  [of  light]  is  physiological  ;  fire-flies,  glow-worms, 
meduscey  dead  fish  (?) — the  eye  of  a  cat "  (vol.  xiv,  p.  379). 

If  these  are  the  opinions  of  acknowledged  authorities  in  optics,  we 
can  hardly  expect  the  mass  of  even  ordinarily  intelligent  and  informed 
persons  to  have  more  correct  ones,  and  should  expect  thorough  cre- 
dence to  be  given  to  the  story  of  the  man  who  claimed  that  he  was 
able  to  recognize  an  antagonist  who  struck  him  in  the  dark  by  means  of 
the  light  emitted  from  his  own  eye  as  the  result  of  the  blow. 


8i4  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

The  fact  is,  there  is  no  phosphorescence  in  the  eyes  of  animals — 
at  least,  so  far  as  my  knowledge  extends,  none  has  been  demonstrated  ; 
and,  that  it  is  absent  from  the  eyes  of  the  cat.  Professor  Tait  can  dem- 
onstrate conclusively  for  himself,  by  taking  a  cat,  be  it  ever  so  black 
(and  these  I  believe  are  supposed  to  have  the  luminous  power  in  the 
greatest  degree),  into  a  completely  dark  room  where  there  can  come  no 
ray  of  extraneous  light,  and  he  will  find  that  the  eyes  can  not  generate 
enough  light  to  make  even  the  darkness  visible. 

The  real  cause  of  the  luminosity  of  the  eyes  of  animals  in  the  dark 
is  now  thoroughly  understood  by  physiological  opticists  and  by  many 
practical  oculists,  and  depends  upon  the  well-demonstrated  laws  of 
the  refraction  and  reflection  of  light.  For  a  clear  apprehension  of  the 
phenomenon,  however,  it  is  necessary  to  understand  the  properties  of 
the  eye  as  an  optical  instrument. 

The  office  of  the  eye  as  an  optical  instrument,  pure  and  simple,  is 
to  bring  rays  of  light  to  a  focus  on  the  membrane  at  the  back  part 
known  as  the  retina,  in  such  a  manner  that  small  and  inverted  images 
of  external  objects  shall  be  formed  there.  For  this  purpose  there  is 
a  general  plan,  which  is  subject,  however,  to  more  or  less  variation 
in  different  animals.  The  basis  of  this  plan  is  the  camera-ohscura, 
in  which  the  box  is  represented  by  the  hollow  globe  or  ball  of  the 
eye,  the  small  aperture  through  which  the  light  enters,  by  the  pupil, 
and  the  lens  by  which  the  inverted  and  reduced  images  of  external 
objects  are  formed,  by  the  refracting  surfaces  of  the  eye,  which  are 
usually  two — the  cornea,  or  clear  part  of  the  front  of  the  eye,  and  the 
crystalline  lens. 

Now,  the  eye,  in  its  capacity  of  optical  instrument,  is  obedient  to 
the  same  laws  as  any  other  apparatus  reflecting  and  refracting  light. 
It  may  astonish  some  to  be  told  that  the  eye  reflects  the  light  passing 
into  it.  It  was  for  a  long  time  believed  that  all  light  that  entered  the 
eye  was  in  some  manner  consumed  there,  and  that  none  ever  found  its 
way  out  again.  It  was  considered  one  of  the  functions  of  the  choroid 
or  pigmented  coat  of  the  eye  to  absorb  such  light  as  was  not  used  in 
the  formation  of  the  image.  The  basis  of  this  opinion  was  that,  under 
ordinary  circumstances,  no  matter  how  bright  the  light  may  be  in 
which  the  eye  is  looked  at,  the  pupil  always  appears  black.  But  no 
fact  is  more  clearly  demonstrated  now  than  that  the  eye  does  throw 
back  a  large  part  of  the  light  which  enters  its  pupil. 

One  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  optics  is  what  is  called  the 
law  of  conjugate  foci.  This  is  readily  understood  by  means  of  the 
accompanying  diagram  (Fig.  1).  If  the  object  is  at  a,  the  lens  I  will 
form  an  image  of  that  object  at  c.  The  law  of  conjugate  foci  is 
that  the  image  can  exchange  places  with  the  object  and  the  object 
with  the  image,  and  the  result  be  still  the  same.  That  is  to  say,  if 
the  object  were  placed  at  c,  its  image  would  be  formed  at  a.  Or, 
expressing  it  in  another  way,  the  rays  of  light  follow  the  same  lines, 


WITT  EYES    OF  ANIMALS   SHINE  IN  THE  DARK.  815 

whether  going  from  the  image  to  the  object  or  from  the  object  to  the 
image. 

Let  us  now  apply  this  law  to  the  case  of  the  eye.  We  will  suppose 
the  eye  to  be  in  a  normal  optical  condition ;  that  is,  that  the  retina 
on  which  the  image  is  formed  is  to  be  found  exactly  at  the  focus  of 


the  lenses  by  which  the  light  is  refracted.  By  consulting  Fig.  2,  we 
can  follow  the  course  of  the  rays  of  light  in  both  directions.  We 
have  rays  going  from  a  in  the  flame  a  h,  which  after  refraction  by 
the  lenses  of  the  eye  are  brought  to  a  focus  at  c,  and  form  the  lower 
end  of  the  inverted  image  ;  whereas,  these  going  from  h  are  united 
again  at  d.  But,  since  the  bottom  of  the  eye  is  a  reflecting  surface, 
and  sends  back  a  part,  at  least,  of  the  light  which  falls  on  it,  some  of 
these  rays  pass  out  again,  but,  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  conju- 
gate foci,  they  must  follow  the  same  lines  as  in  entering  ;  therefore, 
the  rays  from  c  will  come  back  to  a,  and  those  from  d  will  come 


I 


back  to  h.  If  we  could  place  our  eye  at  a  h,  then  we  would  catch 
some  of  these  rays,  and  the  bottom  of  the  eye  would  appear  illu- 
minated just  as  any  other  surface  from  which  light  was  reflected. 
But  our  eye  and  the  candle  can  not  occupy  the  same  place  at  the 
same  time,  and  if  we  place  it  behind  the  candle,  the  flame  itself 
cuts  off  the  rays  of  light,  and  if  we  place  it  in  front,  our  head 
obstructs  the  passage  of  the  light  to  the  eye  to  be  observed.  So, 
under  these  circumstances,  it  is  impossible  for  an  eye,  at  0,  for  in- 
stance, to  get  any  of  the  light  that  is  constantly  coming  from  the  bot- 


8i6  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

torn  of  an  eye  which  has  been  illuminated.  But,  if  we  were  able  by 
any  contrivance  to  place  our  eye  in  the  position  of  the  source  of 
light,  w^e  would  be  able  to  catch  the  rays  coming  from  the  bottom 
of  the  observed  eye,  and  it  would  appear  illuminated.  Kow,  there  is 
such  a  contrivance,  and  it  is  called  the  ophthalmoscope,  and  it  owes 
its  existence  to  the  genius  of  Professor  Helmholtz.  The  principle 
of  its  construction  is  so  simple  that  the  wonder  is  that  no  one  ever 
thought  of  it  before  ;  but  never,  until  the  year  1851,  had  any  one 
ever  seen  in  anything  like  detail  the  interior  of  a  living  eye.  If  you 
take  a  piece  of  bright  tin  and  punch  a  small  hole  in  it,  and,  placing  the 
hole  directly  in  front  of  your  own  pupil,  throw  the  light  from  a  lamp 
into  the  eye  of  a  child,  the  pupil,  instead  of  appearing  black  as  it 
usually  does,  will  be  of  a  beautiful  yellowish-red  color.  This  is  be- 
cause you  have,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  put  your  eye  in  the  place 
of  the  source  of  light.  For  the  light  reflected  from  the  surface  of 
the  tin  is  that  which  passes  into  the  eye,  and  it  must  come  back  to  it 
after  reflection.  The  eye  placed  behind  the  hole  catches  the  small 
quantity  which  would  fall  on  that  part,  and  therefore  sees  the  surface 
from  which  it  comes,  illuminated.  This  is  the  principle  of  illumina- 
tion of  the  bottom  of  the  eye,  and,  when  you  have  your  object  sufii- 
ciently  well  lighted,  it  is  only  a  matter  of  optical  appliance  to  see  it 
distinctly  and  in  great  detail.  This  digression  is  designed  to  show 
that,  when  we  have  favoring  circumstances,  by  the  action  of  well- 
known  optical  laws,  the  eyes  of  animals  appear  illuminated,  and  that 
it  is  not  necessary  to  call  in  the  supposition  of  phosphorescence  to 
account  for  the  phenomenon. 

But,  in  the  case  of  some  animals,  the  eyes  appear  to  shine  without 
the  intervention  of  any  optical  means,  however  simple.  This,  how- 
ever, is  only  apparent,  for  the  principle  of  illumination  is  applicable 
here  as  in  the  other  cases. 

In  the  case  we  have  supposed,  the  retina,  which  in  this  instance  is 
the  reflecting  surface  as  well  as  the  membrane  on  which  the  image  is 
formed,  was  found  at  the  focus  of  the  refracting  surfaces  of  the  eye. 
But  this  condition  is  met  with  only  in  what  is  accepted  as  the  per- 
fect optical  state  of  the  eye.  As  can  be  readily  understood,  the  retina 
may  lie  either  in  front  or  behind  the  focus  of  the  refracting  media — 
that  is,  the  eye  may  be  too  long  or  too  short  for  its  focus,  and  unfor- 
tunately such  conditions  are  but  too  common.  When  an  eye  is  too 
long,  it  is  said  to  be  near-sighted  or  myopic  ;  when  too  short,  it  is  far- 
sighted  or  hypermetropic. 

The  change  in  the  position  of  the  retina,  then,  must  exercise  an 
influence  on  the  direction  of  the  rays  that  are  reflected  from  it.  From 
the  well-demonstrated  properties  of  lenses  we  know  that,  when  rays  of 
light  coming  from  a  point  at  the  focus  of  a  lens  pass  through  it,  they 
are  rendered  parallel ;  when  they  come  from  a  point  within  the  focus, 
they  are  spread  out,  or  rendered  divergent ;  and  when  from  heyond 


WRY  EYES    OF  ANIMALS   SHINE  IN  THE  DARK.  817 

the  focus,  they  are  rendered  convergent,  or  brought  toward  another 
focus. 

In  accordance  with  these  laws,  therefore,  we  must  expect  the  rays 
of  light  to  take  a  different  course  in  coming  out  of  an  eye  according  as 
it  is  near-  or  far-sighted.  The  course  of  the  rays  coming  from  the 
far-sighted  or  hypermetropic  eye  is  shown  in  Fig.  3. 

If  the  retina  lay  in  the  focus  of  the  refracting  surfaces  of  the  eye 
at  E,  then  the  light  from  the  inverted  image  c  d  of  the  flame  would 
travel  back,  in  the  same  direction  in  which  it  came,  to  the  flame  a  h 


itself.  If,  however,  it  meets  the  reflecting  surface  of  the  retina  within 
the  focus  at  H,  then  the  rays  from  the  confused  image  e  i  would  come 
out  in  a  divergent  manner,  and  form  a  cone  of  light,  F  G,  like  that 
from  the  head-light  of  a  locomotive. 

It  is  now  easy  to  see  that  if  an  observing  eye  is  placed  anywhere 
in  the  vicinity  of  the  source  of  illumination,  as  at  o,  it  will  take  in  some 
of  the  rays  coming  from  e  ^,  and  see  it  illuminated.  There  are  very 
few  human  eyes  so  accurately  adjusted  as  to  their  focus  that  all  the 
rays  come  back  to  the  source  of  light ;  some  of  them  are  scattered, 
and  by  a  very  simple  arrangement  it  is  possible  to  catch  them  in  suffi- 
cient number  to  show  the  bottom  of  the  eye  illuminated. 

Place  a  child  (because  the  pupils  of  children  are  large),  and  by  pref- 
erence a  blonde,  at  a  distance  of  ten  or  fifteen  feet  from  a  lamp  which 
is  the  only  source  of  light  in  a  room,  and  cause  it  to  look  at  some  ob- 
ject in  the  direction  of  the  lamp,  turning  the  eye  you  wish  to  look  at 
slightly  inward  toward  the  nose.  Now,  put  your  own  eye  close  behind 
the  lamp-flame,  with  a  card  between  it  and  the  flame.  If  you  will  then 
look  close  by  the  edge  of  the  flame  covered  by  the  card  into  the  eye 
of  the  child,  you  will  see,  instead  of  a  perfectly  black  pupil,  a  reddish- 
yellow  circle.  If  the  eye  happens  to  be  hypermetropic,  you  will  be 
able  to  see  the  red  reflex  when  your  own  eye  is  at  some  distance  to 
one  side  of  the  flame. 
VOL.  XXIV. — 52 


8i8  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

This  is  the  true  explanation  of  the  luminous  appearance  of  the  eyes 
of  some  animals  when  they  are  in  comparative  obscurity.  It  is  simply 
the  light  reflected  from  the  bottom  of  their  eyes,  which  is  generally  of 
a  reddish  tinge  on  account  of  the  red  blood  in  the  vascular  layer  of 
the  choroid  back  of  the  semitransparent  retina,  and  not  light  that  is 
generated  there  at  all.  This  reflection  is  most  apparent  when  the  ani- 
mal is  in  obscurity,  but  the  observer  must  be  in  the  light,  and  some- 
what in  the  relative  position  indicated  in  the  above-described  experi- 
ment— that  is,  the  eye  of  the  observer  must  be  on  the  same  line  with 
the  light  and  the  observed  eye.  The  eyes  of  nearly  all  animals  are 
hypermetropic,  most  of  them  very  highly  so,  so  that  they  send  out  the 
rays  of  light  which  have  entered  them  in  a  very  diverging  manner. 

The  circumstances  under  which  the  phenomena  of  luminosity  are 
usually  seen  are,  it  will  be  noted,  those  most  favorable  for  the  success 
of  the  experiment.  The  animal  is  always  in  an  obscure  corner,  under 
a  table  or  chair,  as  in  the  case  of  the  cat,  while  the  deer  is  in  the  outer 
darkness  of  the  night.  It  is  well  known  that  the  pupils  dilate  when 
in  the  dark,  and  they  often  attain  an  immense  size  in  the  eyes  of  those 
animals  with  nocturnal  habits,  and  the  size  of  the  cone  of  light  is  gov- 
erned by  the  size  of  the  pupil,  since  its  circumferential  boundary  is 
formed  by  it. 

In  making  some  experiments  on  dogs  and  cats,  for  the  purpose  of 
determining  the  size  of  this  cone  of  light,  I  found  that  it  had  actually 
about  twice  the  diameter  it  should  have  theoretically,  from  the  amount 
of  hypermetropia  present,  as  determined  by  means  of  the  ophthalmo- 
scope. This  I  can  account  for  only  by  the  great  dispersion  of  light 
at  the  periphery  of  the  lens  and  cornea,  rendered  possible  by  the  im- 
mense dilatation  of  the  pupil  ;  and  this  I  think,  too,  is  the  reason  why 
the  phenomenon  is  not  more  frequently  observed  in  the  higher  animals 
affected  with  hypermetropia.  The  pupil  in  man  never  attains  the  size, 
under  the  same  circumstances,  as  that  of  the  cat,  for  example  ;  and, 
moreover,  it  is  most  likely  that  the  surfaces  of  the  cornea  and  lens  are 
more  regular  in  their  curve,  even  at  their  more  peripheral  parts,  and 
consequently  disperse  the  light  in  a  very  much  less  degree. 


PKEHISTOEIC  AKT  IN  AMEEICA. 

By  the  Mabquis  de  NADAILLAC. 

THE  world  of  science  was  astonished  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago 
by  the  discovery  made  in  the  caves  of  Vez6re,  France,  of  works 
of  art  executed  by  the  prehistoric  troglodytes.  The  specimens  con- 
sisted of  representations  of  mammals,  birds,  fishes,  and  of  man  him- 
self, sculptured  in  relief  or  engraved  upon  elephants'  tusks,  bears' 


PREHISTORIC  ART  IN  AMERICA,  819 

teeth,  the  shoulder-blade  of  a  reindeer,  the  long  bones  of  deer,  or  on 
stones  or  beach-pebbles,  and  included  the  huge  cave-bear,  the  mam- 
moth with  its  heavy  mane  and  upturned  tusks,  the  seal,  the  croco- 
dile, and  the  horse.  These  drawings,  the  first  efforts  of  man,  are 
crude  in  shape,  but  suggestive  of  vital  action.  One  of  the  stag-horns, 
engraved  with  representations  of  reindeer  and  fishes,  is  a  almost  a  mas- 
terpiece. The  deer  are  following  one  another,  and  one  of  them  has 
turned  to  look  back,  doubtless  so  as  to  see  her  fawn  ;  the  heads  are  all 
drawn  in  profile  and  without  foreshortening,  as  in  the  Egyptian  paint- 
ings and  sculptures  ;  sometimes  the  lines  are  light,  at  other  times  they 
are  cut  deeply  to  bring  out  certain  parts.  By  a  curious  caprice  the 
artist,  after  having  completed  his  first  design,  has  put  fishes  in  all  the 
vacant  spaces,  and  they  too  are  wonderfully  truthful.  M.  Massenat 
has  discovered,  at  Laugerie  Basse,  a  piece  of  reindeer-horn  about  ten 
inches  long,  on  which  was  plainly  engraved  an  aurochs  running  from 
a  young  man  who  is  about  to  shoot  an  arrow  at  it.  The  animal  has 
its  head  down  with  its  horns  in  a  position  of  menace,  expanded  nos- 
trils, and  tail  raised  and  curved,  all  being  signs  of  terror  and  irrita- 
tion. The  man  is  naked  and  has  a  round  head,  with  coarse  hair,  which 
is  brought  up  over  the  top  of  his  head,  and  an  obvious  beard  on  the 
chin.  His  whole  physiognomy  expresses  joyousness  and  the  excite- 
ment of  the  chase.  The  women  have  flat  breasts  and  prominent  hips. 
One  of  them,  very  hairy,  is  drawn  between  the  legs  of  a  deer,  and 
wears  a  collar  around  her  neck.  Unfortunately,  her  head  is  wanting. 
A  considerable  number  of  engraved  stones  and  bones  have  been 
brought  to  light  in  the  excavations  of  the  cave  of  Thayngen,  Switzer- 
land. Among  them  is  a  reindeer,  standing  with  its  head  inclined 
toward  the  ground,  and  drawn  with  a  precision  showing  a  really  re- 
markable acquaintance  with  the  form  of  the  animal.  The  artist  had 
attained  such  perfection  that  observers  were  at  first  tempted  to  ask  if 
they  had  not  been  invited  to  look  at  one  of  the  archaeological  frauds 
that  have  unhappily  become  so  common.  But  the  excavations  had 
been  watched  with  unremitting  care  ;  the  witnesses  of  the  discovery 
were  honorable  men  of  science  ;  the  calcareous  deposit  of  more  than 
a  yard  thick  had  been  taken  up  under  their  eyes  ;  there  were  found 
in  the  cave  reproductions  of  animals  which  had  disappeared  centuries 
ago — ^the  musk-ox,  for  instance  ;  and  the  engraving  was  so  faithful 
that  it  could  have  been  made  only  from  nature.  It  was  necessary, 
then,  to  surrender  to  the  evidence.  Away  back  in  the  quaternary  ages, 
in  the  midst  of  the  hardest  conditions  of  life,  of  the  struggle  for 
existence,  and  of  incessant  conflicts  against  the  great  pachyderms,  the 
bears,  and  the  feline  animals  that  swarmed  around  him,  man  already 
had  the  feeling  or  the  instinct  of  art.  He  tried  to  draw  the  likenesses 
of  the  animals  he  saw  and  of  the  trees  that  shaded  the  cave  he  lived 
in  ;  and  the  productions  of  his  industry,  found  again  after  so  many 
ages,  are  all  the  more  interesting  from  the  fact  that  the  extemporiz- 


820  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

ing  artist  had,  to  assist  him  in  his  work,  only  some  wretched  flints  or 
roughly-sharpened  bones.  The  inquiry  whether  these  discoveries  made 
in  the  west  of  Europe  are  verified  in  other  countries,  and  whether  this 
art-feeling  was  innate  in  man  and  has  characterized  him  always  and 
everywhere,  is  one  of  much  interest.  The  excavations  in  Asia  and 
Africa  are  still  too  few,  and  the  discoveries  that  have  been  made  there 
are  of  too  little  importance,  to  warrant  the  drawing  of  serious  conclu- 
sions respecting  those  quarters.  We  must,  then,  turn  to  America, 
where  eminent  archaeologists  and  enthusiastic  collectors  have  eagerly 
studied  all  that  relates  to  the  past  of  the  human  race.  With  the  aid 
of  their  publications  and  the  photographs  they  have  distributed  with 
rare  liberality,  we  are  able  to  follow  the  ancient  populations  in  their 
migrations  from  the  shores  of  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific,  to  study 
their  habits  and  their  progress,  and  to  show  that  among  them  also  art 
was  bom  at  a  very  early  epoch,  and  that  it  grew  up  with  the  generations. 
It  has  now  been  ascertained  that  man  lived  in  America  during  the 
quaternary  ages,  contemporaneously  with  the  mastodons  and  the  huge 
edentates  and  pachyderms,  which  had  no  other  resemblances  with  the 
mammals  of  the  Eastern  continents  than  those  of  size.  Like  their  con- 
temporaries in  Europe,  the  primitive  Americans  wandered  in  the  soli- 
tary wilderness,  and  disputed  with  animals  for  the  prey  on  which  they 
fed  and  the  caves  that  sheltered  them,  having  for  weapons  of  offense 
and  defense  only  the  flints  that  lay  at  their  feet.  Their  barbarism  ap- 
pears to  have  been  lower  than  that  of  the  troglodytes  of  Europe,  and 
to  have  been  destitute  of  all  artistic  feeling  and  taste  for  ornament. 
Ages  passed,  the  duration  of  which  we  can  not  compute  ;  the  quater- 
nary animals  disappeared,  and  man  became  sedentary  ;  and  he  has  left 
as  evidences  of  his  long  abode  in  the  same  place  the  heaps  of  refuse 
exemplified  in  the  shell-mounds  and  kitchen-middens  of  the  Atlantic 
coast,  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi  and  thie  Ama- 
zon, the  Pacific  coast,  and  Tien-a  del  Fuego.  Excavations  made  at 
several  points  have  brought  out  hatchets,  knives,  harpoons,  and  tools 
of  every  shape,  of  stone,  bone,  and  horn,  all  bearing  witness  to  a  back- 
ward social  condition,  fragments  of  carbonized  wood,  bones  of  ani- 
mals, and  fish-bones,  all  having  evidently  been  accumulated  by  men 
who  knew  nothing  of  agriculture  and  lived  by  hunting  and  fishing. 
Occasionally  a  few  shards  of  pottery  have  been  found  among  the  re- 
mains, made  of  clay  mixed  with  pounded  shells,  fashioned  by  hand, 
and  dried  in  the  sun.  Sometimes  plaited  vines  or  canna-stems  have 
been  impressed  on  the  wet  parts,  or  lines  have  been  scratched  on  the 
vessel  with  the  point  of  a  shell  or  a  flint.  These  are  the  first  efforts  at 
ornamentation,  and  are  singularly  like  those  of  the  most  ancient  pot- 
teries of  Europe.  Ornaments  designed  for  the  decoration  of  the  per- 
son are  more  rare  than  the  potteries.  We  can  only  cite  a  few  bears' 
or  cats'  teeth  and  shells  bored  for  the  purpose  of  being  hung  from  the 
neck,  except  in  the  samhaquis  or  kitchen-middens  of  Brazil,  where  a 


PREHISTORIC  ART  IN  AMERICA.  821 

few  figures  of  fishes  and  idols  in  gold  and  silver  have  been  found  in 
very  ancient  deposits  of  guano. 

We  can  form  only  the  most  imperfect  estimates  of  the  dates 
of  these  remains.  Geological  evidences  give  no  definite  clew.  The 
growth  of  trees  over  the  kitchen-middens  may  fix  dates  previous  to 
which  they  certainly  existed,  but  when  we  have  admitted  the  five  or 
six  centuries  it  took  the  trees  from  the  time  the  wind  wafted  the  seed 
to  the  spot,  how  are  we  to  compute  the  number  of  generations  of 
plants  that  were  required  to  furnish  the  soil  on  which  they  could  grow  ? 
One  point  only  is  ascertained,  and  that  is  that  no  bones  of  quaternary 
animals  have  been  met  under  the  kitchen-middens,  and,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  the  figures  we  have  mentioned,  no  metallic  objects.  The 
remains  must,  then,  have  been  accumulated  between  the  period  of  the 
disappearance  of  the  larger  animals  and  the  time  when  the  metals 
came  into  habitual  use.  Must  we  say,  then,  that  during  that  long  se- 
ries of  ages  no  artistic  tendency  revealed  itself  in  man  ?  Yes,  if  we 
judge  by  the  individual  objects  that  have  been  collected  ;  no,  if  we 
attribute  to  that  epoch  the  pictographs,  or  the  figures,  scenes,  hiero- 
glyphics, or  rebuses,  as  we  might  call  them,  which  are  painted,  en- 
graved, and  sculptured  on  the  cliffs,  the  sides  of  caves,  the  bowlders, 
and  erratic  rocks,  or  wherever  a  vacant  space  may  have  been  offered 
to  the  artist.  Men  have  at  all  times  with  a  childish  vanity  endeavored 
to  delineate  their  migrations,  their  contests,  their  hunts,  and  their  vic- 
tories. Egypt  has  transmitted  its  ancient  history  to  us  on  granite  ; 
the  rocks  of  Scandinavia  still  wear  the  likeness  of  the  Vikings'  ves- 
sels ;  and  those  around  the  lac  des  Merveilles,  near  Nice,  bear  pictures 
of  men  extremely  primitive  in  design  ;  curious  engravings  have  been 
noticed  in  Algeria  ;  the  Bushmen,  who  are  among  the  most  degraded 
populations  of  the  globe,  have  drawn  on  stone,  with  wonderful  fidelity, 
their  hunting  scenes  and  their  loves  ;  and  the  rock-paintings  of  New 
Zealand,  the  work  also  of  a  barbarous  race,  but  evidently  superior  in 
execution  to  the  scratches  of  the  Bushmen,  have  been  described  before 
the  London  Society  of  Anthropology.  These  are  isolated  facts,  though 
curious  ones  ;  but  in  the  two  Americas  the  number  of  pictographs  and 
the  extent  of  surface  they  cover  give  them  an  exceptional  importance. 
The  desire,  not  only  to  reproduce  striking  events,  but  also  to  give  pre- 
cision to  their  sense  by  conventional  signs,  by  graphic  strokes,  or  by 
hieroglyphics  or  phonetic  or  symbolical  characters,  is  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  traits  of  the  different  races  that  have  succeeded  each  other 
on  the  new  continent.  Although  the  initial  date  of  these  engravings 
is  unknown,  we  can  nevertheless  affirm  that  they  continued  to  be  exe- 
cuted through  many  ages,  and  that  while  the  most  ancient  ones  ascend 
to  remote  epochs,  in  some  instances  these  historic  drawings  only  a  lit- 
tle while  preceded  the  arrival  of  the  Europeans.  Pictographs  are 
especially  abundant  in  the  regions  that  formerly  constituted  Spanish 
America  :  in  Nicaragua,  near  the  extinct  volcano  of  Masaya  ;  in  the 


822  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MOJSrTHLr, 

United  States  of  Colombia,  on  the  banks  of  the  Orinoco  ;  and  in  Vene- 
zuela, where  in  consequence  of  their  antiquated  condition  they  will 
soon  cease  to  be  distinguishable.  The  rocks  of  Honduras  are  covered 
with  sharply-cut  designs  ;  the  coiiquistadores,  in  1520,  remarked  simi- 
lar works  in  the  Isthmus  of  Darien  ;  and  in  the  State  of  Panama  en- 
tire cliffs  were  charged  with  hieroglyphics  that  might  afford  matter 
for  very  interesting  studies.  In  the  Sierra  Nevada,  between  Colum- 
bus, Nevada,  and  Benton,  California,  are  hosts  of  figures  of  men  and 
animals  and  uninterpretable  signs.  About  twenty  miles  south  of  Ben- 
ton, the  road  follows  a  narrow  defile,  bounded  on  both  sides  by  nearly 
perpendicular  rocks,  and  these  are  covered  with  figures  in  respect  to 
which  no  clew  exists  as  to  the  people  that  designed  them. 

Pictographs  are  little  less  numerous  in  Arizona,  New  Mexico,  and 
Colorado — in  parts  of  the  country  which,  though  now  desolate,  were 
formerly  inhabited  by  a  considerable  population.  The  glacier-polished 
bowlders  of  the  valley  of  the  Gila  River  have  figures  that  may  be 
compared  with  those  of  Thuringia.  On  the  banks  of  the  Mancos  and 
the  San  Juan,  and  in  the  deep  canons  stretching  up  toward  the  east, 
the  figures  are  visible  at  dizzy  heights,  some  deeply  engraved,  others 
drawn  in  red  or  white.  Among  them  is  a  procession  of  men,  animals, 
and  birds  with  long  necks  and  legs,  all  going  in  the  same  direction. 
Two  of  the  men  are  standing  on  a  sledge  drawn  by  a  deer,  while  oth- 
ers direct  the  march  of  the  drove.  The  artist  evidently  intended  to 
represent  a  migration  of  his  tribe.  In  another  pictograph  on  the  banks 
of  the  San  Juan,  among  figures  of  strange  forms  and  of  drawing  in- 
correct but  full  of  movement  and  life,  may  be  recognized  a  number  of 
flint  hatchets,  exactly  similar  in  pattern  to  the  symbolical  hatchets 
that  are  cut  on  the  megaliths  of  Brittany.  At  another  spot,  a  cliff  is 
covered,  for  a  space  of  more  than  sixty  square  feet,  with  figures  of 
men,  deer,  and  lizards  ;  and  M.  Bandelier  has  seen,  near  the  ruins  of 
Pecos,  pictographs,  the  high  antiquity  of  which  is  attested  by  the  de- 
gree of  effacement  they  have  undergone.  They  represent  the  tracks 
of  men  or  children,  a  human  figure,  and  a  tolerably  regular  circle.  On 
the  banks  of  the  Puerco  and  the  Zuiii,  two  of  the  affluents  of  the  Colo- 
rado Chiquito,  designs  have  been  remarked  having  the  appearance 
of  hieroglyphics,  but  their  significance  is  unknown,  and  we  can  not 
even  affirm  that  they  had  any.  The  cliffs  near  Salt  Lake  in  Utah 
are  adorned  with  sculptures,  among  which  are  human  figures  of  the 
natural  size,  cut  in  a  hard  rock  more  than  thirty  feet  above  the  ground. 
All  together  show  an  amount  of  labor  of  which  the  Indians  are  inca- 
pable, and  a  sum  of  difficulties  which  they  could  not  have  overcome  ; 
and  the  height  at  which  some  of  the  sculptures  appear  allows  the  sup- 
position that  some  geological  phenomenon,  perhaps  a  depression  of 
the  lake,  may  have  occurred  since  they  were  executed.  Many  draw- 
ings on  stone  have  also  been  observed  in  the  eastern  parts  of  the 
United  States. 


PREHISTORIC  ART  IN  AMERICA.  823 

Pictographs  to  which  we  are  disposed  to  accord  a  great  antiquity- 
are  to  be  seen  on  the  sides  of  caves  in  Nicaragua.  Some  grottoes  in 
the  mountains  of  Oajaca  also  bear  witness  to  the  labor  of  man,  in  the 
shape  of  coarse  paintings  in  red  ochre.  Among  them  is  frequently  re- 
peated the  imprint  in  black  of  a  human  hand.  This  imprint,  which  is 
probably  borrowed  from  some  myth,  seems  to  have  played  a  great 
part  in  America.  It  is  found  reproduced  in  regions  very  remote  from 
one  another,  standing  out  on  the  potteries,  sometimes  in  red  on  a  black 
ground,  sometimes  in  black  on  a  red  ground.  In  our  own  days  it  is 
occasionally  found  in  use  among  Indians  as  a  totem  or  coat-of-arms. 

All  that  we  have  just  said  bears  witness  to  a  still  primitive  condi- 
tion of  art.  The  men  who  executed  the  works,  barbarous  as  they  seem 
to  have  been,  were  capable  of  rising  higher.  This  is  proved  by  works 
of  a  manifestly  later  epoch.  Guatemala,  the  ancient  land  of  the 
Quiches  and  the  Cakchiquels,  abounds  in  ruins.  Bas-reliefs,  statues, 
and  monoliths  covered  with  arabesques  to  the  height  of  twenty  feet, 
meet  the  traveler  frequently.  At  Quirigua,  a  small  port  on  the  Bay 
of  Honduras,  a  statue  of  a  woman  has  been  found,  footless  and  hand- 
less,  with  a  crowned  idol  on  its  head  ;  excavations  by  the  side  of  it 
have  brought  to  light  a  tiger's  head  in  porphyry.  At  Santa  Lucia 
Cosumalhuapa,  at  the  foot  of  the  Volcan  de  Fuego,  among  the  Cyclo- 
pean stones  and  the  statues  of  tapirs  and  caymans,  lie  colossal  stone 
heads,  of  a  strange  type,  hitherto  unknown.  Two  of  these  heads  wear 
the  immense  ear-rings  peculiar  to  the  ancient  Peruvians,  and  a  head- 
dress similar  to  the  Asiatic  turbans.  Farther  on  are  bas-reliefs  in  hard 
porphyry,  larger  than  nature,  representing  personages  as  odd  in  con- 
ception as  in  execution,  and  mythological  scenes  that  have  no  relation 
to  any  known  form  of  worship.  The  most  interesting  bas-relief  rep- 
resents a  human  sacrifice.  The  principal  personage  is  a  priest ;  he  is 
naked  and,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  Aztec  priests,  wears  a  garter 
around  his  left  leg  ;  only  the  left  foot  is  shod.  The  head-dress  is  a 
crab.  One  hand  holds  a  flint,  doubtless  the  sacrificial  knife,  while  the 
other  hand  grasps  the  head  of  the  victim  to  be  slain.  On  a  second 
plane,  two  acolytes  are  carrying  human  heads.  One  of  them  is  a 
skeleton,  a  sinister  symbol  of  death.  Its  head  is  of  a  simian  shape, 
mingling  the  grotesque  with  the  terrible.  To  cite  more  similar  facts 
would  merely  involve  unpleasant  repetitions.  We  shall  only  add,  then, 
that  the  figures  are  of  a  grinning  aspect  and  a  repulsive  ugliness.  The 
ancient  American  races  did  not  seek  for  the  beautiful,  or,  rather,  did 
not  comprehend  it  as  we  do,  who  have  been  taught  by  the  immortal 
creators  of  the  high  art  of  Greece. 

We  have  just  occasion  to  be  surprised  when  we  think  of  the  time 
that  was  required  to  execute  these  works,  and  consider  what  inefficient 
mechanical  means  the  artists  had  to  use.  They  had  to  detach  blocks 
of  hard  stone  by  means  of  wretched  tools  of  quartzite  and  obsidian, 
and  to  saw  granite  and  porphyry  with  agave-fibers  and  emery.     A 


824  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

coarse  outline  design  indicated  the  part  to  be  removed.  The  labor 
was  executed  either  by  sawing  partly  through  the  stone  and  deftly 
breaking  off  the  fragment,  or  by  pecking  it  away  with  a  flint-point. 
Lastly,  the  surface  of  the  planes  was  rubbed  with  flat  stones  or  polish- 
ers to  remove  the  traces  of  the  chippings.  Other  processes  also  appear 
to  have  been  employed.  The  artist  drew  his  figure  in  coarse  tracings, 
and  covered  with  ashes  the  lines  he  desired  to  bring  out  in  relief.  The 
whole  surface  was  then  heated  with  fire  ;  the  parts  which  were  sub- 
jected to  the  direct  action  of  the  flames  were  decomposed,  and  left 
hollow  places,  while  those  that  were  protected  by  the  ashes  remained 
intact.* 

For  finishing  his  work,  the  sculptor  had  nothing  better  than  a  flint- 
point  or  a  copper  chisel,f  the  only  tools  in  use,  for  iron  was  unknown. 
He  was  obliged,  in  order  to  execute  those  colossal  figures  and  the  bas- 
reliefs  which  now  make  such  an  impression  of  astonishment  upon  us, 
to  cut  with  those  imperfect  tools  in  a  very  hard  rock  to  a  depth  of 
three  or  four  centimetres.  The  fact  of  the  performance  of  a  labor  of 
such  length  is  a  certain  indication  of  the  infancy  of  the  society  in 
which  it  was  done,  where  man  had  not  yet  learned  to  appreciate  the 
value  of  time. 

The  region  of  the  piedras  pintadas  (painted  stones)  in  South 
America  extends  from  Guiana  to  Patagonia.  They  are  found  in  the 
wilds  of  Brazil  and  La  Plata  as  well  as  in  the  more  civilized  districts 
of  Peru  and  Chili,  and  they  betray  everywhere  a  remarkable  analogy. 
In  the  solitudes  of  Para  and  Piauhy,  Brazil,  are  numerous  intaglio- 
sculptures,  executed  by  unknown  peoples ;  they  represent  animals, 
birds,  and  men,  in  various  attitudes.  Some  of  the  men  are  tattooed  ; 
others  wear  crowns  of  feathers  ;  and  the  picture  is  finished  off  with 
arabesques  and  scrolls.  At  la  Sierra  da  On9a  are  drawings  in  red 
ochre,  isolated  and  in  groups,  without  apparent  order,  and  the  rocks  of 
the  province  of  Ceara  and  those  of  Tejuco  are  covered  with  tracings 
not  unlike  those  on  the  rocks  of  Scandinavia.  Humboldt  describes 
intaglios  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Orinoco,  representing  the  sun  and 
moon,  pumas,  crocodiles,  and  serpents,  ill-formed  figures  defined  most 
frequently  by  a  simple  outline  and  declaring  little  advancement  in  art. 
Nevertheless,  since  they  are  cut  in  the  hardest  kind  of  granite,  it  is 

*  Mr.  Wiener  saw  the  natives  excavating  an  irrigation  canal  in  the  valley  of  Chi- 
cama  de  Sausal,  through  a  rock  which  stood  in  the  way.  The  workmen  piled  ashes  along 
the  line  of  the  edges  of  the  canal,  covered  them  with  dried  manure  and  burned  it.  After 
eight  days  they  succeeded  in  forming  by  this  process  a  channel  through  a  granite  rock 
containing  a  vein  of  basalt  1-20  metre  wide,  0*80  metre  deep,  and  2*30  metres  long. 

f  There  has  been  found  near  Quito  a  chisel  that  was  used  in  working  the  large  blocks 
of  trachyte  employed  in  paving  the  roads  of  the  Incas'  empire.  It  weighed  198  grammes. 
The  surface  was  worn,  the  edge  was  nicked,  and  the  head  appeared  to  have  been  ham- 
mered upon,  all  indicating  that  it  had  been  subjected  to  long  use.  An  analysis  of  a  piece 
of  it  by  M.  Damour  gave  ninety-five  parts  of  copper,  a  little  more  than  four  parts  of  tin, 
and  slight  traces  of  iron,  lead,  and  silver. 


PREHISTORIC  ART  IN  AMERICA.  825 

impossible  to  attribute  them  to  the  barbarous  tribes  that  inhabited  the 
country  at  the  time  of  the  arrival  of  the  Europeans.  These  tribes  were 
incapable  of  executing  works  of  this  kind,  and  even  of  comprehending 
any  art,  however  crude  it  may  appear  to  us.  Who,  then,  were  the 
peoples  to  whom  we  can  attribute  the  painted  stones  ?  What  was 
their  origin  ?  The  illustrious  German  traveler  tells  us  nothing  that  can 
diminish  our  ignorance  on  this  point. 

There  are  mentioned  as  among  the  works  in  the  country  of  the 
Chibkas,  in  the  United  States  of  Colombia,  a  stone  probably  designed 
for  sacrificial  purposes,  and  sustained  by  caryatides,  a  jaguar  sculp- 
tured at  the  entrance  to  a  cave  near  Neyba,  and  gigantic  llamas.  In 
the  land  of  the  allied  tribe  of  the  Muiscao,  the  granitic  and  syenitic 
rocks  are  adorned  with  colossal  figures  of  crocodiles  and  tigers,  guard- 
ians doubtless  of  the  images  of  the  sun  and  moon,  the  supreme  gods 
of  the  South  American  natives.  All  of  these  figures  are  coarsely  exe- 
cuted, and  betray,  like  the  North  American  figures,  an  extreme  ab- 
sence of  taste  and  an  absolute  inability  to  reproduce  objects  faithfully. 

Abundant  examples  occur  on  the  Pacific  coast  of  an  art  which 
we  can  best  compare  with  that  of  Guatemala.  A  granite  block  near 
Macaya,  known  as  the  Piedra  de  Leon,  is  covered  with  sculptures 
which  all  are  agreed  are  very  ancient.  The  most  important  group 
represents  a  face-to-face  struggle  of  a  man  and  a  puma.  The  figures 
suggest  movement,  and  the  man  and  the  animal  appear  to  be  really 
struggling.  Near  the  little  city  of  Nepen  may  be  seen  a  colossal  ser- 
pent ;  a  short  distance  from  Arequipa,  trees  and  flowers  ;  farther  on, 
bisons  with  bored  noses  are  wearing  movable  rings  cut  in  the  same 
stone.  At  the  Pintados  de  las  Rayaa,  geometrical  figures,  circles,  and 
rectangles,  the  meaning  of  which  can  not  be  defined,  take  the  place 
of  figures  from  life.  In  the  province  of  Tarapaca,  considerable  sur- 
faces are  covered  with  figures  of  men  and  animals  mostly  fairly  good 
specimens  of  work,  and  with  a  kind  of  characters  arranged  vertically. 
The  lines  are  from  twelve  to  eighteen  feet  long,  and  each  character 
is  quite  deeply  engraved.  This  is  not  an  isolated  instance.  Inscrip- 
tions very  much  worn  have  been  found  near  Huara,  and  between 
Mendoza  and  La  Punta,  Chili,  is  a  large  pillar  on  which  letters  have 
been  imagined  analogous  in  some  respects  with  the  Chinese  alphabet. 
These  evidences  are  very  vague,  and,  however  well  disposed  to  dis- 
cover in  them  the  beginnings  of  graphic  art,  we  can  not  as  yet  found 
so  important  a  conclusion  upon  them. 

The  use  of  colors  was  certainly  known  to  the  Americans  from  the 
most  remote  antiquity.  The  ochres,  soot-black,  and  lime  doubtless 
furnished  them  their  first  coloring  elements,  and  there  was  nothing  in 
the  idea  of  using  these  pigments  above  the  most  primitive  conceptions. 
Experiment  induced  a  rapid  progress,  and  men  learned  to  extract 
vegetable  colors  from  leaves,  fruits,  roots,  stems,  and  seeds.  A  color- 
ing-matter was  also  borrowed,  like  the  Tyrian  purple,  from  sea-mol- 


826  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

lusks.  The  Peruvians  and  the  Mexicans  knew  how  to  place  the 
colors  upon  their  cloths.  The  goods  were  then  exposed  to  the  action 
of  the  light,  and  tints  varying  from  a  delicate  rose-color  to  a  dark 
violet  were  obtained.  The  colors  were  so  well  fixed  that  they  were 
not  even  modified  by  the  decomposition  of  dead  bodies.  In  the  col- 
lection of  cloths  from  the  Peruvian  huacas  at  the  museum  of  the  Tro- 
cadero,  in  Paris,  wrappings  of  mummies  that  have  been  buried  for 
centuries  still  retain  the  primitive  color  on  their  time-eaten  threads. 

The  Mexicans  probably  obtained  the  remarkably  brilliant  coloring 
of  their  pictographs  by  somewhat  analogous  processes.  These  picto- 
graphs,  manuscripts  of  which  only  a  smaller  number  have  reached  us, 
embrace  the  history  of  the  country,  its  national  traditions,  the  geneal- 
ogies of  its  kings  and  nobles,  the  rolls  of  provincial  tributes,  the  laws, 
the  calendar,  religious  festivals,  and  the  education  of  the  children — a 
complete  summary,  in  fact,  of  all  that  concerns  the  manners,  customs, 
and  life  of  the  people.  They  were  painted  in  various  colors  on  cotton 
cloth,  on  prepared  skins,  or  on  a  strong  and  tough  paper  made  from 
the  fibers  of  the  agave.  At  times  the  artist  depicts  scenes  from  real 
life  ;  at  other  times  he  records  facts  by  means  of  hieroglyphical, 
symbolical,  or  phonetic  characters,  conventional  signs  that  have  been 
handed  down  for  generations,  and  on  which  innovation  is  prohibited. 
Another  series  of  pictures  illustrates  the  education  of  children  and 
their  food  and  punishments.  The  father  teaches  his  son  to  carry  bur- 
dens, to  steer  a  canoe,  or  to  manage  the  fishing-tackle.  The  mother 
instructs  her  daughter  in  domestic  duties  ;  she  sweeps  the  house,  pre- 
pares tortillas,  and  weaves  cloths.  These  pictures  present  the  distinct 
outlines  and  bright  colors  which  the  Americans  sought  first  of  every- 
thing. Evidently  we  must  not  ask  them  for  models  of  decorative 
painting.  Their  complete  ignorance  of  proportions  and  the  laws  of 
perspective  demonstrates  that  their  art  was  the  exclusive  product  of 
their  own  genius,  or  of  the  instinct  of  their  race,  and  that  they  had 
not  been  subject  to  any  foreign  influence. —  Translated  for  the  Popular 
Science  Monthly  from  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes. 


EECE:^rT  GEOLOGICAL  CHAI^GES  IN  WESTERN 
MICHIGAN. 

By  C.  W.  WOOLDPwlDGE,  B.  S.,  M.D. 

WESTERN  Michigan  is  a  region  noted  for  its  lumber,  its  peache^, 
and  its  sand.  It  has  other  claims,  however,  to  the  attention 
of  those  who  are  interested  in  the  workings  of  Nature,  that  are  not 
nearly  so  well  known  as  they  deserve  to  be,  for  it  bears  the  marks 
of  very  extensive  geological  changes  in  recent  times,  which  are  even 
yet  in  progress,  but  have  not  attracted  the  attention  that  their  im- 


GEOLOGICAL   CHANGES  IN  MICHIGAN,  827 

portance  merits,  and  have  been  overlooked  altogether  by  some  geolog- 
ical writers,  whose  observations  might  be  expected  to  cover  their 
field.  Let  us  take  a  look  at  this  region  and  examine  briefly  some  of 
the  marks  in  which  Nature  has  written  its  history.  We  find  it  in 
the  main  a  sandy  plain,  wooded  with  white-oak,  beech,  maple,  hem- 
lock, and  pine,  varying  in  the  proportion  which  they  bear  to  one 
another,  and  interspersed  with  other  trees  and  undergrowth  in  all  the 
variety  which  the  prolific  flora  of  that  region  affords.  In  places  the 
land  sinks  so  low  as  to  constitute  a  timbered  swamp,  and  in  others 
it  rises  to  a  moderate  height  above  ground-water  ;  often  it  appears,  as 
indicated  by  the  vegetation  it  bears,  to  be  very  fertile,  but  occasion- 
ally it  is  almost  naked  in  its  barrenness.  Taken  as  a  whole,  it  is  of  a 
lower  degree  of  fertility  than  the  heavier  soils  found  in  the  more  cen- 
tral and  southern  parts  of  the  State,  and  for  this  reason  it  is  less  gen- 
erally under  cultivation  than  it  otherwise  would  be. 

This  plain  is,  however,  interspersed  with  tracts  of  land  of  a  very 
different  character.  These  consist  mostly  of  a  clayey  loam,  contain- 
ing bowlders,  as  the  sandy  levels  generally  do  not,  having  a  more  roll- 
ing and  irregular  surface,  and,  so  far  as  it  has  been  the  writer's  privi- 
lege to  observe  them,  lying  at  a  higher  level  than  the  sandy  plain  by 
which  they  are  surrounded. 

On  scanning  the  map  of  Michigan,  it  will  strike  one  as  a  peculiar 
feature  of  this  west  side  of  the  State,  that  nearly  every  stream,  large 
or  small,  that  flows  into  Lake  Michigan,  expands  into  a  small  lake  near 
its  mouth,  a  fact  that  may  have  given  rise  to  a  query  in  some  as  to 
why  such  a  peculiar  feature  should  exist,  especially  in  a  country  all  of 
whose  features  are  post-glacial — carved,  indeed,  out  of  the  glacial  drift 
or  built  upon  it  everywhere  ;  and  it  is  with  the  hope  to  throw  some 
light  on  this  matter,  as  well  as  other  peculiarities  of  the  region,  that 
this  article  is  written. 

Our  principal  field  of  observation  is  the  country  near  Whitehall, 
Muskegon  County,  Michigan,  where  the  writer  began  to  reside  in  the 
summer  of  1878.  This  village  is  situated  at  the  head  of  White  Lake, 
on  White  River,  which  opens  into  Lake  Michigan  some  six  miles  to  the 
southwest. 

In  this  river-lake  one  may  see  in  many  places  an  old  water-line  on 
piling,  which  at  that  time  was  at  an  elevation  of  three  feet  or  more 
above  the  water.  The  fact  that  this  line  was  continuous  at  a  uniform 
level  on  lines  of  piling  that  were  apparently  undisturbed  rendered  the 
theory  of  uplifting  by  ice  that  was  often  given  in  explanation  of  it 
exceedingly  unsatisfactory  ;  and  when  old  residents  of  the  neighbor- 
hood were  heard  to  speak,  as  they  often  did,  of  schooners  loading  and 
unloading,  a  few  years  before,  in  places  where  there  was  not  at  this 
time  water  enough  to  float  a  raft,  it  left  very  little  room  for  doubt  that 
this  old  water-line  recorded  a  real  change  of  relative  level  between  the 
water  and  the  land. 


828  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

On  passing  along  the  borders  of  the  lake,  however,  another  phe- 
nomenon was  observed  that  seemed  to  contradict  this  hypothesis,  or 
to  indicate  that  the  change  of  level  had  been  the  other  way.  This  was 
the  existence  of  the  stumps  of  large  trees,  evidently  in  the  position 
where  they  had  grown,  but  at  this  time  standing  in  the  water.  And 
again,  a  living  witness  was  found  to  corroborate  the  testimony  of  the 
stumps,  in  the  person  of  an  old  resident  who  tells  of  the  willows  grow- 
ing far  out  on  what  is  now  a  shallow  in  the  lake,  and  forming  a  haunt 
that  the  deer  used  to  frequent  in  the  years  when  this  country  was  first 
settled. 

That  summer  (1878),  a  new  trestle  was  built  across  the  head  of  the 
lake  for  the  Chicago  and  West  Michigan  Railroad.  In  building  it 
piles  were  driven  and  sawed  off  beneath  the  surface  of  the  water  for 
the  bottom  sill  of  each  bent  to  rest  upon,  but  before  the  next  spring 
these  piles  began  to  lift  their  heads  out  of  the  water,  and,  before  the 
summer  of  1879  had  passed,  the  sills  that  rested  on  them  were  lifted 
from  ten  to  fourteen  inches  above  the  water-level.  During  the  sum- 
mer of  1879  an  iron  swing-bridge  was  built  across  the  mouth  of  White 
River,  at  the  head  of  the  lake,  and,  as  a  foundation  for  the  turn-table, 
a  bed  of  piling  was  driven  in  the  center  of  the  channel,  which  was 
sawed  off  at  a  considerable  depth  below  the  surface  of  the  water.  On 
this  piling  a  platform  of  lumber  was  built,  so  that  its  surface,  when 
completed,  was  at  a  depth  of  some  six  inches  below  the  surface  of  the 
water,  and  on  that  a  tower  of  stone-work  was  built  for  the  turn-table 
to  rest  on.  As  the  lake  was  considered  to  be  at  a  low  level  at  this 
time,  it  was  supposed  that  this  platform  would  be  perpetually  un- 
der water  ;  but  the  bridge  was  not  yet  completed  when  it  began 
to  rise  above  the  surface,  and,  by  the  next  spring,  it  was  some  eight 
inches  above  the  water-level.  At  this  point,  however,  the  water 
again  began  to  rise,  and  at  present  this  platform  is  again  under 
water. 

Another  matter  must  now  claim  our  attention,  that  speaks  of  a 
time  somewhat  more  remote  ;  but  first,  perhaps,  it  will  be  as  well  to 
glance  briefly  at  the  immediate  border  of  Lake  Michigan.  Here, 
along  the  border  of  the  low-lying,  sandy  country,  there  is  generally  a 
strip,  varying  from  a  few  rods  to  half  a  mile  or  more  in  width,  on 
which  the  sand  has  been  piled  up  by  the  wind  into  dunes.  Here  the 
surface  of  the  ground  is  fantastically  irregular.  Sharp  crests,  gorges, 
valleys,  and  crater-like  depressions  abound  eveiywhere,  and  the  whole 
is  generally  covered  with  forest  and  filled  in  with  a  rank  undergrowth. 
In  places,  however,  especially  at  the  foot  of  the  river-lakes,  the  sand 
is  yet  without  vegetation,  except  here  and  there,  on  some  sheltered 
slope,  a  few  bunches  of  beach-grass  or  a  stunted  shrub  ;  white  and 
shining,  its  surface  rippled  by  the  wind,  and  traced  at  times  with  the 
strangely  varied  tracks  of  insects,  birds,  small  creatures  from  the 
neighboring  woods,  turtles  from  the  water,  and,  most  numerous  of  all, 


GEOLOGICAL    CHANGES  IN  MICHIGAN.  829 

the  mimic  tracks  made  by  light  objects  that  are  moved  along  by  the 
wind,  such  a  scene  is  in  itself  a  study  for  a  naturalist. 

In  some  places,  Lake  Michigan  is  year  by  year  building  out  the 
land  with  fresh  deposits  of  sand,  but  oftener  it  is  cutting  it  away  with 
every  storm.  A  reach  of  coast,  extending  perhaps  a  mile  and  a  half 
southward  from  the  foot  of  White  Lake,  is  particularly  interesting  to 
one  who  wishes  to  study  the  structure  of  the  country.  Here,  of  late 
years,  the  lake  has  been  eating  away  the  land.  The  bluff  facing  the 
water  is  from  fifty  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  high  ;  sometimes  its 
face  is  covered  from  top  to  bottom  with  earth  that  has  slid  down  so  as 
to  conceal  its  structure,  at  other  times  this  is  all  swept  away  and  the 
strata  are  revealed.  At  such  times  an  old  surface-line  of  vegetable 
mold  may  be  seen  through  the  entire  extent  of  the  section  at  a  height 
of  from  ten  to  twenty  feet  above  the  lake.  Above  this  line  all  is  sand, 
below  it  all  is  a  heavy  solid  earth,  of  which  clay  forms  the  principal 
part.  In  the  depressions  of  this  line,  where  channels  of  drainage  in 
this  ancient  line  of  surface  may  be  supposed  to  be  cut  across,  springs 
flow  out.  In  one  such  depression  there  is  a  bed  of  peat,  marking  the  site 
of  an  ancient  swamp,  and  near  each  edge  of  this  bed  it  is  full  of  timber 
that  has  fallen  into  it  when  a  swamp  and  there  been  preserved.  Some 
of  this  wood  seems  to  be  but  little  changed,  while  other  pieces  have 
almost  the  color  and  texture  of  charcoal.  Here  we  have  found  elm, 
oak,  and  black-ash,  the  species  of  which  might  be  recognized  as  easily 
as  if  just  from  the  forest.  Some  branches  had  been  charred  by  fire, 
and  altogether  the  deposit  is  exactly  what  we  might  expect  to  find  in 
the  edge  of  a  Michigan  swamp  of  the  present  day,  with  the  difference 
that  this  has  been  compacted  and  hardened  by  time  and  pressure  and 
drainage.  The  clay  soil  in  which  this  old  swamp  was  situated  seems 
to  underlie  the  sand  everywhere  in  this  region  at  varying  depths,  but 
on  excavating  to  it  we  do  not  everywhere  find  the  vegetable  mold 
that  here  marks  its  surface.  From  these  facts  the  conviction  has  grown 
that  here  in  Western  Michigan  the  condition  of  things  has  varied  some- 
what like  this  :  First  succeeding  the  introduction  of  the  present  order 
of  things  at  the  close  of  the  last  Glacial  epoch,  the  entire  country  was 
at  an  elevation  above  Lake  Michigan  much  greater  than  at  present, 
great  enough  to  drain  the  bottoms  of  all  these  river-lakes  which,  it 
should  be  noticed,  are  deepest  near  the  great  lake,  and  generally  termi- 
nate in  a  swamp  at  their  head,  and  each  of  which  is  elongated  in  the 
same  general  direction  as  the  valley  the  foot  of  which  it  occupies. 
This  condition  of  things  lasted  until  the  configuration  of  the  land  had 
become  substantially  what  it  is  at  present ;  then  a  subsidence  took 
place,  until  all  the  lower  levels  of  the  country  were  beneath  the  waters 
of  Lake  Michigan.  Again  the  country  began  to  rise,  and  as  the  sub- 
merged lands  were  lifted  above  the  water  they  were  covered  with 
sand,  exactly  as  the  lake  now  deposits  sand  on  a  retreating  coast. 
When  this  uplifting  reached  such  a  degree  that  the  action  of  the 


830  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 

waves  was  disturbed  by  the  bottom  near  the  edge  of  the  deep  water 
marking  the  ancient  boundary  of  the  lake,  sand-bars  would  be  de- 
posited there  as  we  find  them,  and  these  would  stretch  across  the 
mouths  of  the  submerged  river-valleys,  and  on  further  uplifting  they 
would  separate  the  waters  occupying  them  from  those  of  the  great 
lake,  which,  meanwhile,  would  go  on  adding  more  sand  to  them  from 
without.  This  is  the  condition  of  things  existing  at  present.  The 
changes  of  level  that  have  brought  it  about  have  not  been  uniform 
and  constant  ;  they  may  have  consisted  of  a  single  sinking  and  rising, 
but  more  probably  there  were  many.  Even  yet  we  see  that  the  solid- 
seeming  earth  is  sinking  and  swelling  there  in  a  most  capricious  manner. 
It  is  hard  to  tell  to  what  the  present  movements  are  tending  even — 
whether  for  a  long  period  the  land  is  to  remain  substantially  at  its 
present  level,  whether  it  is  to  rise  until  the  river-lakes  are  drained  and 
the  Western  Michigan  lake-ports  are  left  stranded  inland,  or  whether 
the  country  is  to  be  again  submerged.  We  see,  within  the  memory  of 
those  now  living  there,  a  variation  of  level  to  the  extent  of  six  feet  at 
least,  and  in  both  directions.  Forty  years  ago  the  land  seems  to  have 
been  at  a  higher  level  than  it  is  at  present,  and  to  have  continued  so 
long  enough  to  permit  the  growth  of  large  trees  on  land  since  sub- 
merged. Then  there  was  a  subsidence  to  an  extent  of  several  feet, 
then  an  uplift  until  the  waters  were  below  their  present  level,  and  at 
last  accounts  another  subsidence  seemed  to  be  in  progress.  Who  can 
tell  us  its  limits,  either  as  to  time  of  continuance,  rapidity,  or  extent  ? 
What  is  the  nature  of  this  movement  ?  There  are  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  accounting  for  it  that  would  not  exist  if  Lake  Michigan  were 
the  ocean.  A  rising  and  falling  of  the  land  as  a  whole  would  include 
the  bed  of  the  lake,  and  would  not  produce  these  changes  of  relative 
level.  To  lift  the  bed  of  Lake  Michigan,  might  pour  out  a  part  of  its 
contents,  and  so  cause  an  enormous  increase  in  the  volume  of  the  St. 
Clair,  Detroit,  and  St.  Lawrence  Rivers,  with  a  corresponding  diminu- 
tion when  a  subsidence  was  taking  place,  the  rivers  rising  as  the  lake 
was  going  down,  and  falling  as  the  waters  of  the  lake  were  rising ; 
but  this,  we  believe,  has  not  taken  place.  Is  it  a  shrinking  and  swell- 
ing of  the  upper  strata  of  Western  Michigan,  leaving  the  deeper  strata 
in  which  the  bed  of  the  lake  rests  comparatively  undisturbed  ?  Is 
it  a  rocking  of  the  lake-bed  from  side  to  side,  one  part  sinking  as 
another  rises  ?  What  is  the  extent  of  the  country  through  which  these 
movements  are  felt  ?  These  questions,  and  others  relating  to  the  mat- 
ter, would  seem  to  be  of  interest.  Perhaps,  if  the  Government  would 
take  the  subject  in  hand  and  cause  a  record  to  be  kept  of  the  water- 
level  at  all  light-houses  and  life-saving  stations,  a  few  years  might 
throw  light  upon  it. 


SKETCH  OF  AUGUST  WILHELM  HOFMANN,      831 
SKETCH  OF  AUGUST  WILHELM  HOFMAlN'Isr. 

By  EDWAKD  J.  H ALLOC K,  Ph.  D. 

THE  recent  visit  of  this  distinguished  scholar  and  chemist  to  our 
city  is  worthy  of  more  than  a  passing  notice,  and  we  would  com- 
memorate it  in  a  feeble  manner  by  placing  before  our  readers  a  sketch 
and  portrait  of  the  man  who  has  contributed  so  much  to  the  advance- 
ment of  science  and  of  human  progress. 

August  Wilhelm  Hofmann-  was  born  in  Giessen,  April  8,  1818. 
After  completing  the  usual  gymnasium  course,  he  entered  the  Univer- 
sity of  Giessen  at  the  age  of  eighteen.  Having  acquired  a  taste  for 
the  modern  languages  during  his  travels  in  Italy  and  France,  he  at 
first  took  up  the  study  of  philology,  to  which  he  devoted  himself  as- 
siduously for  several  years.  To  this  we  may  undoubtedly  attribute 
much  of  his  power  as  a  writer  and  speaker.  At  this  time  his  father, 
who  was  an  architect,  was  engaged  on  the  plans  for  Liebig's  new  labo- 
ratory, and  thus  young  Hofmann  became  acquainted  with  that  famous 
chemist.  His  influence  turned  the  whole  course  of  Hofmann's  life,  for 
he  at  once  took  up  the  study  of  chemistry,  and  we  next  hear  of  him  as 
the  assistant  of  Liebig.  He  remained  in  this  position  until  the  spring 
of  1845,  when  he  was  appointed  professor  in  Bonn,  but  he  was  not 
destined  to  remain  long  upon  the  Rhine,  for,  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
same  year,  he  was  called  to  London  and  placed  in  charge  of  the  newly 
established  Royal  College  of  Chemistry.  Through  the  exertions  of 
Professor  Hofmann,  and  his  popularity  as  a  lecturer  and  teacher,  this 
school  soon  acquired  such  a  prominence  that,  in  1853,  the  Govern- 
ment united  it  with  the  Royal  School  of  Mines.  It  was  during  this 
time  that  he  made  several  of  those  important  researches  which  have 
resulted  in  discoveries  of  the  greatest  importance.  In  addition  to  his 
other  labors,  he  found  time  to  deliver  courses  of  lectures  to  working- 
men,  which  were  well  attended,  and  to  investigate  various  technical 
and  sanitary  questions  upon  which  his  opinion  was  sought.  His  suc- 
cess in  solving  difiicult  expert  problems  soon  won  for  him  an  influ- 
ential position  in  England.  In  1856  he  was  appointed  Warden  of  the 
English  Mint,  which  position  he  continued  to  hold  until  he  left  Eng- 
land. He  was  made  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  in  1861,  and  ten 
years  later  was  nominated  President  of  the  London  Chemical  Society. 
He  served  on  the  jury  in  the  International  Exhibitions  held  in  Lon- 
don in  1851  and  1862.  Among  the  important  investigations  of  public 
interest  was  a  chemical  examination  of  the  waters  of  London,  and, 
with  Professor  Graham,  an  investigation  of  the  bitter  ales  at  a  time 
when  the  brewers  were  suspected  of  using  strychnine  as  an  adul- 
terant. 


832  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

His  early  philological  studies  enabled  him  rapidly  to  master  the 
intricacies  of  the  English  language,  so  that  he  became  a  "fluent  speaker 
and  a  correct  writer  in  our  tongue.  Several  of  his  works  have  appeared 
in  English  first,  and  subsequently  been  translated  into  German. 

His  reputation  as  one  of  the  most  successful  teachers  of  chemistry 
of  the  present  day  brought  him  many  offers  from  German  govern- 
ments, for  at  that  time  he  stood  almost  alone  as  a  teacher  of  organic 
chemistry  according  to  modern  ideas.  In  1862  he  was  called  to  Bonn, 
where  he  undertook  the  building  of  a  fine  chemical  laboratory,  but  he 
was  not  permitted  to  finish  his  undertaking,  for  in  1863  he  was  ap- 
pointed the  successor  to  Mitscherlich  at  the  Frederick  William  Uni- 
versity in  Berlin. 

His  first  work  in  Berlin  likewise  consisted  in  the  planning,  erecting, 
and  equipping  of  a  new  chemical  laboratory,  which  was  opened  in  1868. 
It  consists  of  a  substantial  brick  edifice,  built  in  the  form  of  a  hollow 
square,  in  the  center  of  which  is  a  large,  airy,  and  well-lighted  lecture- 
room,  capable  of  seating  about  two  hundred  students.  Two  large 
courts,  one  on  each  side  of  the  lecture-room,  afford  abundant  light 
to  the  various  work-rooms,  laboratories,  and  smaller  lecture-rooms. 
The  entire  structure  occupies  a  lot  of  ground  one  hundred  and  forty 
by  one  hundred  and  sixty-five  feet  on  Georgen  Strasse,  with  an  ex- 
tension seventy  feet  wide  running  through  to  the  Dorothean  Strasse. 
On  the  latter  are  the  library  and  residence  of  the  professor.  The  situ- 
ation is  a  central  one,  near  the  principal  station  of  the  elevated  rail- 
road (Stadtbahn),  and  but  five  minutes'  walk  from  the  university 
building  on  Unter  den  Linden. 

Professor  Hofmann's  lectures  are  illustrated  by  very  elaborate  ex- 
periments, and  the  fundamental  laws  of  the  science  are  demonstrated 
by  means  of  apparatus  devised  by  himself  for  this  special  purpose. 
No  other  living  chemist,  Bunsen  perhaps  excepted,  has  invented  so 
many  new  and  useful  forms  of  lecture  apparatus  as  Hofmann.  Besides 
his  earlier  papers  on  this  subject,  a  season  rarely  passes,  even  now, 
without  some  new  contribution  to  this  kind  of  literature  from  his 
fertile  pen.  His  lectures  are  so  interesting,  his  manner  so  animated, 
that  his  lecture-room  is  thronged  with  students  from  all  parts  of  the 
globe. 

Soon  after  his  removal  to  Berlin,  Professor  Hofmann  founded  the 
German  Chemical  Society,  of  which  he  has  several  times  been  presi- 
dent, and  the  growth  of  which  has  been  largely  due  to  his  efforts. 
Although  German  in  name  and  in  language,  it  numbers  among  its 
twenty-seven  hundred  members  persons  of  every  nation  where  chemis- 
try is  cultivated,  and  its  proceedings  are  the  chief  means  of  commu- 
nication between  a  large  portion  of  the  chemists  of  this  and  other 
countries.  The  number  of  original  papers  published  by  it  is  larger 
than  that  of  the  English,  French,  and  American  chemical  societies 
combined. 


SKETCH  OF  AUGUST  WILHELM  H  OEM  ANN,      833 

Although  Hof  mann  excels  as  a  lecturer  and  teacher,  his  reputation 
rests  chiefly  on  his  valuable  and  numerous  contributions  to  the  science 
of  organic  chemistry,  foremost  among  which  are  his  investigations  on 
the  coal-tar  colors. 

He  first  began  the  study  of  the  bases  in  coal-tar  under  the  direction 
of  Liebig,  and  in  1843  we  find  him  publishing  his  first  original  paper 
on  this  subject.  One  of  these  bases,  then  known  as  "cyanol,"  at- 
tracted his  special  attention,  and  by  working  over  half  a  ton  of  coal- 
tar  he  succeeded  in  obtaining  this  rare  base  in  sufficient  quantity  to 
investigate  its  properties,  which  he  found  to  be  the  same  as  those  of 
"benzidam."  Further  investigation  also  enabled  him  to  prove  that 
"  aniline,"  the  name  then  given  to  a  substance  that  had  only  been  ob- 
tained from  indigo  by  distillation,  was  identical  with  both  cyanol  and 
benzidam.  Here,  then,  were  three  sources  for  obtaining  this  rare  ma- 
terial. Evidently  there  could  not  be  much  of  it  in  coal-tar,  when  only 
three  pounds  could  be  separated  from  half  a  ton  of  tar ;  indigo,  too, 
was  an  expensive  source  ;  hence  it  was  a  fortunate  circumstance  that 
Zinin  had  discovered  another  method  of  making  it,  and  that  too  from 
a  far  more  abundant  constituent  of  coal-tar,  namely,  benzol ;  it  is  from 
that  all  the  aniline  of  the  present  day  is  prepared. 

Hofmann,  it  is  said,  noticed  that  aniline  gave  rise,  under  certain 
conditions,  to  the  production  of  a  red  color,  but  he  failed  to  publish 
the  fact,  and  to  Perkin  belongs  the  credit  of  having  discovered  the 
first  aniline  dye — mauvine.  This  took  place  in  1856,  and  two  years 
later  Hofmann  discovered  a  red  dye,  then  called  Hofmann's  red,  which 
was  formed  by  the  action  of  chloride  of  carbon  upon  aniline.  Aniline 
was  beginning  to  attract  the  attention  of  manufacturers  as  well  as  of 
chemists,  and  many  different  methods  were  devised  for  making  what 
seemed  to  be  the  same  substance,  a  fine  red  dye  variously  known  as 
magenta,  solferino,  fuchsine,  and  aniline  red.  Hofmann  undertook  a 
careful  investigation  of  the  dye,  which  resulted  in  his  discovery  of  the 
surprising  fact  that  the  red  dye  was  in  reality  the  salt  of  an  organic 
base,  like  an  alkaloid,  and  that  this  base,  to  which  he  gave  the  name  of 
"  rosaniline,"  was  colorless.  From  this  base  he  prepared  another  which 
he  called  "  leucaniline  "  by  reducing  it  with  zinc.  Turning  his  atten- 
tion to  the  blues,  greens,  and  purples,  he  found  them  to  be  derivatives 
from  this  same  base,  but  of  more  complex  construction.  The  impor- 
tance of  these  investigations  can  scarcely  be  overestimated.  The  pro- 
duction of  dyes  from  aniline  was  no  longer  a  matter  of  blind  experi- 
mentation ;  empirical  methods  gave  place  to  scientific  ones,  and  the 
process  of  making  dyes  has  gone  on  to  the  present  day  nearly  in  the 
same  direction.  One  of  the  earliest  practical  results  of  this  discovery 
was  the  invention  of  a  series  of  most  beautiful  purples  which  still 
bear  the  name  of  Hofmann.  Like  Leverrier's  discovery  of  Neptune, 
their  elements  had  been  calculated  beforehand,  their  existence  fore- 
told, and  they  needed  only  to  be  made. 
VOL.  XXIV. — 53 


834  THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 

Before  taking  up  the  investigation  of  the  aniline  dyes,  Hofmann 
had  been  engaged  in  a  line  of  research,  which,  though  apparently  of 
mere  theoretical  interest,  had  especially  fitted  him  for  this  work, 
namely,  the  study  of  organic  ammonias,  or  amines.  In  1849-'50  Hof- 
mann made  the  discovery  that  when  ammonia  was  acted  upon  by 
certain  alcoholic  iodides,  such  as  methyl  iodide,  one,  two,  or  three  of 
the  hydrogen-atoms  of  the  ammonia  could  be  replaced  by  the  alco- 
holic radical.  In  this  way  he  prepared  trimethylamine,  a  substance 
which  he  subsequently  found  to  exist  ready  formed  in  herring-pickle, 
and  from  which  it  is  still  obtained  for  medicinal  purposes.  For  his 
investigations  on  the  molecular  constitution  of  the  organic  bases,  he 
was  awarded  the  Royal  Medal  in  1854,  and  in  1867  he  received  the 
great  prize  of  the  World's  Fair  at  Paris. 

Engaged  in  studies  of  this  sort,  the  resemblances  between  aniline 
oil  and  ordinary  ammonia,  and  more  especially  between  their  respective 
salts,  could  not  escape  his  notice.  Each  contains  one  atom  of  nitro- 
gen ;  the  substitution  of  a  certain  group  of  atoms  known  as  the  phe- 
nyl group  for  one  of  hydrogen  will  convert  ammonia  into  aniline. 
In  the  more  complex  molecule  of  rosaniline,  with  its  three  atoms  of 
nitrogen,  he  naturally  sought  for  a  triple  ammonia,  but  he  found  the 
phenyl  group  alone  incompetent  to  form  this  base,  which  led  to  his 
discovery  of  the  very  important  fact  that  no  dyes  can  be  made  from 
pure  aniline,  an  admixture  of  its  homologue,  toluidine,  being  essential 
to  the  production  of  the  rosaniline  and  its  derivatives. 

Organic  bases,  containing  other  elements  than  nitrogen,  have  also 
attracted  his  attention,  and  through  his  labors  much  has  been  added 
to  our  knowledge  of  the  "  phosphines,"  phosphonium,  etc. 

Another  class  of  subjects,  to  which  Hofmann  has  devoted  much 
attention,  includes  the  mustard-oils,  both  natural  and  artificial,  and 
the  sulpho-cyanides  of  organic  bodies.  These  researches  have  resulted 
in  the  artificial  production  or  synthesis  of  many  pungent  oils  and 
ethers.  He  has  also  fearlessly  attacked  the  cyanides  themselves,  and 
succeeded  in  producing  some  new  organic  compounds  that  fairly  rival 
Bunsen's  well-known  cacodyle  in  their  repulsive  odors. 

Among  the  analytical  processes  introduced  by  Dr.  Hofmann  are 
several  of  importance,  including  the  separations  of  arsenic  from  anti- 
mony, and  of  copper  from  cadmium,  and  the  detection  and  estimation 
of  carbon  disulphide.  Hofmann's  method  of  determining  the  specific 
gravity  of  vaj^ors  is  as  remarkable  for  its  simplicity  as  for  its  accu- 
racy. 

Although  a  fertile  writer.  Professor  Hofmann  is  not  given  to  writing 
books.  He  has,  however,  contributed  a  great  many  original  papers  to 
various  chemical  journals,  of  which  the  "  Journal  of  the  London  Chem- 
ical Society  "  contains  more  than  ninety,  and  nearly  two  hundred  more 
are  to  be  found  in  the  "  Berichte  "  of  the  Berlin  Chemical  Society. 
He  was  for  a  time  one  of  the  editors  of  Fowne's  "  Manual  of  Chemis- 


SKETCH  OF  AUGUST  WILHELM  H  OEM  ANN.      835 

try,"  and  since  1874  has  also  been  one  of  the  editors  of  the  "  Annalen 
der  Chemie  und  Pharmacie,"  established  by  Liebig. 

A  portion  of  the  course  of  lectures  upon  inorganic  chemistry, 
which  he  had  delivered  so  acceptably  before  the  Royal  College  of 
Chemistry  in  London,  was  published  in  book  form  in  1866,  under  the 
title  of  "  Lectures  on  Chemistry."  It  was  soon  after  translated  into 
German,  and  has  passed  through  several  editions  under  the  more  appro- 
priate title  of  an  "  Introduction  to  Modern  Chemistry."  We  know 
of  no  other  book  in  any  language  on  this  trite  subject  that  exhibits 
so  much  originality  of  treatment,  or  that  is  more  pleasing  in  style, 
convincing  in  its  demonstrations,  and  logical  in  method.  Taken 
in  connection  with  the  ingenious  apparatus  therein  described,  it 
has  had  avery  beneficial  effect  upon  the  methods  of  teaching  chem- 
istry. 

The  substance  of  his  lectures  upon  organic  chemistry  was  published 
in  1872  by  one  of  his  former  assistants,  Dr.  A.  Pinner,  and  during  the 
past  year  it  has  been  translated  into  English  by  Professor  P.  T.  Aus- 
ten, one  of  his  American  pupils. 

Hofmann's  "  Life-Work  of  Liebig  "  is  a  worthy  monument  to  the 
great  chemist ;  while  his  biography  of  the  great  French  chemist,  Jean 
Baptiste  Andre  Dumas,  in  the  "  Nature  "  series  of  scientific  worthies, 
is  a  charming  specimen  of  English  composition.  His  memorials  of 
deceased  scientists  are  worthy  of  more  than  passing  mention.  Among 
those  whose  memories  have  been  perpetuated  by  his  pen  are  Thomas 
Graham,  Gustav  Magnus,  and  last  of  all  Friedrich  Wohler. 

Several  of  his  addresses  delivered  upon  special  occasions  have  been 
published,  among  which  are  two  academical  orations  delivered  recently 
in  Berlin,  which  have  appeared  under  the  title  of  "  Cheraische  Erinne- 
rungen  aus  der  Berliner  Vergangenheit."  His  inaugural  address  upon 
assuming  the  rectorship  of  the  Berlin  University  has  provoked  some 
discussion,  owing  to  the  position  taken  in  regard  to  classical  studies, 
and  has  already  been  referred  to  in  our  pages.  His  largest  and  most 
important  work  is  his  "  Report  on  the  Development  of  Chemical  In- 
dustries," which  first  appeared  in  1875-'76. 


836 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


CORRESPONDENCE 


OLD  STUMP-WELLS  IN  THE  MISSISSIPPI 
''BOTTOM." 

Messrs.  Editors : 

IT  is  a  fact  well  known  to  all  who  have 
made  any  study  of  the  "  Bottom,"  or 
alluvial  plain,  formed  during  the  lapse  of 
ages  by  the  great  Mississippi  River,  that 
the  river  channel,  or  bed,  is  forever  shift- 
ing, and  in  its  mighty  contortions  it  has 
moved  laterally  eastward  and  westward  over 
vast  spaces.  Many  of  the  abandoned  chan- 
nels ai-e  now  curved  lakes,  with  no  con- 
nection with  the  river ;  others,  connected 
with  it  more  or  less  during  floods,  are  called 
"  old  rivers."  So  thoroughly  the  river  does 
its  work  in  forming  the  land  that,  besides 
these  crescent-shaped  lakes  and  old  rivers, 
there  is  little  in  view  to  indicate  where 
the  bed  of  the  river  lay  one  hundred  or 
one  thousand  years  ago.  When  the  river 
changes  its  channel,  by  suddenly  or  grad- 
ually cutting  through  a  point  of  land,  or 
when  one  chute  of  an  island  is  closed  by  a 
bar,  a  lake  or  an  old  river  is  formed ;  but, 
when  the  river  shifts  its  position,  by  con- 
tinued abrasion  on  one  side,  and  by  corre- 
sponding deposit  of  sediment  on  the  other, 
the  latter  slowly  but  steadily  rises  to  the 
average  height  of  the  neighboring  land,  and 
in  a  few  years  is  covered  by  a  heavy  forest- 
growth,  and  there  is  no  visible  sign  left  to 
show  that  it  has  not  been  thus  since  the 
creation,  or  at  least  since  the  Gulf  of  Mcx- 
ico  deserted  that  particular  point  on  its  ever- 
lasting retreat  southward. 

The  tract  of  land  on  which  I  reside,  and 
which  I  have  owned  for  more  than  forty 
years,  was  washed,  up  to  about  the  year 
1855,  by  the  main  body  of  the  Mississippi 
River,  swinging  around  the  western  side  of 
a  plano-convex-shaped  island ;  at  that  pe- 
riod three  fourths  of  all  the  water  of  the 
river  passed  my  door,  but  about  that  time, 
the  exact  year  I  do  not  remember,  the  chan- 
nel began  to  change,  and  in  a  very  few 
years  the  main  body  of  water  was,  and  has 
since  then  been,  running  down  the  piano 
and  eastward  side  of  the  island,  and  the 
head  of  the  western  chute  is  largely  ob- 
structed by  bars.  Whether  the  bars  formed 
first,  and  forced  the  channel  eastward,  or 
whether  the  change  of  the  channel  caused 
the  bars  to  form,  has  not,  so  far  as  I  know, 
been  satisfactorily  answered.  At  all  events, 
my  land  now  lies  on  an  "old  river,"  which 
is  never  entirely  dry,  although  often  very 
nearly  so,  and  the  growing  obstructions 
threaten  to  cut  me  off,  at  no  distant  day, 
from  outside  communication,  at  least  by 
water,  except  at  very  high  stages.     I  will 


add,  in  passing,  that  it  is  in  contemplation 
by  the  National  River  Improvement  Com- 
mission (which  is  spending  millions  in  the 
interest  of  navigation,  with  no  especial 
thought  as  to  riparian  interests)  to  hurry 
up  this  consummation  by  piling,  willow-mat- 
tressing,  etc.,  so  as  to  force  the  entire  body 
of  water,  even  in  its  highest  stages,  through 
the  eastern  or  shorter  chute. 

In  addition  to  being  located  on  an  "  old 
river,"  my  land  lies,  as  I  believe,  just  where 
a  river-formed  lake  existed  at  a  remote  pe- 
riod, but  which  has  in  process  of  time,  long 
before  memory  goes,  been  filled  up  by  de- 
posits from  overflows,  until  now  it  is  some- 
what higher  than  the  general  level  of  the 
neighboring  sections,  and  I  will  give  my 
reasons  for  so  thinking  as  briefly  as  I  can. 
At  certain  periods  of  the  year,  as  there  are 
no  small  running  streams  in  this  section, 
cattle  suffer  from  thirst,  although  the  great 
river  runs  by  our  doors,  for  then  the  stream 
is  low,  and  the  banks  are  either  precipitous, 
or,  when  sloping,  terminate  in  a  quicksand, 
in  which  many  uncared-for  cattle  are  lost 
every  year ;  hence  the  necessity  for  abundant 
wells  and  cisterns. 

Seeing  some  water  standing  in  an  old, 
hollow  cypress-stump,  about  four  fee  tin  diam- 
eter, the  surface  of  which  water  was  at  least 
fifteen  feet  above  the  surface  of  the  river  at 
the  time,  I  was  curious  enough  to  investigate 
the  matter.  An  outside  rim  of  the  stump, 
about  four  inches  in  thickness,  remained 
sound,  but  the  interior  portion  (all  except  a 
hollow  of  about  a  foot  in  diameter,  down 
which  I  had  observed  the  water)  was  com- 
posed of  dry-rotted  wood,  still  clinging  close- 
ly in  place.  I  had  the  rotted  portion  taken 
out  down  to  the  surface  of  the  water,  and 
the  water  pumped  out,  finding  the  reservoir 
to  extend  down  sixteen  feet.  In  about  six 
hours  the  water  had  returned  to  its  former 
level.  Pumping  it  out  again,  I  had  the  rot- 
ten wood  removed ;  this  was  done  with  very 
little  trouble.  With  a  little  more  digging, 
and  removing  the  old  wood,  which  had  pre- 
viously fallen  to  the  bottom,  I  discovered 
where  the  main  roots  of  the  tree  started  at 
a  distance  of  about  seventeen  feet  below  the 
surface  of  the  ground,  plainly  showing  that, 
when  the  tree  first  sprang  from  the  seed,  the 
surface  of  the  ground  was  many  feet  lower 
than  at  present.  After  thoroughly  clean- 
ing out  the  well,  I  permitted  the  water  again 
to  rise,  and  found  it  cool  and  wholesome, 
with  a  slightly  brackish  taste,  but  not  at  all 
offensive. 

Subsequent  investigation  showed  me  that 
every  hollow  cypress-stump  (and  there  are  a 


CORRESPONDENCE, 


^Z7 


large  number  of  them)  on  my  place  is  a  nat- 
ural well,  but  varying  in  depth,  proving  that 
the  ground  on  which  these  trees  sprouted 
was  not  level,  or  at  least  that  the  level  was 
changed  from  time  to  time.  I  have  one  of 
these  wells  in  my  stable-yard  ;  it  is  about 
four  feet  in  diameter  and  nine  feet  in  depth. 
I  cut  the  stump  off  level  with  the  ground, 
floored  it  over,  and  placed  a  pump  in  it,  and 
in  the  driest  seasons  it  furnishes  abundant 
water  for  my  stock.  I  have  about  fifteen 
dug  wells  on  my  place,  all  within  the  space 
of  two  square  miles ;  the  depth  of  the  water- 
surface  in  these  varies  from  eight  to  fifteen 
feet.  A  large  curbed  well  stands  in  my  gin- 
house,  within  twenty  feet  of  the  bank  of  the 
river,  and  to-day  the  water  stands  in  this 
well  at  least  fifteen  above  the  surface  of  the 
stream,  and  is  in  no  manner  affected  by  its 
rise  or  fall.  It  would  not  be  difficult  to 
form  a  reasonable  theory  to  account  for  the 
deeply-rooted  cypresses,  but  the  formation 
and  existence  of  the  wells  require  the  pre- 
sumption of  an  enormous  deposit  of  clay, 
and  to  account  for  the  presence  of  the  lat- 
ter is  the  difficulty.  The  Mississippi  brings 
down  in  suspension  a  comparatively  small 
portion  of  argillaceous  material,  but  it  is 
certainly  here  in  a  solid  stratum,  and  it 
came  at  a  period  subsequent  to  the  sprout- 
ing of  the  old  cypress-trees,  for  it  is  highly 
improbable  that  a  tree  should  send  down  a 
tap-root  eighteen  feet,  and  then  spread  out 
its  lateral  supports.  The  cypresses,  forty 
years  old,  make  no  such  indications,  but 
have  their  radical  processes  corresponding 
with  those  of  the  other  trees  of  the  forest. 
Jamks  B.  Craighead. 

NODENA,  ARKAN8AS,  AuQUSt  1,  1S83. 


WORK  OF  SHOD  AND  UNSHOD  HORSES. 

Messrs.  Editors  : 

In  the  February  number  of  your  maga- 
zine appears  an  article,  by  Arthur  F.  Ast- 
ley,  on  the  "  Working  Capacity  of  Unshod 
Horses,"  in  which  the  writer  states,  "/;* 
Neio  Mexico^  horses  are  ridden  barefoot  fort ij 
miles  day  after  day  ^  and  perhaps  twenty  miles 
of  this  10 ill  be  over  a  rough  mountain-track.'''' 
Now,  I  have  served  with  my  regiment  in  New 
Mexico  for  several  years,  most  of  the  time 
as  post-quartermaster,  having  large  numbers 
of  both  horses  and  mules  under  my  charge. 
While  it  is  true  that  most  horses  are  ridden 
unshod  by  the  natives  in  the  valleys,  where 
the  roads  are  sandy  and  soft,  it  should  be 
borne  in  mind  that  even  there  the  majority 
do  so  simply  because  they  are  too  poor  to 
have  their  horses  shod  ;  but,  when  it  comes 
to  traveling  over  rough  mountain-tracks,  the 
writer's  statement  is  simply  absurd.  The 
Indians  (Apaches)  understand  the  inability 
of  unshod  horses  to  travel  over  mountain- 
trails  so  well,  that  they  cover  their  horses' 
feet  with  raw-hide  bags,  and,  when  the  latter 


wear  out,  the  horses  soon  become  disabled, 
and  I  have  frequently  found  Indian  horses 
abandoned  on  the  trail,  with  their  hoofs 
bleeding  and  worn,  and  the  poor  animals  in 
a  most  pitiful  plight.  Again,  when  Indians 
are  enlisted  as  scouts,  they  furnish  their  own 
mount,  and,  when  reaching  the  post,  they 
always  request  to  have  their  horses  shod. 
There  can  be  no  question  that  a  properly- 
shod  horse  has  a  superior  working  capacity, 
but  I  confess  that  most  shoeing,  from  the 
ignorance  of  the  average  farrier,  is  simply  a 
process  of  torture  and  violation  of  nature, 
and  crippled  horses  are  the  result.  Most 
farriers  place  the  horse  upon  an  iron  tripod, 
the  weight  of  the  animal  resting  entirely 
upon  three  points  of  the  foot,  and  those  not 
the  parts  intended  to  bear  the  shock  of 
travel,  or  to  sustain  his  weight.  The  posi- 
tion of  the  frog  becomes  one  of  hopeless 
inaction,  and  the  motion  of  the  unsupported 
bones  within  the  hoof  produces  inflamma- 
tion at  the  points  of  extreme  pressure.  But 
I  did  not  intend  to  write  an  essay  on  horse- 
shoeing. 

Respectfully,  yours, 

Theodore  Smith, 
Lieutenant,  United  States  Army. 
"WAsmNGTON,  D.  0.,  February  17, 1SS4. 


AMERICAN  LOESS-DEPOSITS. 
Messrs.  Editors  : 

I  HAVE  just  read  Mr.  D.  W.  Williams's 
interesting  article  in  your  December  issue 
on  "  The  Loess-Deposits  of  Northern  China," 
and  am  rather  surprised  to  find  no  allusion 
therein,  by  way  of  comparison  or  otherwise, 
to  the  very  extensive  loess-deposits  of  the 
United  States — especially,  since  it  was  here, 
in  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi,  that  this 
peculiar  soil  was  first  studied  and  named 
loess  by  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  during  his  second 
visit  to  the  United  States  in  1846. 

Mr.  Williams  speaks  of  the  loess-beds 
of  China  as  among  the  most  remarkable 
and  important  geological  phenomena  hith- 
erto brought  to  light  in  Middle  Asia,  and 
says  "  the  term  loess  has  been  used  to  des- 
ignate a  tertiary  deposit  appearing  in  the 
Rhine  Valley,  along  the  Danube,  and  in 
several  isolated  sections  of  Europe,"  etc. 
But  the  loess-beds  of  Nebraska,  alone,  ex- 
ceed in  extent  of  area  those  of  all  Europe 
combined  ;  and  their  aggregate  extent  with- 
in the  States  of  Nebraska  and  Minnesota 
and  the  Territory  of  Dakota  falls  but  little, 
if  any,  below  that  of  the  loess-beds  proper 
of  Northern  China.  It  is  believed  that  the 
total  extent  in  square  miles  of  this  deposit 
within  the'  States  and  Territories  drained  by 
the  Jlissouri  and  Mississippi  Rivers  exceeds 
that  within  the  Chinese  provinces  drained 
by  the  Yellow,  the  Wei,  and  the  northern 
tributaries  of  the  Yangtse. 

Mr.  Williams  does  not  give  any  analyses 


838 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


of  the  Chinese  loess,  but  it  appears  to  be 
not  essentially  unlike  that  of  the  Rhine, 
which,  as  analyzed  by  Bischoff,  contains  a 
larger  proportion  of  alumina  than  the  sam- 
ples hitherto  analyzed  from  Nebraska.  Bis- 
choff found  in  four  analyses  of  Rhine  loess  : 


Silicic  acid 

Alamina 

Peroxide  of  iron 

Lime 

Magnesia 

Potash 

Soda 

Carbonate  of  lime.. 
Carbonate  of  mag- 
nesia   

Loss  by  ignition. . . . 


KUUBEB  OP  ANALYSIS. 


1. 


58-97 
9-97 
4-25 
0-02 
0-04 
Oil 
0-84 

20-16 

4-21 
1-37 


78-61 
j- 16-26 

6-09 
j-  8-31 


62-43 
J  7-51 
t5-14 

6-2i 

1-75 

11-63 

8-02 
2-31 


Dr.  Hayden,  in  his  "Final  Report  on 
the  Geology  of  Nebraska,"  gives,  on  page 
12,  two  analyses  of  the  loess  from  Hanni- 
bal, Missouri,  made  by  Dr.  Lytton,  as  fol- 
lows :  in  one  hundred  parts,  there  were  of — 


No.l, 

No.  2. 

Silica  

76-98 
11-54 
8-87 
1-68 
imdetermin'd 
2-01 

77-02 

Alumina  and  peroxide  of  iron  . . . 

12-10 
8-25 

1-63 

Carbonic  acid 

2-a3 

Water 

2-43 

Total     

96-17 

99-26 

Dr.  Aughey,  in  his  "  Report  on  the 
Superficial  Deposits  of  Nebraska "  (United 
States  Geological  Survey,  1874),  gives  the 
analyses  of  five  samples  of  the  Nebraska 
loess  taken  from  widely-separated  sections, 
showing  the  wonderful  homogeneity  of  the 
deposit  over  the  large  area  which  it  covers 
in  that  State — estimated  at  not  less  than 
fifty-eight  thousand  square  miles.  His  anal- 
yses are  as  follows : 


Insoluble  (sill 
ceous)  matter 

Ferric  oxide  . . . 

Alumina 

Lime,  carbonate 

Lime.phosph'te 

Magnesia,  car- 
bonate   

Potassa 

Soda 

Organic  matter. 

Moisture 

Loss  in  analysis 


N0.I 


81-82 

8-86 

■75 

6-07 

8-58 

1-29 

•27 

•15 

107 

1-09 

•59 


No.  2.  No.  8. 


81-83 
8-87 
-75 
6-06 
8-59 

1  23 

-29 

•16! 

1-06 

1-08 

-54 


No.  4.  No.  5. 


81-85    81-30    81-32 


-74! 
6-03 
3-58 

1-81 

-85 

-14 

1-05 

1-09 

-63 


3-85 

-73 

6-05 

3-57 

1-31 
-34 
•16 

l-0(>i 
1-OS' 

-55! 


8-86 

-74 

6- 09 

3-59 

1-29 

•82 

-16 

106 

1-09 

•47 


Total 100-00  100-00  100-00  100-00  100-00 


It  will  be  seen  from  these  several  anal- 
yses that  the  loess  of  the  Rhine  and  that 
of  the  Republican  and  the  upper  and  lower 
Missouri  are  not  chemically  dissimilar.  The 
latter  is  thoroughly  homogeneous  and  of 
uniform  color  from  whatever  depth  taken. 


Dr.  Aughey  says :  "  I  have  compared  many 
specimens  taken  three  hundred  miles  apart, 
and  from  the  top  and  bottom  of  the  de- 
posits, and  no  difference  could  be  detected 
by  the  eye,  or  by  chemical  analysis.  Over 
eighty  per  cent  of  this  deposit  is  finely- 
comminuted  silica.  ...  So  fine,  indeed,  are 
the  particles  of  silica  that  its  true  character 
can  alone  be  detected  by  analysis  or  under 
the  microscope."  The  tendency,  noted  by 
Mr.  Williams,  in  the  Chinese  loess  to  crys- 
tallize spontaneously,  and  form  the  cylin- 
drical and  spherical  concretions  which  the 
Chinese  call  "ginger-stones,''  is  also  no- 
ticeable over  all  the  loess-regions  of  the 
West.  Wherever  the  sod  is  broken  or  the 
earth  freshly  disturbed  from  any  cause, 
whether  by  the  plow,  or  "prairie-dogs," 
these  "  ginger-stones "  literally  cover  the 
ground.  This  feature  is  presumably  due  to 
the  richness  of  the  soil  in  the  phosphates 
j  and  carbonates  of  lime,  which  constitute 
about  one  tenth  of  the  entire  mass. 

In  their  structural  as  well  as  chemical 
characteristics  our  Western  loess-beds  seem 
to  be  identical  with  those  of  China.  They 
present,  also,  the  same  striking  peculiari- 
ties of  landscape-contour,  erosion-products, 
and  surpassing  fertility,  so  well  described 
by  Mr.  Williams.  The  unique  and  often 
exceedingly  fantastic  forms  assumed  by  the 
loess-bluffs  wherever  they  have  been  sub- 
ject to  erosion,  as  along  the  Missouri  and 
lower  Platte,  have  long  excited  the  curiosity 
of  tourists.  Indeed,  so  quaint  and  striking 
are  many  of  these  natural  carvings — now 
stately  and  now  grotesque — that  it  is  not 
easy  on  first  acquaintance  to  accept  them 
as  the  products  of  natural  causes  merely, 
and  not  rather  as  the  gigantic  labors  of 
past  generations.  In  point  of  architectural 
adaptability,  too,  these  Nebraska  bluffs  are 
the  fellows  of  their  Chinese  congeners,  and 
fulfill  the  same  generous  function  of  afford- 
ing cheap  and  healthful  domiciles  to  whom- 
soever will  carve  out  their  homes  in  them. 
Many  are  the  happy  and  well-to  do  families, 
scattered  over  these  fertile  regions — espe- 
cially in  Nebraska,  Dakota,  and  Southwest- 
ern Minnesota — who  have  known  no  other 
home  since  "  coming  West "  than  the 
smoothly-hewed  walls  of  the  facile  loess. 
Nor,  for  ends  of  comfort,  cleanliness,  or 
health,  do  they  need  to  seek  better  homes 
— only  at  the  behest  of  taste  or  fashion ; 
though,  as  wealth  increases,  the  American 
squatter,  unlike  the  Mongolian,  soon  builds 
for  himself  a  more  pretentious  dwelling,  and 
converts  his  old  home  into  a  stable  or  pig- 
gery. I  have  sometimes  had  occasion  to 
seek  shelter  from  a  storm  in  one  of  these 
"  dug-outs,"  and  in  traveling  have  often 
spent  a  night  in  them,  and  can  testify  as  to 
the  excellent  quarters  they  afford  for  both 
man  and  boast.  Like  the  "  adobe  "  houses 
of  the  Mexicans  and  Pueblo  Indians,  they 


EDITOR'S    TABLE, 


839 


are  cool  in  summer  and  warm  in  winter, 
but  are  superior  to  "adobe"  dwellings  in 
point  of  dryness  and  cleanliness.  This  su- 
periority is  due  to  the  fact  that  wherever 
the  soil  is  smoothly  cut  the  slight  chemical 
union,  which  speedily  takes  place  under  the 
influence  of  the  atmosphere  between  the 
silica  and  the  carbonate  of  lime,  coats  the 
surface  as  if  with  a  light  washing  of  cement, 
and  so  prevents  crumbling.  One  may  note 
spade-marks  as  clean-cut  and  fresh-looking 
as  if  newly  made  on  the  walls  or  ceiling  of 
"dug-outs"  that  have  been  occupied  for 
years.  When  the  threatened  (?)  "Mongo- 
lian invasion  "  comes,  what  hosts  of  happy 
Celestials  will  find  here  congenial  homes  ! 
And  if,  for  their  better  contentment,  they 
rechristcn  the  .Missouri  the  Yellow  lliver,  it 
will  be  no  serious  misnomer. 

In  point  of  fertility  our  Western  loess- 
beds  are  the  counterpart  of  those  described 
by  Mr.  Williams,  except  that  they  do  not 
seem  to  suffer  equally  in  seasons  of  drought. 
The  greater  depth  of  the  Nebraska  deposits 
— exceeding  in  many  places  tw^o  hundred 
feet — and,  possibly,  their  more  perfect  cap- 
illary structure,  may  explain  this  difference. 

As  to  the  origin  of  the  loess-beds  of  the 
United  States,  the  belief  of  Drs.  Hayden, 
Aughey,  and  others  that  they  are  lacustrine 
deposits  has  been  hitherto  accepted.  But 
it  is  curious  to  note  how  many  of  their 
peculiar  characteristics  are  explained,  and 
their  general  features  harmonized  with  the 
geological  and  meteorological  phenomena 
of  the  great  region  lying  between  them  and 
the  summit  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  by  the 
hypothesis  that  they  are  subaerial  rather 
than  subaqueous  deposits.  Nearly  all  the 
arguments  adduced  by  Baron  von  Richtho- 
fen  in  support  of  his  theory  of  the  origin 
of  the  loess-beds  of  Asia  may  be  adduced 
with  equal  force,  mutatis  mutandis,  in  sup- 
port of  a  like  theory  here.  Of  more  than 
one  hundred  and  twenty  species  of  shells 
found  and  identified  in  the  loess-deposits  of 
Nebraska,  as  given  by  Dr.  Aughey  on  pages 
267  and  268  of  "  United  States  Geological 


Report"  for  1 874,  it  will  be  seen  that  a 
large  proportion  are  land-shells.  And  it 
appears  from  the  same  "  Report "  that,  while 
the  deposits  are  rich  in  the  remains  of  land- 
animals,  no  considerable  number  of  aquatic 
species  have  ever  been  identified. 

Dr.  Aughey  says,  page  254  :  "  Occasion- 
ally I  have  found  the  teeth  and  a  stray  bone 
of  a  fish,  but  have  not  been  able  to  identify 
any  species.  The  remains  of  rabbits,  go- 
phers, otters,  beavers,  squirrels,  deer,  elk, 
and  buffalo  are  frequently  found.  Through 
the  entire  extent  of  these  deposits  are  many 
remains  of  mastodons  and  elephants."  To 
one  who  has  ever  encountered  a  dust-storm 
on  the  great  plains  west  of  these  deposits, 
when  the  landscape  to  either  horizon  is  ob- 
scured with  flying  clouds  of  powdery  dust, 
like  drifting  fog,  and  has  noted  the  almost 
continuous  belt  of  sand-hills  extending  from 
Western  Kansas  through  Eastern  Colorado 
and  Wyoming  and  Western  Nebraska,  evi- 
dently formed  by  these  high  winds,  whose 
prevailing  direction  is  always  eastward,  and 
marking  the  deposit  of  the  heavier  particles 
dropped  from  the  flying  mass  of  dust-freight 
which  they  had  gathered  in  their  fury  from 
the  arid  foot-hills  and  high  plains  still  far- 
ther westward,  the  theory  of  Von  Richtho- 
fen  commends  itself  with  peculiar  force. 
And  if  a  period  of  still  greater  aridity  be 
conceived  of,  before  these  high  regions,  the 
American  analogues  of  the  Asiatic  steppes, 
had  received  their  present  scant  protection 
of  stunted  grasses,  the  conviction  arises 
that,  even  assuming  the  volume  and  velo- 
city of  the  wind  to  have  been  no  greater 
then  than  now,  its  prevailing  direction  being 
the  same,  our  loess-deposits  of  the  North- 
west, like  those  of  China,  may  be  accounted 
for,  both  as  to  their  origin  and  chief  pecul- 
iarities, by  reference  to  known  causes  still 
existing,  whose  action  has  been,  indeed, 
greatly  modified  but  not  wholly  suspended ; 
and  without  recourse,  necessarily,  to  the  la- 
custrine hypothesis. 

William  T.  IIolt. 

Denvee,  Colorado,  January  4, 1884. 


EDITOR'S    TABLE. 


THE  EDINBUROn  REVIEW  ON   THE 
SPENCEEIAIf  PHILOSOPHY. 

THERE  is  obviously  a  decline  in  the 
influence  of  malign  criticism  in  re- 
cent times.  Even  the  savage  "  quarterly 
reviewer  "  has  lost  many  of  the  terrors 
with  which  he  used  to  be  invested.  An 
excellent  example  of  this  is  afforded  by 
the  history  of  Spencer's  "  Synthetic  Phi- 


losophy." It  has  been  tempting  game 
for  the  critical  sports,  and  they  have 
pursued  it  unweariedly.  It  had  but 
few  friends  and  multitudes  of  enemies. 
A  new  departure  in  philosophy,  it  in- 
curred the  hostility  of  the  devotees  of 
all  old  philosophies.  Dealing  with  the 
larger  aspects  of  science,  it  kindled  the 
jealousy  of  narrow-minded  scientific 


840 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


specialists.  Antagonizing  establislied 
political  opinion  and  cherished  religious 
beliefs,  it  provoked  the  wrath  of  all 
who  rest  contented  in  tradition.  Ap- 
pearing in  successive  parts  and  volumes 
for  twenty-five  years,  it  was  constantly 
before  the  public,  and  has  been  all  that 
time  subject  to  a  degree  of  abuse,  ridi- 
cule, and  detraction,  which  is  quite  with- 
out parallel  in  the  past  history  of  such 
enterprises. 

And  yet  during  all  that  time  Spen- 
cer's system  of  thought  has  increased 
in  recognition,  appreciation,  and  power 
over  the  mind  of  the  age.  Its  doc- 
trines permeate  our  serious  literature, 
as  is  widely  shown  by  the  periodicals ; 
many  books  are  written  for  and  against 
them ;  and  their  author  stands  to-day 
the  representative  man  of  the  most  in- 
fluential and  growing  school  of  thought 
in  modern  times.  This  view  is  further 
verified  by  the  increasing  public  de- 
mand for  his  works,  more  of  the  solid 
volumes  of  the  "  Synthetic  Philosophy  " 
having  been  called  for  during  the  last 
twelvemonth  than  in  any  former  year. 
The  inexorable  critical  resistance  Spen- 
cer's works  have  met  with  has  no 
doubt  hindered  their  spread,  but  it  has 
failed  to  arrest  them,  and  has  only 
served  to  test  and  demonstrate  the  in- 
herent strength  of  his  systematic  work. 

And  now  the  sluggish  old  "Edin- 
burgh Review  "  has  at  last  awakened, 
girded  itself  up,  and  entered  the  lists 
against  Mr.  Spencer.  The  current  num- 
ber contains  an  article  entitled  "  The 
Spencerian  Philosophy,"  to  which  we 
here  call  attention,  not  because  it  has 
the  slightest  value  as  a  contribution  to 
the  subject,  but  because  we  may  gather 
from  it  an  instructive  lesson  regarding 
the  decline  of  the  influence  of  vindic- 
tive criticism.  It  happens  that  the 
"  Edinburgh  Review  "  has  a  history  in 
this  matter.  This  is  not  the  first  time 
it  has  practiced  its  bludgeon  upon  the 
representatives  of  advancing  knowledge. 
Let  us,  therefore,  first  notice  its  early 
record  in  relation  to  one  of  the  most 


important  steps  in  the  progress  of  mod- 
ern science — the  establishment  of  "the 
undulatory  theory  of  light "  by  Dr. 
Thomas  Young.  We  give  the  "Re- 
view "  full  credit  for  consistency  in  an 
unprincipled  course ;  the  instinctive 
meanness  of  its  infancy,  long  since  exe- 
crated by  the  world,  is  not  in  the  least 
abated  in  its  senile  dotage. 

The  "  Novum  Organon  Renovatum  " 
of  Dr.  William  Whewell  is  an  able  work 
devoted  to  the  philosophy  of  the  induc- 
tive sciences,  of  which  the  same  au- 
thor is  also  the  eminent  historian.  Dr. 
Whewell  has  selected  the  two  most 
conspicuous  examples  of  comprehen- 
sive and  valid  induction  afforded  by 
physical  science,  and  by  means  of 
charts  he  has  illustrated  in  a  very  strik- 
ing way  the  extent  of  the  observed  and 
experimental  facts,  and  the  minor  in- 
ductions, that  are  brought  into  unity 
by  all-embracing  theories.  The  first 
chart  is  an  "Inductive  Table  of  As- 
tronomy," and  it  shows  in  a  very  inter- 
esting manner  how  completely  astro- 
nomical phenomena  are  explained  and 
brought  into  harmony  by  "  the  theory 
of  universal  gravitation."  The  second 
chart  is  "An  Inductive  Table  of  Optics," 
and  in  a  corresponding  way  it  exem- 
plifies the  elucidation  of  luminous  phe- 
nomena, and  the  explication  of  general 
optical  effects  which  result  from  "  the 
undulatory  theory  of  light."  What- 
ever may  be  the  imperfection  of  these 
theories,  they  have  fulfilled  the  pur- 
poses of  giving  rational  interpretation 
to  wide  ranges  of  natural  phenomena, 
and  of  guiding  the  human  mind  in  the 
pathway  of  new  discovery  by  the  pow- 
er of  prediction  that  they  have  con- 
ferred, and  the  two  theories  stand  to- 
gether as  eminent  triumphs  of  physical 
reasoning.  Tlie  name  of  Newton  will 
be  forever  associated  with  the  law  of 
universal  gravitation,  and  in  the  same 
way  Dr.  Thomas  Young  will  be  im- 
mortal as  the  man  whose  genius  estab- 
lished the  undulatory  theory  of  light, 
and  who  has  hence  been  very  appro- 


EDITOR'S   TABLE. 


841 


priately  designated  as  tlie  Newton  of 
the  science  of  optics. 

The  optical  theory  which  reigned 
in  the  scientific  world  until  the  begin- 
ning of  the  present  century  was  known 
as  the  theory  of  emission,  which  as- 
sumed that  all  luminous  efiects  are  due 
to  the  darting,  reboundihg,  and  deflect- 
ing of  some  kind  of  material  corpuscles 
or  particles.  The  idea  of  vibratory  or 
undulatory  action  as  the  cause  of  light 
was  early  broached  by  Huygens  and 
maintained  later  by  Euler,  but  was  gen- 
erally regarded  as  a  crude  speculation 
without  scientific  value.  Dr.  Young, 
devoting  his  great  powers  to  optical 
research,  soon  perceived  that  the  evi- 
dence was  decisive  in  favor  of  the  un- 
dulatory view ;  and,  in  the  case  of  the 
interference  of  light,  he  proved  that 
it  affords  a  complete  interpretation  of 
the  effects  where  the  emission  theory 
wholly  breaks  down.  He  developed 
his  ideas  in  elaborate  papers  published 
in  the  "  Proceedings  of  the  Royal  Soci- 
ety," and  gave  them  mature  expression 
in  the  Bakerian  Lecture  of  1802.  It 
was  at  once  seen  by  a  few  discerning 
scientific  men  that  the  old  controversy 
between  the  theories  of  light  was  vir- 
tually brought  to  an  end.  But  the  old 
explanation,  long  accepted,  and  sanc- 
tioned by  the  great  authority  of  New- 
ton, was,  of  course,  still  supreme,  while 
the  new  explanation  had  its  way  to 
make  in  scientific  circles  and  in  the 
general  mind. 

The  "  Edinburgh  Review  "  now  ap- 
pears upon  the  scene.  This  quarterly 
had  just  been  established,  and  was  sup- 
ported by  a  brilliant  corps  of  writers 
who  attracted  wide  attention,  and  gave 
to  the  periodical  an  extensive  and  pow- 
erful influence.  Henry  Brougham,  af- 
terward Lord  Chancellor  of  England, 
was  among  its  founders,  and  was  one 
of  its  most  versatile  and  effective  writ- 
ers, and  he  had  himself  dabbled  some- 
what in  optical  science.  He  reviewed 
Young's  Bakerian  Lecture  on  "The 
Theory  of  Light  and  Colors,"  which 


appeared  in  the  "  Philosophical  Trans- 
actions," and  the  article  was  published 
in  the  first  volume  of  the  new  Edin- 
burgh quarterly  issued  in  1803,  It  was 
an  insulting  and  malignant  attack  upon 
Dr.  Young,  whom  he  ridiculed  in  the 
coarsest  manner.  Mr.  Brougham  char- 
acterized the  Bakerian  Lecture  as  worth- 
less, and  bitterly  denounced  the  authori- 
ties of  the  Royal  Society  for  degrading 
science  by  admitting  such  foolish  specu- 
lations into  their  published  proceedings. 
The  event  is  so  memorable  that  we  shall 
be  excused  for  making  some  quotations 
from  the  article.  It  opens  with  these 
words  :  "  As  this  paper  contains  noth- 
ing which  deserves  the  name  either  of 
experiment  or  discovery^  and  as  it  is  in 
fact  destitute  of  every  species  of  merits 
we  should  have  allowed  it  to  pass  among 
the  multitude  of  those  articles  which 
must  always  find  admittance  into  the 
collections  of  a  society  wiiich  is  pledged 
to  publish  two  or  three  volumes  every 
year.  .  .  . 

"  We  wish  to  raise  our  feeble  voice 
against  innovations  that  can  have  no 
other  effect  than  to  check  the  progress 
of  Science,  and  renew  all  those  wild 
phantoms  of  the  imagination  which 
Bacon  and  Newton  put  to  flight  from 
her  temple.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  diflScult  to  argue  with  an  au- 
thor whose  mind  is  filled  with  a  me- 
dium of  so  fickle  a  vibratory  nature. 
Were  we  to  take  the  trouble  to  refute 
him,  he  might  tell  us,  '  My  opinion  is 
changed,  and  I  have  abandoned  that 
hypothesis,  but  here  is  another  for 
you.'  .  .  . 

"  We  demand  if  the  world  of  sci- 
ence, which  Newton  once  illuminated,  is 
to  be  as  changeable  in  its  modes  as  the 
world  of  taste,  which  is  directed  by  the 
will  of  a  silly  woman  or  a  pampered 
fop.  Has  the  Royal  Society  degraded 
its  publications  into  new  and  fashion- 
able theories  for  the  ladies  who  attend 
the  Royal  Institution?  Proh  pudor ! 
Let  the  professor  continue  to  amuse  his 
audience  with  an  endless  variety  of 


842 


THE  POPULAR    SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


such  harmless  trifles  ;  but  in  the  name 
of  Science  let  them  not  find  admittance 
into  that  honorable  repository  which 
contains  the  works  of  Newton,  Boyle, 
Cavendish,  and  Herschel.  .  .  . 

"  From  such  a  dull  invention  noth- 
ing can  be  expected.  It  only  removes 
all  the  difficulties  under  which  the 
theory  of  light  labored  to  the  theory 
of  this  new  medium  which  assumes  its 
place.  It  is  a  change  of  name ;  it 
teaches  no  trut\  reconciles  no  contra- 
dictions^ arranges  no  anomalous  facts^ 
suggests  no  new  experiments^  and  leads 
to  no  new  inquiries.  It  has  not  even 
the  pitiful  merit  of  affording  an  agree- 
able play  of  the  fancy.  It  is  infinitely 
more  useless  and  less  ingenious  than  the 
Indian  theory  of  the  elephant  and  the 
tortoise.  We  have  a  right  to  demand 
that  the  hypothesis  shall  be  so  consist- 
ent with  itself  and  so  applicable  to  the 
facts  as  not  to  require  perpetual  mend- 
ing and  patching — that  the  child  which 
we  stoop  to  play  with  shall  be  tolerably 
healthy,  and  not  of  the  puny,  sickly  na- 
ture of  Dr.  Young's  productions  which 
have  scarcely  stamina  to  subsist  until 
the  fruitful  parent  has  furnished  us  with 
a  new  litter ;  to  make  way  for  which, 
he  knocks  on  the  head  or  more  bar- 
barously exposes  the  first." 

This  is  certainly  poor  stuff,  read  in 
the  light  of  subsequent  history.  Of  the 
man  so  shamefully  vilified  by  a  reck- 
less critic.  Professor  Helmholtz  thus 
speaks  :  "  His  was  one  of  the  most  pro- 
found minds  that  the  world  has  ever 
seen  ;  but  he  had  the  misfortune  to  be 
too  much  in  advance  of  his  age.  He 
excited  the  wonder  of  his  contempo- 
raries, who,  however,  were  unable  to 
follow  him  to  the  heights  at  which  his 
daring  intellect  was  accustomed  to  soar. 
His  most  important  ideas  lay,  therefore, 
buried  and  forgotten  in  the  folios  of  the 
Royal  Society  until  a  new  generation 
gradually  and  painfully  made  the  same 
discoveries,  and  proved  the  exactness 
of  his  assertions  and  the  truth  of  his 
demonstrations." 


Nevertheless,  the  "Edinburgh  Re- 
view "  had  power  to  extinguish  the  in- 
fluence of  this  extraordinary  genius,  and 
it  was  the  article  from  which  we  have 
quoted  that  did  the  work.  Rubbish  as  it 
now  appears,  it  was  accepted  as  truth, 
and  the  effect  was  to  close  the  channels 
of  reply  to  Dr.  Young,  and  push  him 
into  obscurity  as  nothing  better  than 
a  shallow  pretender.  As  Professor  Tyn- 
dall  remarks :  "  For  twenty  years  this 
man  of  genius  was  quenched — hidden 
from  the  appreciative  intellect  of  his 
countrymen — deemed,  in  fact,  a  dream- 
er, through  the  vigorous  audacity  of  a 
writer  who  had  then  possession  of  the 
public  ear,  and  who,  in  the  '  Edinburgh 
Review,'  poured  ridicule  upon  Young 
and  his  speculations." 

Such  was  the  power  of  base-mind- 
ed criticism  at  the  beginning  of  the 
century;  and  such  the  first  great  ex- 
ploit of  the  "  Edinburgh  Review  "  in 
relation  to  the  progress  of  scientific 
thought. 

Eighty  years  have  since  passed  away, 
but  the  old  Scotch  quarterly  has  learned 
nothing.  Oblivious  of  the  great  changes 
that  have  taken  place  in  the  world  of 
thought,  it  undertakes  to  repeat  upon 
Herbert  Spencer  the  tactics  which 
proved  so  effectual  in  suppressing  the 
greatest  scientific  man  of  the  opening 
century.  It  will  fail,  and  not  only  this, 
but  the  absurd  anomaly  of  its  action 
will  be  certain  to  defeat  the  end  it 
proposes  to  accomplish.  There  could 
hardly  be  a  greater  compliment  to  the 
work  of  Spencer  than  that  the  "Edin- 
burgh Review  "  should  at  this  time  have 
printed  so  incompetent  and  ridiculous 
an  assault  upon  it. 

The  reviewer  entitles  his  article 
"The  Spencerian  Philosophy,"  but  it 
is  false  to  its  title  in  that  it  makes  not 
the  slightest  attempt  to  deal  with  that 
philosophy.  It  shows  no  appreciation 
of  it,  and  conveys  no  shadow  of  an  idea 
of  its  real  character.  The  discussion  is 
confined  to  "First  Principles,"  the  open- 
ing volume  of  the  philosophical  sys- 


EDITOR'S   TABLE. 


843 


tern,  wliich  was  published  twenty-two 
years  ago,  and  the  article  is  character- 
ized throughout  by  the  most  inexcus- 
able ignorance  of  the  subjects  consid- 
ered. It  is  spiteful,  contemptuous,  and 
flippant  in  spirit,  vicious  in  misrepre- 
sentation, and  mean  in  its  covert  in- 
sinuations and  outright  imputations. 
Brougham's  assault  upon  Young  is  its 
model,  and  the  phraseology  of  dispar- 
agement is  almost  identical  in  the  two 
papers,  as  we  illustrate  by  italicized  pas- 
sages. The  reviewer  says  of  Spencer : 
"  He  has  not  ascertained  or  discovered 
a  single  new  fact ^  nor  put  any  old  ones 
together  in  such  a  way  as  to  justify  any 
new  inference  as  to  their  causes,  either 
immediate  or  ultimate.  He  has  only 
applied  new  and  fanciful  terms  to  the 
collections  he  has  made."  And  this  is 
the  way  he  sums  the  matter  up :  "  This 
is  nothing  but  a  philosophy  of  epithets 
and  phrases  introduced  and  carried  on 
with  an  unrivaled  solemnity,  and  affec- 
tation of  precision  of  style  concealing 
the  loosest  reasoning,  and  the  haziest 
indefiniteness  on  every  point  except  the 
bare  dogmatic  negation  of  any  '  know- 
able'  or  knowing  author  of  the  uni- 
verse ;  which,  of  course,  is  the  reason 
why  this  absurd  pretense  of  a  philoso- 
phy has  obtained  the  admiration  of  a 
multitude  of  people  who  will  swallow 
any  camel  that  pretends  to  carry  the 
world  standing  on  the  tortoise  that 
stands  on  Twthing,  provided  only  it  has 
been  generated  by  a  man  out  of  his 
own  brains,  and  asserted  in  imposing 
language  with  sufficient  confidence." 
The  philosophy  of  the  universe,  it  may 
be  remarked,  which  is  tacitly  held  by 
the  writer,  is  simply  mathematics  and 
physics  plus  Scotch  orthodoxy. 

We  have  no  space  to  go  into  par- 
ticulars in  regard  to  this  performance, 
but  may  give  one  illustration  of  its 
looseness  and  lack  of  decent  regard  for 
truth.  Its  fragmentary  quotations  are 
made  in  the  most  slovenly  manner,  and 
mixed  up  with  the  language  of  the 
writer  so  as  to  convey  his  own  pervert- 


ed meaning ;  and,  as  if  conscious  of  this, 
he  seems  to  think  it  necessary  to  make 
at  least  one  fair  extract.  So  he  says : 
"  This  time  we  will  not  omit  a  word 
for  brevity.  We  ought  to  give  at 
least  one  specimen  of  Mr.  Spencer's 
most  careful  and  precise  style  unre- 
duced." Then  follows  an  extract  of 
eighteen  lines,  and,  if  the  reader  will 
believe  it,  the  passage  was  reduced  ly 
the  dropping  of  whole  clauses,  which 
were  not  only  significant,  but  made  the 
entire  statement  unintelligible.  And  if 
the  reader  hesitates  to  believe  this  on 
our  authority,  as  too  improbable  a 
thing,  then  let  us  say  that  Mr.  Proc- 
tor has  exposed  it  in  his  London  jour- 
nal, and  convicted  the  reviewer  of  mu- 
tilation by  publishing  the  extract,  with 
the  omissions  bracketed. 

The  "  Edinburgh  Review  "  will  not 
succeed  at  this  late  day  in  the  revival 
of  its  old  tactics.  Its  ".slashing  "  article 
will  be  rated  at  its  true  worthlessness 
because  there  are  now  multitudes  who 
have  some  intelligent  understanding  of 
the  Spencerian  philosophy,  even  if  the 
chosen  reviewer  knows  nothing  about 
it,  cares  nothing  about  it,  and  only 
takes  it  up  to  make  a  sensational  cari- 
cature of  it.  In  confirmation  of  this, 
we  quote  a  passage  from  a  recent  letter 
of  Mr.  Richard  A.  Proctor  to  the  "  New 
York  Tribune  "  : 

The  "  Edinburgh  Eeview  "  makes  a  savage 
assault  on  Herbert  Spencer  this  quarter,  in 
an  article  written  in  a  style  so  familiar  that  it 
might  as  well  have  been  signed.  Those  who 
admire  the  work  which  has  already  been 
achieved  and  is  in  progress  of  achievement 
by  the  leading  philosopher  of  the  century, 
"W'ill  be  scarcely  less  pained  by  this  unfair  and 
acrimonious  attack  than  those  who  have  a  re- 
gard for  the  reputation  of  Sir  Edmund  Beck- 
ett. Sir  Edmund  lias  attacked  the  Bacon  of 
this  day  in  terms  that  would  be  hardly  ap- 
propriate if  applied  to  one  of  those  absurd 
persons  who  go  about  with  theories  that  the 
earth  is  flat,  the  law  of  gravity  a  gigantic 
blunder,  and  the  squaring  of  the  circle  child's 
play.  Belonging  myself  to  both  categories 
above  mentioned,  I  am  doubly  grieved.  I 
value  Sir  Edmund  Beckett  as  a  kind  personal 
friend,  a  masterly  reasoner  within  certain 


844 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


lines,  and  one  of  the  most  skillful  advo- 
cates, whether  of  a  good  or  of  a  mistaken 
cause,  that  I  have  ever  met.  Herbert  Spencer 
I  esteem,  I  may  almost  say  reverence,  as  the 
teacher  of  the  soundest  system  of  philosophy 
the  world  has  yet,  in  my  judgment,  known. 
That  a  man  whose  researches  reach  so  widely 
should  at  times  fall  into  error  in  matters  of 
detail  may  be  readily  admitted.  Only  a  few 
weeks  ago  I  pointed  out  in  the  pages  of  my 
weekly  journal,  "Knowledge,"  what  i  hold 
to  be  an  entirely  erroneous  view  of  Herbert 
Spencer's  respecting  the  probable  origin  of 
the  system  of  asteroids.  Yet  even  in  matters 
of  detail  belonging  to  the  work  of  specialists 
he  has  been  singularly  clear-sighted.  He  first 
pchited  out  the  fallacies  underlying  the  long- 
accepted  teaching  respecting  the  stellar  sys- 
tem, star-clusters,  nebulae,  etc.,  which  men 
like  Arago  and  Humboldt  had  dealt  with 
without  detecting  error.  In  every  depart- 
ment of  science,  in  fact,  though  a  specialist 
in  none,  Herbert  Spencer  has  left  his  mark. 

The  attack  in  the  "Edinburgh  Eeview" 
leaves  Spencer's  fame  untouched.  It  is  evi- 
dent in  every  line  of  this  sour  production  that 
the  enmity  which  Sir  Edmund  Beckett  has 
always  felt  and  expressed  toward  the  teach- 
ings of  the  school  of  which  Spencer  has  been 
the  Bacon,  the  Darwin,  and  the  Newton,  has 
made  it  impossible  for  him  to  read  with  even 
average  attention  the  work  which  he  pretends 
to  criticise.  He  has  not  caught  the  veriest 
glimmer  of  a  notion  of  Mr.  Spencer's  real 
meaning.  From  the  only  passage  which  he 
claims  to  quote  entire  he  has  allowed  several 
important  words  to  drop — by  accident  doubt- 
less, but  yet  not  by  mere  accident  in  tran- 
Bcribing  what  he  had  already  carefully  read 
and  understood ;  for  the  reasoning  which  fol- 
lows falls  to  the  ground  so  soon  as  the  omit- 
ted words  are  restored. 

Let  one  example  suffice  to  show  how  ut- 
terly Sir  Edmund  Beckett  either  has  missed 
or  misrepresents  the  meaning  of  the  famous 
contemporary  whom  he  assaults.  Herbert 
Spencer,  speaking  of  the  Great  First  Cause, 
transcending  all  laws,  Absolute,  Uncondi- 
tional, says  that  we  only  perceive  It,  can  only 
recognize  It,  by  the  persistence  of  force  which, 
as  it  were,  symbolizes  It.  Sir  Edmund  re- 
gards this  as  equivalent  to  saying  that  the 
Great  First  Cause  is  nothing  else  but  persist- 
ent Force.  Beckett  rebukes  Spencer  for  speak- 
ing of  the  "  laws  of  motion  "  as  the  results  of 
experience,  saying  that  Newton  regarded  them 
as  self-evident.  He  must  have  forgotten  Ne  w- 
ton's  "  Principia,"  where  these  laws  are  pre- 
sented by  Newton  as  now  spoken  by  Spen- 
cer. 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 

Hand-Book  of  Sanitary  Information  for 
Householders,  containing  Facts  and  Sug- 
gestions about  Ventilation,  Drainage, 
Care  of  Contagious  Diseases,  Disinfec- 
tion, Food,  and  Water.  With  Appen- 
dices on  Disinfectants  and  Plumbers' 
Materials.  By  Koger  S.  Tracy,  M.  D., 
Sanitary  Inspector  of  the  New  York  City 
Health  Department.  New  York :  D.  Ap- 
pleton  &  Co.    Pp.  110.    Price,  50  cents. 

There  are  now  but  few  persons  who 
have  the  hardihood  to  say  that  hygienic 
knowledge,  or  information  concerning  the 
preservation  of  health,  is  without  value. 
But  if  it  have  any  value  whatever  for  its 
purpose,  then  is  it  of  very  great  importance, 
for  the  maintenance  of  health  and  life  is 
the  supremest  earthly  interest.  It  may  of 
course  be  said  that  our  fathers  got  along 
very  well  without  all  this  bother  about  ven- 
tilation, drainage,  and  other  hygienic  mat- 
ters, but  this  is  only  an  apology  for  igno- 
rance, or  a  plea  for  indolence.  Through  the 
whole  history  of  the  world,  and  everywhere, 
long  life  and  vigorous  health  have  been  de- 
pendent upon  the  necessary  conditions,  and, 
where  these  have  been  wanting,  feebleness, 
invalidism,  severe  sickness,  premature  death, 
and  the  destruction  of  countless  thousands 
by  pestilence,  have  been  the  results.  In  the 
ignorant  ages — the  theological  ages,  when 
the  phenomena  of  sickness  and  death  were 
accounted  for  by  the  providence  of  God, 
j  against  which  it  was  in  vain  to  strive — little 
I  was  known  of  the  real  causes  of  disease, 
'  and  it  was  therefore  a  subject  that  attracted 
but  slight  attention  either  privately  or  pub- 
licly. But  in  this  more  scientific  age,  de- 
voted so  assiduously  to  the  extension  and 
diffusion  of  knowledge,  men  are  beginning 
to  feel  the  importance  of  a  better  under- 
standing of  those  physical  conditions  and 
physiological  laws  upon  which  health  is  de- 
pendent, and  there  is,  of  course,  a  good  deal 
said  about  their  urgency,  and  the  need  of 
reducing  them  to  practical  application.  Ig- 
norant and  stupid  people,  and  often  excel- 
lent and  pious  people,  are  no  doubt  much 
bored  by  all  this  modern  hygienic  agitation, 
but  in  the  happy  order  of  the  world  this  class 
of  persons  are  certain  to  be  gradually  got 
out  of  the  way,  and  they  are  to  be  replaced 
by  others  who  will  regard  these  subjects  as 
not  only  of  the  first  importance,  but  full  of 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


845 


the  liveliest  interest.  A  good  sanitary  edu- 
cation involves  a  very  considerable  under- 
standing of  the  method  of  Nature. 

We  heartily  welcome,  therefore,  the  in- 
creasing hygienic  literature  of  the  age,  and 
are  glad  to  see  that  the  best  minds  are  de- 
voting themselves  to  it,  and  giving  the  pub- 
lic the  results  in  various  forms  of  their  seri- 
ous and  careful  studies.  The  little  volume 
now  before  us  is  a  timely  and  most  valu- 
able contribution  to  the  subject  in  its  prac- 
tical, every-day  aspects  for  the  use  of  house- 
holders. First  of  all,  it  is  a  careful  and 
trustworthy  book  by  a  thoi-oughly  prepared 
man,  who  has  had  large  experience  of  hy- 
gienic subjects  as  Sanitary  Inspector  of  the 
New  York  City  Health  Department.  It  has 
been  Dr.  Tracy's  business  to  apply  sanitary 
science  to  the  art  of  living  under  our  pres- 
ent domestic  constructions  and  arrange- 
ments. He  has  had  to  meet  actual  difficulties 
that  arise  from  the  influence  of  bad  air,  bad 
sewerage,  bad  drainage,  bad  house-construc- 
tion, bad  precautions  respecting  infectious 
diseases,  bad  food,  bad  water,  and  bad 
plumbing.  It  seemed  to  him  that  there  was 
needed  a  little  book  simply  of  facts  and  re- 
sults, free  from  theory,  discussion,  or  specu- 
lation, and  written  in  the  plainest  style,  that 
would  serve  for  every-day  guidance  in  rela- 
tion to  all  these  sanitary  subjects.  It  is 
full  of  brief  rules  and  directions,  and  useful 
information  regarding  sanitary  contrivances, 
how  they  are  to  be  obtained  and  what  they 
cost,  and  from  this  point  of  view  it  may  be 
regarded  as  a  practical  summing  up  of  the 
most  urgent  requirements,  the  best  facilities, 
and  the  clearest  directions,  that  will  be  of 
service  every  day  and  to  everybody.  We 
have  read  the  book  with  care,  and  can  rec- 
ommend it,  without  hesitation  or  qualifica- 
tion, as  one  that  should  be  kept  for  constant 
reference  in  every  house. 

INTERNATIONAL  SCIENTIFIC  SERIES. 

The  Concepts  and  Theories  of  Modern 
Physics.  Second  edition,  revised ;  with 
an  Introductory  Essay.  By  J.  B.  Stallo. 
New  York :  D.' Appleton  &  Co.  Pp.  358. 
Price,  $1.75. 

The  first  edition,  and  a  pretty  large  one, 
of  this  profound  work  was  exhausted  some 
time  ago,  which  speaks  well  for  the  interest 
of  American  readers  in  the  thorough  discus- 
sion of  the  fundamental  ideas  that  are  at  the 


basis  of  science  and  philosophy.  The  con- 
tinued demand  for  the  work  making  neces- 
sary a  second  edition,  the  author  has  sub- 
jected the  text  to  a  close  revision,  and  pre- 
fixed to  it  a  masterly  introduction  of  forty- 
four  pages.  He  here  avails  himself  of  the 
criticisms  passed  upon  the  work,  both  in 
this  country  and  abroad  (where  several  edi- 
tions of  it  have  also  appcai-ed),  to  restate 
the  purpose  of  the  volume,  which  has  been 
a  good  deal  misunderstood,  and  to  reply  to 
such  objections  as  seemed  to  require  atten- 
tion. The  effect  of  this  lucid  and  brilliant 
discussion  will  be  to  greatly  facilitate  the 
general  apprehension,  and  to  enhance  the 
interest  of  the  work  to  those  who  take  it  up 
for  the  first  time. 

In  our  review  of  Judge  Stallo's  book 
upon  its  first  appearance,  we  pointed  out 
that  it  is  a  philosophical  study  of  the  rela- 
tions of  metaphysics  to  physics,  designed  to 
show  that  many  of  the  leading  physicists  of 
the  age  are  by  no  means  as  far  emancipated 
from  old  metaphysical  influences  as  it  is 
customary  to  believe.  He  attacks  some  of 
the  fundamental  ideas  of  modern  physics  as 
being  strictly  metaphysical  assumptions,  and 
j  shows  historically  how  they  have  survived, 
'  and  performed  their  old  duties  in  new  rela- 
[  tions.  But  the  book  was  construed  as  an 
onslaught  upon  the  foundations  of  modern 
physics  in  the  interests  of  a  bad  metaphys- 
ics, and  the  author  was  called  upon  to  offer 
his  substitutes  for  the  fundamental  doctrines 
he  aimed  to  sweep  away.  We  quote  some 
passages  from  the  new  introduction,  which 
leave  no  room  for  further  misunderstand- 
ing: 

The  misapprehension  I  speak  of  is  very  surpris- 
ing, in  view  of  the  explicit  declaration,  contained  in 
the  very  first  sentence  of  my  preface,  that  the  book 
is  "  desig'ned  as  a  contribution  not  to  physics,  nor 
certainly  to  metaphysics,  bnt  to  the  theory  of  cog'- 
nition.''  Notwithstanding  this  declaration,  most  of 
my  critics  assume  it  to  be  my  purpose  to  expose  the 
short-comings  and  defects  of  particular  theories  as 
devices  for  the  colligation  of  facts,  or  as  instruments 
of  research,  and  suppose  that  my  endeavor  is  sim- 
ply, as  one  of  my  critics  expresses  it.  "to  pick 
flaws  in  these  theories,"  or,  in  the  language  of  an- 
other critic,  "  to  classify  and  develop  contradic- 
tions "  between  them,  to  "  set  facts  by  the  ears," 
and  "bump  friendly  heads  together" — in  short,  in 
the  spirit  of  a  sort  of  scientific  pyrrhonism,  to  dis- 
credit the  familiar  methods  of  physical  science,  if 
not  to  invalidate  its  results.  And  they  complain 
that  I  fail  to  apprehend  what  one  of  them  is  pleased 
to  term  the  "laboratory  function"  of  a  physical 


846 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


theory  or  hypothesis,  and  to  appreciate  the  distinc- 
tion between  a  •'  working  hypothesis "'  and  a  theory 
advanced  with  the  claim  of  its  final  validity  or 
truth. 

Now,  the  fact  is,  that  for  the  purposes  of  the  in- 
quiry to  which  my  book  i3  devoted,  I  am  not  di- 
rectly concerned  with  the  "laboratory  function"  of 
'•working  hypotheses"  or  physical  thories  at  all. 
My  object  is  to  consider  current  physical  theories 
and  the  assumptions  which  underlie  them  in  the 
light  of  the  modern  theory  of  cognition— a  theory 
which  has  taken  its  rise  in  very  recent  times,  and  is 
founded  upon  the  investigation,  by  scientific  meth- 
ods analogous  to  those  employed  in  the  physical  sci- 
ences, of  the  laws  governing  the  evolution  of  thought 
and  speech.    Among  the  important  truths  devel- 
oped by  the  sciences  of  comparative  linguistics  and  ! 
psychology  are  such  as  these  :  that  the  thoughts  of  i 
men  at  any  particular  period  are  limited  and  con- 
trolled by  the  forms  of  their  expression,  viz.,  by  lan- 
guage (using  this  term  in  its  most  comprehensive 
sense) ;  that  the  language  spoken  and  "  thought  in  " 
by  a  given  generation  is  to  a  certain  extent  a  record 
of  the  intellectual  activity  of  preceding  generations, 
and  thus  embodies  and  serves  to  perpetuate  its  er- 
rors as  well  as  its  truths  ;  that  this  is  the  fact  hint- 
ed at,  if  not  accurately  expressed,  in  the  old  obser- 
vation according  to  which  every  distinct  form  or 
system  of  speech  involves  a  distinct  metaphysical 
theory  ;  that  the  metaphysical  systems  in  vogue  at 
any  particular  epoch,  despite  their  apparent  dilTer- 
ences  and  antagonisms,  on  proper  analysis  are  found 
to  be  characterized  by  certain  common  features  in  \ 
which  the  latent  metaphysics  of  the  language  in  , 
which  such  systems  have  originated,  or  are  pre-  ' 
sented,  are  brought  to  view ;  that  philosophers  as 
■well  as  ordinary  men  are  subject  to  the  thralldom  of 
the  intellectual  prepossessions  embodied  in  their  ^ 
speech  as  well  as  in  the  other  inherited  forms  of 
their  mental  and  physical  organizations,  and  are  un- 
able to  emancipate  themselvos  from  this  thralldom  1 
otherwise  than  by  slow  and  gradual  advances,  in  ; 
conformity  to  the  law  of  continuity  which  governs  | 
all  processes  of  evolution  whatever.    It  being  my 
belief  that  all  this  applies  to  the  votaries  of  science  j 
as  well  as  to  the  devotees  of  metaphysics  or  ontology,  [ 
I  sought  to  enforce  this  belief  by  an  examination  of  | 
the  general  concepts  and  theories  of  modern  phys-  j 
ica.    According  to  the  opinion  of  contemporary  men  | 
of  science,  these  concepts  and  theories  are  simply 
generalizations  of  the  data  of  experience,  and  are 
thus  not  only  independent  of  the  old  a  priori  no- 
tions of  metaphysics,  but  destructive  of  them.    But, 
although  the  founders  of  modern  physical  science  at 
the  outset  of  their  labors  were  animated  by  a  spirit 
of  declared  hostility  to  the  teachings  of  mediaeval 
scholasticism— a  fact  which  is  nowhere  more  con- 
spicuous than  in  the  writings  of  Descartes— never- 
theless, when  they  entered  upon  the  theoretical  dis- 
cussion of  the  results  of  their  experiments  and  ob- 
servations, they  unconsciously  proceeded  upon  the 
old  assumptions  of  the  very  ontology  which  they 
openly  repudiated.    That  ontology— founded  upon 
the  inveterate  habit  of  searching  for  "  essences'  by 
the  Interpretation  of  words  and  the  analysis  of  the 
concepts  underlying  them,  before  the  relations  of 
■words  to  thoughts  and  of  thoughts  to  things  were 
properly  imderstood — was  characterized  by  three 


great  errors  :  its  hypostasis  of  concepts  (notwith- 
standing the  protest  of  the  nominalists  against  the 
reification  of  universals) ;  its  disregard  of  the  two- 
fold relativity  of  all  physical  phenomena ;  and  its 
confusion  of  the  order  of  intellectual  apprehension 
with  the  order  of  Nature.  These  errors  gave  rise  to 
a  number  of  cardinal  doctrines  respecting  the  "sub- 
stance of  things,"  among  which  were  the  assertion 
of  its  existence  as  a  distinct  thing  or  real  entity, 
apart  from  its  properties ;  the  further  assertion  of 
its  absolute  permanence  and  immutability;  and, 
finally,  the  assertion  of  the  absolute  solidity  and  in- 
ertia of  its  .parts  and  their  incapacity  to  act  upon 
each  other  otherwise  than  by  contact.  And  all  these 
doctrines  lie  at  the  base,  not  only  of  Cartesian  phys- 
ics and  metaphysics,  but  of  the  scientific  creed  of 
the  great  majority  of  the  physicists  of  the  present 
day.  The  eminent  physicist  and  physiologist  who 
declares  that  "before  the  difi'erential  equations  of 
the  world-formula  could  be  formed"  (i.e.,  before 
the  ultimate,  true,  and  exhaustive  theory  of  the  uni- 
verse could  be  constructed),  "all  processes  of  Nature 
must  be  reduced  to  the  motions  of  a  substratum  sub- 
stantially homogeneous,  and  therefore  totally  desti- 
tute of  quality,  of  that  which  appears  to  us  as  het- 
erogeneous matter — in  other  words,  all  quality  must 
be  explained  by  the  arrangement  and  motion  of  such 
a  substratum,"  and  the  equally  distinguished  ph5-si- 
cist  and  mathematician  who  enters  upon  the  at- 
tempt at  a  solution  of  the  problem  thus  stated  by 
endeavoring  to  deduce  the  phenomenal  diversities 
and  changes  of  the  universe  from  imaginary  vortical 
motions  of  the  undistinguishable  parts  of  an  as- 
sumed universal,  homogeneous,  continuous,  and  in- 
compressible fluid,  are  both  as  truly  instinct  with 
the  spirit  of  the  old  scientia  entia  quatenus  entia 
as  the  most  ardent  disciple  of  the  Stagirite  in  the 
times  of  Erigena  or  Aquinas.  The  physicist  who  in- 
sists upon  impact  theories  of  gravitation,  cohesion, 
or  chemical  aflinity,  has  the  same  intellectual  blood 
in  his  veins  which  coursed  in  those  of  the  old  dis- 
putants about  "  first  matter "  or  "  substantial 
forms,"  "When  the  Professor  of  Physics  in  the 
University  of  Edinburgh  teaches  that  matter  is  ab- 
solutely passive,  dead,  that  all  i>hysical  action  is 
action  by  contact,  that  nothing  is  real  which  is  not 
indestructible,  etc.,  he  stands  as  unmistakably  upon 
scholastic  ontological  ground  as  did  Descartes  or 
any  of  his  ecclesiastical  contemporaries.  The  prop- 
osition of  the  modern  kincmatist,  that  the  true  ex- 
planation of  the  phenomena  of  heat,  light,  electricity, 
magnetism,  etc.,  consists  in  their  reduction  to  the 
elements  of  matter  and  motion,  diflFers  in  little  else 
than  its  phraseology  from  the  metaphysical  thaorem 
that  all  the  "  secondary  quahties  "  of  the  universal 
substance  are  mere  specifications  or  derivatives  of 
its  "  primary'  qualities." 

Aborigixal  American  Authors  and  their 
Productions  ;  especially  those  in  the 
Natite  Languages.  By  Daniel  G,  Brin- 
ton.  Philadelphia:  115  South  Seventh 
Street.  Pp.  63.  Price,  $1. 
The  present  memoir  is  an  enlargement 
of  a  paper  which  the  author  presented  to  the 
International  Conference  of  Americanists  at 


LITERARY  NOTICES, 


847 


its  last  meeting  in  Copenhagen,  in  August, 
1883.  In  it  Dr.  Brinton  shows  that  the  na- 
tive Americans  had  a  literary  faculty,  which 
is  indicated  by  a  vivid  imagination,  a  love 
of  narration,  and  an  ample,  appropriate,  and 
logically  developed  vocabulary.  They  have 
left  behind  them  a  creditable  literature  of 
considerable  extent  which  would  have  been 
larger,  but  much  of  it  was  wantonly  de- 
stroyed by  their  self-styled  civilized  con- 
querors. They  wrote  in  their  own  language, 
in  Spanish,  and  in  Latin,  narrative,  didac- 
tic, and  oratorical  works,  poems,  and  dra- 
mas, the  general  character  of  which  is  brief- 
ly sketched  and  a  partial  list  given.  The 
Northern  Indians  are  less  fully  represented 
in  this  literature  than  the  Mexican  and  South 
American. 

Cassell's  Family  Magazine,  American  edi- 
tion. January  and  February,  1884.  New 
York :  Cassell  &  Co.,  Limited.  Pp.  64 
each.  Price,  15  cents  a  number;  §1.50 
per  year. 

"  Cassell's  Magazine"  is  conducted  with 
reference  to  the  tastes  of  the  family,  and  is 
designed  to  furnish  that  which  will  profit  as 
well  as  amuse.  Well-selected  fiction  is  pro- 
vided, in  serial  stories  as  well  as  in  those 
that  are  completed  in  one  number ;  and  in 
addition  to  this  are  given,  regularly,  papers 
on  "  Household  Management,"  "  Domestic 
Cookery,"  "  Gardening,"  "  Education  and 
Recreation,"  the  "  Family  Doctor's  Papers  " ; 
a  department  for  the  discussion  of  social 
questions  of  the  day,  papers  on  remunera- 
tive employment  for  women,  records  of  use- 
ful inventions  and  discoveries,  and  numer- 
ous illustrations. 

Natural  Philosophy.  By  Isaac  Sharp- 
less,  Sc.  D.,  and  G.  M.  Philips,  A.  M. 
Philadelphia :  J.  B.  Lippincott  &  Co. 
1884.     Pp.  350. 

So  many  text-books  on  natural  philoso- 
phy have  appeared  within  the  past  few  years 
that  the  teacher  of  to-day  is  embarrassed  by 
the  surplus  of  riches.  In  most  of  these  an 
effort  may  be  observed  to  introduce  the  only 
true  method,  that  of  personal  experimenta- 
tion. Many  difficulties  remain  to  be  over- 
come, and  the  task  is  not  an  easy  one.  Al- 
though the  authors  state  in  their  introduc- 
tion that  this  treatise  differs  from  others  in 
the  large  number  of  practical  experiments 


and  exercises  which  it  contains,  we  are  some- 
what disappointed  at  the  small  number  of 
novel  and  simple  experiments  adapted  to 
the  average  school-room,  while  more  diffi- 
cult and  dangerous  experiments  are  given  in 
detail,  such  as  the  preparation  of  cyanide  of 
silver  from  a  silver  coin  for  electro-plating. 
In  other  cases  there  is  a  lack  of  fullness,  as 
for  example,  under  electrolysis  of  water  no 
mention  is  made  of  the  kind  or  size  of  bat- 
tery required  ;  under  electrophorus  the  com- 
position of  the  rosin-cake  is  not  given,  and 
the  pupil  is  led  to  infer  that  it  is  pure  rosin. 
Neither  the  Holtz  nor  Windhurst  electrical 
machines  is  pictured  and  described,  but  the 
old  cylindrical  machine  takes  their  place. 
The  Morse  registering  apparatus  is  illus- 
trated instead  of  the  sounder  actually  in  use, 
and  the  duplex,  quadruplex,  and  ocean-cable 
systems  are  referred  to  in  a  manner  neither 
satisfying  nor  instructive.  Notwithstanding 
these  obvious  defects,  there  is  much  to 
recommend  the  book  as  quite  equal  to  the 
average  text-books  on  this  subject,  and  in 
some  respects  it  is  an  improvement  on 
them.  The  illustrations  are  excellent,  the 
type  clear,  and  the  paper  good. 

Transactions  of  the  American  Dermato- 
logical  Association  at  the  Seventh  An- 
nual Meeting,  August,  1883.  By  Dr. 
Arthur  Van  Harlingen.  Baltimore: 
Thomas  &  Evans.     Pp.  49. 

The  pamphlet  contains  the  official  report 
of  the  proceedings  of  the  Association,  with 
abstracts  of  the  papers  read,  a  list  of  publi- 
cations and  writings  of  members  of  the  As- 
sociation during  the  year  ending  in  July, 
1883,  and  a  statistical  report  of  cases  treat- 
ed. 


The  "Winter  Resorts  op  Florida,  South 
Georgia,  Louisiana,  Texas,  California, 
Mexico,  and  Cuba.  By  John  Temple 
Grates.  Published  by  the  Passenger 
Deparment  of  the  Savannah,  Florida,  and 
Western  Railway  Company.  Pp.  103, 
with  Maps  and  Illustrations, 

An  attractive  and  popular  guide-book  to 
a  whole  region  of  health  resorts  and  winter 
residences  that  are  every  year  attracting 
more  attention.  It  furnishes  brief  descrip- 
tions of  the  points  of  interest  to  the  tourist, 
invalid,  immigrant,  or  sportsman,  and  of  the 
way  to  reach  them. 


848 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


God  and  the  Statk.  By  Michael  Bakou- 
NiNE,  Founder  of  Nihilism  and  Apostle 
of  Anarchy.  Translated  by  Benjamin  R. 
Tucker.  Boston :  Benjamin  R.  Tucker. 
Pp.  52.     15  cts. 

The  name  of  the  author  of  this  pam- 
phlet ought  to  give  a  sufficient  indication  of 
its  character.  His  apostleship  of  anarchy 
appears  to  have  been  as  active  in  a  reli- 
gious  as  in  a  social  and  political  aspect.  We 
arc  informed  that  the  work  "contains  an 
attack  upon  the  theistic  idea  from  a  new 
stand-point,  which,  if  successful,  will  result 
in  tremendous  consequences."  It  is  certainly 
of  interest  to  the  student  of  mental  phenom- 
ena, and  of  the  order  of  social  movements 
of  which  the  author  is  a  most  conspicuous 
representative.  A  preface  is  furnished  by 
Carlo  Cafiero  and  Elisee  Reclus. 


Popular  Essays  on  the  Movements  op  the 
Atmosphere,  By  Professor  William  Fer- 
REL.  Washington:  Government  Print- 
ing-Office.    Pp.  59. 

The  papers  that  make  up  this  volume 
were  originally  published  in  the  "  Nashville 
Journal  of  Medicine  and  Surgery,"  "  The 
American  Journal  of  Science,"  and  "Na- 
ture." They  relate  to  the  winds  and  cur- 
rents of  the  ocean ;  the  motions  of  fluids 
and  solids  relative  to  the  earth's  surface ; 
the  cause  of  low  barometer  in  the  polar  re- 
gions and  in  the  central  part  of  cyclones ; 
the  relation  between  the  barometric  gra- 
dient and  the  velocity  of  the  wind ;  and  re- 
searches on  cyclones,  tornadoes,  and  water- 
spouts. 

Elementary  Botany,  with  Student's  Guide 
to  the  Examination  and  Description  of 
Plants.  By  George  ^Iacloskie,  D.  Sc, 
LL.  D.,  Professor  of  Natural  History  in 
the  J.  C.  Green  School  of  Science,  Prince- 
ton, N.  J.,  and  Medalist  of  Queen's  and 
London  Universities.  New  York :  Henry 
Holt  &  Co.     1883. 

Macloskie's  "  Botany  "  is  a  marked  de- 
parture from  our  cherished  models  of  botan- 
ical  text-books,  and  we  confess  that  it  has 
taken  considerable  time  for  us  to  get  accus- 
tomed to  its  novelty.  It  is  a  wholly  modern 
work,  and  conforms  to  the  revolution  of 
method  that  followed  the  translation  of 
"  Sachs's  Botany,"  from  the  German.  The 
body  of  the  book,  which  is  devoted  to  the 
general  principles  of  the  science,  is  unusu- 


ally free  from  the  technicalities  of  text- 
books. The  treatment  is  very  fresh  and 
interesting,  and  in  his  aim  to  supply  a  read- 
able sketch  of  botany  the  author  has  well 
succeeded. 

As  a  "  guide  to  work  in  the  field  and 
laboratory,"  if  supplemented  by  the  further 
guidance  of  the  master,  the  work  will  no 
doubt  prove  a  success  ;  but  as  a  manual  for 
private  study  it  strikes  us  as  unattractive 
and  unsatisfactory.  But  such  a  use  of  it 
was  probably  not  in  the  author's  mind  in  its 
preparation. 

Many  people  will  object  to  Macloskie's 
innovations  in  descriptive  botany.  If  any- 
thing in  science  is  firmly  settled  it  is  thought 
that  botanical  technology  might  make  the 
claim.  But  our  author  has  not  scrupled  to 
alter  and  amend  its  time-honored  usages; 
yet,  if  improvement  be  a  sufficient  war- 
rant for  change,  we  suspect  that  he  can  jus- 
tify himself.  He  has  certainly  gained  in 
brevity,  if  not  in  greater  precision  of  state- 
ment, by  which  beginners  in  the  study  will 
be  gainers.  Old  botanists,  however,  will  be 
slow  to  adopt  the  new  terms.  We  cordially 
commend  the  volume  to  that  large  class  of 
readers  who  wish  to  know  something  of  the 
fundamental  principles  and  philosophical 
bearings  of  this  important  science. 

The  Sun  changes  its  Position  in  Space, 
therefore  it  can  not  be  regarded  as 
being  "  in  a  Condition  of  Rest,"  By 
August  Tischner.  Leipsic:  Gustav 
Fock.    Pp.  37. 

The  obvious  truth  expressed  in  the  title 
is  used  as  a  basis  of  attack  upon  the  ade- 
quacy of  the  received  theories  of  astrono- 
my. "  The  smallest  movement  of  the  sun," 
says  the  author,  "overthrows  the  entire 
fabric  of  Copernicus."  If  the  sun  is  mov- 
ing, the  orbits  traversed  by  the  planets  can 
not  be  closed  ;  and  the  astronomical  dictum 
that,  with  reference  to  the  planets,  we  may 
regard  the  sun  as  being  in  a  state  of  rest, 
involves  absurdity,  for  it  assumes  a  motion 
which  is  at  rest. 

A  Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians. 
Edited  by  George  Grove,  D.  C,  L.   Parts 
XVII  and  XVIII.      London  and   New 
York  :  Macmillan  &Co.  Pp.  240.  $2. 
The  present  double  part  of  the  "  Diction- 
ary" contains  the  titles  from  "Sketches" 
to  "  Sumcr  is  icumen  in,"  with  the  title-page 


LITERARY  NOTICES, 


849 


and  a  list  of  contributions  to  Volume  III. 
The  article  in  the  midst  of  which  the  part 
opens,  on  "  Sketches,"  is  one  of  great  inter- 
est, and  is  liberally  illustrated  with  musical 
citations.  "  The  Sonata  "  is  fully  consid- 
ered. Forty-eight  pages  are  given  to  the  sub- 
ject of  "Song,"  which  is  treated  historically 
and  systematically  with  reference  to  the 
characteristic  features  of  the  songs  of  differ- 
ent nationalities.  The  work  appears  des- 
tined to  be  one  that  no  musician  will  be  will- 
ing to  be  without. 

Evolution  :  A  Summary  op  Evidence.  By 
Robert  C.  Adams.  New  York:  G.  P. 
Putnam's  Sons.     Pp.  44. 

This  paper  is  the  substance  of  a  lecture 
delivered  in  Montreal,  in  which  the  evidence 
in  favor  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  re- 
viewed and  stated  in  brief  in  a  very  clear 
and  forcible  manner.  Concerning  the  orders 
of  life,  the  author  shows  that  animals  and 
plants  appear  as  they  would  have  done  if 
one  race  sprang  from  another;  that  each 
being  does  spring  from  (embryonic)  forms 
common  to  the  races  below  it ;  and  that  life 
has  appeared  on  the  earth  in  the  order  that 
it  would  have  done  if  each  higher  race  had 
been  developed  from  a  lower  one.  Brief 
consideration  is  also  given  to  the  evolution 
of  mind  and  of  the  universe  as  postulated 
by  the  nebular  hypothesis ;  and,  finally,  the 
author,  admitting  that  evolution  does  not 
solve  all  the  mystery  of  life,  asserts  that  it 
does  not  either  question  the  existence  of 
God,  but  "only  concerns  itself  as  to  the 
manner  in  which  the  Supreme  Power  works, 
and  claims  that  it  acts  through  natural  law, 
and  not  through  miracle. 

Lessons  in  Qualitative  Chemical  Analy- 
sis. By  Dr.  F.  Beilstein.  Translated, 
with  Copious  Additions,  by  Charles  0. 
Curtman,  M.  D.  St.  Louis  Stationery 
and  Book  Co.  1883.  Pp.  164,  and  Thir- 
teen Woodcuts.     Price,  $1.50. 

Dr.  Beilstein's  little  work  is  the  text- 
book in  several  German  and  Russian  uni- 
versities, and  more  than  one  English  trans- 
lation has  already  appeared  in  this  country. 
The  present  translation  differs  essentially 
from  the  previous  ones  in  the  amount  of 
new  matter  added.  The  short  introduction 
on  chemical  manipulations  will  prove  valu- 
able to  the  student  who  is  working  alone  or 
VOL.  xxiv. — 54 


in  laboratories  imperfectly  supplied  with  in- 
structors, and  in  any  case  saves  a  great  deal 
of  oral  teaching  and  demonstration.  Next 
follow  the  special  examples  of  the  original 
with  several  additional  ones,  but  rearranged 
so  as  to  place  the  reactions  for  bases  and 
acids  under  separate  headings,  and  elimi- 
nating those  which  require  too  long  a  time 
in  preparation.  A  new  chapter  is  then  in- 
troduced to  serve  as  a  guide  in  the  various 
practical  examinations  during  the  course. 
An  excellent  table  of  spectra  accompanies 
the  book,  with  a  chapter  on  the  use  of  the 
spectroscope.  Directions  are  also  given  for 
the  detection  of  a  few  organic  substances 
such  as  alcohol,  chloroform,  glucose,  phenol, 
and  the  alkaloids.  The  book  closes  with  a 
chapter  of  thirty-eight  pages  on  volumetric 
analysis,  in  which  very  full  directions  are 
given  for  preparing  test  solutions,  with  de- 
scription of  apparatus  employed.  The  course 
embraced  in  Dr.  Curtman's  book  is  sufficient 
for  physicians  and  others  who  do  not  intend 
to  become  chemists,  while  it  is  a  useful  in- 
troduction to  a  more  thorough  course  for  the 
latter. 

A  Manual  of  Chemistry,  Physical  and  In- 
organic. By  Henry  Watts,  B.  A.,  F. 
R.  S.  Philadelphia :  P.  Blakiston,  Son 
&  Co.     1884.     Pp.  595. 

The  name  of  Watts  is  already  familiar 
to  the  chemists  of  all  countries,  not  only  as 
the  author  of  the  only  complete  dictionary 
of  chemistry  in  the  English  language,  but 
also  as  the  editor  of  the  leading  English 
journals  of  that  science,  "The  Chemical 
News"  and  the  "Journal  of  the  London 
Chemical  Society."  In  1868  Mr.  Watts 
revised  Fowne's  well-known  "Manual  of 
Chemistry,"  and  from  time  to  time  new  edi- 
tions of  that  work  have  appeared  under  his 
editorial  care.  The  book  continued  to  in- 
crease in  size  until  it  became  necessary  to 
divide  it  into  two  volumes,  the  one  contain- 
ing the  inorganic  and  physical  portion,  the 
other  being  devoted  to  organic  chemistry. 
The  work  before  us  is  but  a  new  edition  of 
the  first  volume  of  Fownes's,  having  the  same 
ancient  woodcuts,  and  in  most  cases  the 
same  matter  accompanies  them.  We  notice, 
however,  new  cuts  of  a  Iloltz  machine  and 
a  Ruhmkorff's  coil,  but  none  of  any  modern 
dynamo,  although  the  obsolete  cylinder  ma- 
chine is  still  paraded  before  the  reader.    In 


850 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


matters  more  intimately  associated  with  the 
chemical  laboratory  there  is  less  to  criticise. 
Sprengel's  air-pump  is  illustrated  and  de- 
scribed (Bunsen's  modification  is  not) ;  the 
modern  methods  of  determining  vapor  den- 
sities, devised  by  Ilofmann  and  Victor  Meyer, 
are  illustrated  and  explained.  The  theoreti- 
cal portions  have  been  mostly  rewritten,  and 
many  improvements  are  noticed.  The  order 
of  studying  the  non-metals  has  been  changed 
so  that  the  halogens  precede  oxygen  and 
other  dyads.  The  metals  are  grouped  in 
their  natural  order,  so  that  silver  no  longer 
finds  itself  in  the  same  box  with  sodium,  as 
it  did  in  the  artificial  grouping  according  to 
quantivalence  adopted  in  previous  editions. 

Abstract  of  Report  on  the  Geology  of 
THE  Eureka  District,  Nevada.  By 
Arnold  Hague.  Washington:  Gov- 
ernment Printing-Office.  Pp.  48,  with 
Map  and  Sections. 

The  Eureka  District  embraces  a  region 
about  twenty  miles  square,  situated  on  the 
Nevada  Plateau,  in  Central  Nevada,  midway 
between  the  basins  of  Lake  Lahontan  and 
Lake  Bonneville.  It  is  doubtful,  in  the 
opinion  of  Mr.  Hague,  if  there  is  any  region 
of  equally  restricted  area  in  the  Great 
Basin  that  surpasses  it  in  its  grand  expos- 
ures of  palaeozoic  formations,  especially  of 
the  lower  and  middle  portions  of  the  series. 
It  also  possesses  a  great  economic  interest 
as  the  seat  of  an  active  mining  industry, 
and  has  been,  moreover,  the  center  of  in- 
tense volcanic  action.  It  is  therefore  se- 
lected for  a  more  careful  survey  and  study 
than  had  heretofore  been  given  to  any  re- 
gion of  sedimentary  rocks  in  Nevada.  The 
results  of  this  survey  and  study  are  recorded 
in  the  present  memoir. 

United  States  Geological  Survey.    Sec- 
ond Annual  Report,  1«80-'81.     Pp.  688, 
with  61  riat<'s;  Third   Annual  Report, 
1881-'82.     Pp.  564,  with  32  Plates.    By 
J.  W.  Powell,  Director.     "Washington : 
Government  Printing-Office. 
Many  of  the  special  papers  included  in 
the  second  volume  of  the  report  have  al- 
ready been  noticed  in  the  "Monthly,"  as 
monographs.     The  whole  list  includes  Cap- 
tain   Dutton's   "  Tertiary   History    of    the 
Grand  Canon  District,"  Mr.  Gilbert's  "  His- 
tory  of    Lake    Bonneville,"    Mr.    Hague's 
"Geology  of  the  Eureka  District,"  Mr.  S. 


F.Emmons's  "Geology  of  Leadville,"  Mr. 
G.  F.  Becker's  "  Geology  of  the  Comstock 
Lode,"  Professor  Pumpelly's  "  Statistics  of 
Coal  and  Iron,"  Dr.  Irving's  Copper-bear- 
ing Rocks  of  Lake  Superior,"  Mr.  Clarence 
King's  "  Precious  Metal  Statistics,"  Mr. 
Eliot  Lord's  "  History  of  the  Comstock 
Lode,"  and  Mr.  G.  K.  Gilbert's  "  New  Meth- 
od of  Hypsometry."  The  other  volume 
(third  report)  contains  papers  on "  Birds 
with  Teeth,"  by  Professor  0.  C.  Marsh; 
"  The  Copper-bearing  Rocks  of  Lake  Supe- 
rior," by  Roland  D.  Irving  ;  the  "  Geologi- 
cal History  of  Lake  Lahontan,"  by  Israel  C. 
Russell ;  "  The  Geology  of  the  Eureka  Dis- 
trict, Nevada,"  by  Arnold  Hague ;  a  pre- 
liminary paper  "  On  the  Terminal  Moraine 
of  the  Second  Glacial  Epoch,"  by  Thomas 
C.  Chamberlin ;  and  "  A  Review  of  the 
Non-Marine  Fossil  Mollusca  of  North  Ameri- 
ca," by  Dr.  C.  A.  White. 

The  Natural  Genesis.  By  Gerald  Mas- 
SEY.  New  York :  Scribner  &  Welford. 
2  vols.  Pp.  552  and  535. 
Mr.  Massey  has  given  his  critics  a  hard 
task  to  perform.  He  states  that  Mr.  Alfred 
Russel  Wallace,  having  read  the  previous 
volumes  of  his  scries,  expressed  the  fear 
that  there  might  not  be  a  score  of  people  in 
England  who  were  prepared  by  their  pre- 
vious education  to  understand  the  book  ; 
and  he  intimates  that  few  of  its  review- 
ers could  be  included  among  that  number. 
Herr  Pietschmann,  a  German  Egyptologist, 
was  startled  by  the  "  unheard-of  sugges- 
tions "  the  book  contained,  and  thought  it 
was  "  inspired  by  an  unrestrained  lust  for 
discovery."  "  The  Natural  Genesis  "  is  the 
second  part  of  "  A  Book  of  the  Beginnings," 
of  which  two  volumes  had  previously  been 
published,  the  whole  containing  "an  at- 
tempt to  recover  and  reconstitute  the  lost 
origins  of  the  myths  and  mysteries,  types 
and  symbols,  religion  and  language,  with 
Egypt  for  the  mouth-piece  and  Africa  as 
the  birthplace."  It  is  written  "  by  an  evo- 
lutionist for  evolutionists,"  is  intended  to 
trace  the  natural  origins  and  teach  the  doc- 
trine of  development,  and  is  based  upon  the 
new  matter  supplied  by  the  ancient  monu- 
ments. The  predominant  argument  of  the 
book  is,  that  Africa  and  not  Asia  was  the 
birthplace  of  articulate  man,  and  therefore 
1  the  primordial  home  of  all  things  human; 


LITERARY  NOTICES. 


85: 


and  that  the  human  race  and  human  develop- 
ment started  from  the  interior  of  the  dai'k 
continent,  and  went  out  down  the  Nile  and 
through  Egypt,  confessedly  the  oldest  civil- 
ized nation,  to  all  the  quarters  of  the  earth. 
As  a  corollary  to  this,  all  customs,  all 
myths,  all  civilization,  all  speech,  and  all  re- 
ligion, had  their  origin  in  Egypt,  and  are 
traceable  directly  back  there.  Another  corol- 
lary is  that  all  the  sociological  science  and 
comparative  philology  that  have  been  built 
up  on  the  theory  of  a  primitive  Aryan  race 
and  civilization  and  language  are  idle  specu- 
lations, except  as  these  Aryan  institutions 
are  admitted  to  be  children  of  the  Egyptians. 
The  Christian  religion  also  suffers  at  Mr. 
Massey's  hands ;  for  this  work,  to  use  his 
own  language,  *'  culminates  in  tracing  the 
transformation  of  astronomical  mythology 
into  the  system  of  equinoctial  Christology 
called  Christianity,  and  demonstrating  the 
non-historic  nature  of  the  canonical  gospels 
by  means  of  the  original  myths  in  which 
the  Messianic  mystery,  the  Virgin  mother- 
hood, the  incarnation  and  birth,  the  miracu- 
lous life  and  character,  the  crucifixion  and 
resurrection  of  the  Saviour  Son,  who  was 
the  Word  of  all  ages,  were  altogether  alle- 
gorical." Having  devoted  a  dozen  years  ex- 
clusively to  his  work,  Mr.  Massey  has  been 
able  to  bring  to  his  aid  a  vast  amount  of 
learning,  and  has  used  it  with  considerable 
ingenuity.  His  text  abounds  with  interest- 
ing facts  and  citations  not  to  be  found 
elsewhere  in  a  whole  library,  and  with  skill- 
ful applications.  If  his  conclusions  do  not 
carry  conviction,  it  is  not  for  lack  of  bravery 
and  address  on  the  part  of  their  champion. 

On  the  Contents  of  a  Bone-Cave  in  the 
Island  op  Anguilla  (West  Indies). 
By  Edward  D.  Cope.  Washington: 
Smithsonian  Institution.  Pp.  30,  with 
Five  Plates. 

Attention  was  first  called  to  the  inter- 
esting bone-deposit  described  in  this  memoir 
in  1868,  when  a  load  of  the  cave-earth  was 
brought  to  Philadelphia  as  a  fertilizing  ma- 
terial, and  the  bones  were  examined  by 
Professor  Cope.  Together  with  the  bones 
was  found  a  chisel  of  human  manufacture, 
made  from  a  shell.  The  quantity  of  ani- 
mal remains  in- the  deposit  and  their  dimen- 
sions point  to  the  former  existence  of  a 
more  extensive  and  larger  fauna  than  the 


island  as  it  now  stands  could  have  supported. 
This  fact  is  regarded  as  confirmatory  of  the 
hypothesis  that  the  Antilles  were  once  con- 
nected by  ranges  which  have  been  sub- 
merged since  Pliocene  times.  In  the  light 
of  these  facts,  Professor  Cope  claims  that 
the  study  is  of  importance,  because  it  is  the 
first  investigation  of  the  life  of  the  cave  age 
in  the  West  Indies;  because  it  gives  the 
first  reUable  indication  of  the  period  of  the 
submergence  by  which  the  islands  were 
separated ;  because  it  furnishes  the  first 
evidence  as  to  the  antiquity  of  man  there  ; 
and  because  it  describes  some  peculiar  forms 
of  life  not  previously  known. 

Cruise  of  the  Revenue  Steamer  Corwin 
IN  Alaska  and  the  Northwest  Arctic 
Ocean,  in  1881.  Notes  and  Memoranda. 
Washington :  Government  Printing-Of- 
fice.    Pp.  120. 

The  notes  include  a  very  interesting 
paper  by  Dr.  Irving  C.  Rosse,  on  the  medi- 
cal features  of  the  expedition,  with  anthro- 
pological memoranda  respecting  the  Esqui- 
maux, and  the  effects  of  the  Arctic  climate 
on  the  members  of  the  expedition  and  the 
natives  ;  botanical  observations,  by  Mr.  John 
Muir ;  description  of  the  birds  of  Behring 
Sea  and  the  Arctic  Ocean,  by  E.  W.  Nel- 
son ;  and  a  list  of  fishes,  by  Tarleton  H. 
Bean.  The  text  is  illustrated  with  heliotj'pe 
and  colored  lithographic  plates. 

Report  on  the  Otster-Beds  op  the  James 
River,  Virginia,  and  op  Tangier  and 
PocoMOKE  Sounds,  Maryland  and  Vir- 
ginia. 1881.  By  Francis  Winslow, 
U.  S.  N.  Washington:  Government 
Printing-office.     Pp.  87,  with  Plates. 

This  monograph  is  one  of  the  series  of 
"  Methods  and  Results  "  of  the  United  States 
Coast  and  Geodetic  Survey.  In  it.  Captain 
Winslow  presents  the  results  of  an  inves- 
tigation which  he  was  ordered  in  1878  to 
make  with  the  schooner  Palinurus,  and 
which  should  include  the  determination  of 
the  positions  and  areas  of  the  oyster-beds 
and  the  depth  of  water  over  them,  at  both 
high  and  low  water;  the  determination  of 
the  character  of  the  beds,  whether  natural 
or  artificial,  and  how  the  oysters  were  dis- 
tributed ;  the  determination  of  the  tempera- 
tures of  the  surface  and  bottom  water,  and 
the  velocity  of  currents;  the  preservation 
of  specimens  of  oysters  ;  the  determination 


852 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


of  the  characters  of  bottoms  and  of  the  ex- 
istence of  any  sediment  or  deposit ;  of  the 
sources  of  sediment  and  the  means  of  turn- 
ing it  away ;  the  examination  of  the  effects 
of  ice  on  the  beds ;  and  the  determination 
of  the  density  of  the  water,  with  special  ref- 
erence to  tlie  displacement  of  salt  water  by 
fresh  water  from  adjacent  streams  and  riv- 
ers. The  plan  of  the  work  was  to  make 
the  investigation  exhaustive  over  a  limited 
area,  and  extend  it  afterward  as  circum- 
stances should  permit.  The  results  are 
given  in  the  present  memoir. 

Explosive  Materials.  By  M.  P.  E.  Ber- 
THELOT.  Translated  from  the  French  by 
Marcus  Benjamin.  New  York :  D.  Van 
Nostrand.  (Science  Series.)  1883.  Pp. 
180.  Price,  50  cents. 
In  these  lectures  M.  Berthelot  has 
summed  up  the  results  of  his  researches  upon 
explosives,  and  indicated  the  theory  of  their 
action  which  they  seem  to  him  to  warrant. 
He  is  mainly  concerned  in  considering  how 
an  explosive  is  set  in  operation  by  means 
of  shock,  and  reaches  the  conclusion  that  in 
all  cases,  whether  the  explosive  influence  be 
propagated  from  particle  to  particle  of  an 
explosive,  or  from  one  explosive  body  to  an- 
other, not  in  contact  with  it,  the  action  con- 
sists in  the  transformation  of  the  energy  of 
the  shock  into  heat.  Before  an  explosion 
can  occur,  some  portion  of  the  substance 
must  be  raised  to  the  temperature  necessary 
for  the  chemical  reaction  between  its  con- 
stituents. That  this  temperature  should  be 
reached,  it  is  necessary  that  the  impact  be 
sudden,  as  otherwise  the  transformation  into 
heat  will  take  place  so  slowly  that  this  heat 
will  be  distributed  through  too  great  a  mass 
of  material  to  raise  its  temperature  to  the 
requisite  point.  The  explosion  of  one  par- 
ticle of  the  substance  produces  a  sudden 
pressure,  the  energy  of  which,  transformed 
into  heat,  causes  the  next  particle  to  explode, 
and  soon,  the  disturbance  being  thus  prop- 
agated through  the  entire  mass  of  the  ex- 
plosive.  M.  Berthelot  rejects  the  synchro- 
nous theory  of  explosions  by  influence — 
where  a  body  is  exploded  by  another  at  a 
distance — of  Abel,  holding  that  the  theory 
of  transformation  of  mechanical  energy  into 
heat,  and  the  retransformation  of  this  into 
mechanical  energy,  is  competent  to  explain 
all  the  phenomena.     In  discussing  the  con- 


ditions of  maximum  effect  in  explosion,  he 
points  out  the  reason  for  the  extremely  low 
velocity  of  propagation  of  the  explosive  wave 
in  gases,  obtained  by  Bunsen,  and  shows  that 
this  in  reality  moves  with  great  rapidity. 

Mr.  Benjamin's  translation  appears  to  be 
accurate,  and,  despite  occasional  roughness, 
is  fairly  well  done.  The  volume  contains 
also  a  short  historical  sketch  of  gunpowder, 
translated  from  the  German  of  Karl  Braun, 
and  a  bibliography  of  works  on  explosives. 

The  Ores  of  Leadville  and  their  Modes 
OF  Occurrence,  as  illustrated  in  the 
Morning  and  Evening  Star  Mines. 
With  a  Chapter  on  the  Methods  of  their 
Extraction  as  practiced  at  those  Mines. 
By  Louis  D.  Ricketts,  B.  S.,  Princeton, 
N.  J.     Pp.  68,  with  Six  Plates. 

The  author,  in  order  to  comply  with  the 
requirements  of  the  W.  S,  "Ward  Fellowship 
in  Economic  Geology,  in  connection  with 
Princeton  College,  devoted  four  months  at 
Leadville  to  the  study  of  the  ores  and  their 
modes  of  occurrence,  and  to  the  extraction 
of  the  ores  in  the  mines  named  in  the  title 
we  have  cited.  The  result  of  this  study  is 
given  in  the  present  paper,  of  which  the 
first  part  considers  the  scientific  and  the 
second  part  the  practical  side. 

J.  A.  Berly's  British,  American,  and  Con- 
tinental Electrical  Directory  and  Ad- 
vertiser. London :  William  Dawson 
&  Sons ;  New  York :  George  Gumming, 
219  East  Eighteenth  Street.  Pp.  664. 
Price,  $2.50. 

This  volume,  which  embodies  a  record 
of  all  the  industries  directly  or  indirectly 
connected  with  electricity  and  magnetism, 
and  the  names  and  addresses  of  manufac- 
turers in  England,  the  United  States,  Cana- 
da, and  the  European  Continent,  is  a  valu- 
able book  of  reference  for  all  persons  inter- 
ested in  electrical  art.  The  increased  size 
and  importance  of  this,  the  second  edition, 
over  the  volume  published  a  year  previously, 
which  was  chiefly  limited  to  England,  is  one 
of  many  signs  of  the  rapidly  expanding  de- 
velopment of  the  applications  of  electricity. 
Another  similar  sign  is  afforded  by  the  va- 
riety of  trades — some  of  them  appearing 
at  first  sight  only  very  remotely  related  to 
electricity — that  have  been  included  within 
its  scope.  The  relation  is  nevertheless  real, 
for  all  these  trades  have  been  brought  in  to 


LITERARY  NOTICES, 


853 


comply  with  some  demand.  A  brief,  com- 
prehensive record  of  the  progress  in  the 
applications  of  electricity  and  of  events 
illustrating  it,  during  1882,  adds  value  to 
the  work.  Classified  indexes  are  provided, 
and  reference  is  further  facilitated  by  dif- 
ferences in  the  coloring  of  the  leaf-edges  of 
the  several  departments. 

ReCHERCHES  StJR  LA  STRUCTURE  DE  QUELQUES 
DiATOMEES  CONTENUES  DANS  LE  "  CeMENT- 

STEiN  "  DU  Jutland  (Researches  on  the 
Structure  of  some  Diatoms  contained  in 
the  "  Cementstein  "  of  Jutland).  By  MM. 
W.  Prinz  and  E.  Van  Ermengen.  Brus- 
sels :  A.  Manceaux.  Pp.  '74,  with  Four 
Plates. 

A  record  of  a  minute  and  careful  ex- 
amination of  the  curious  organic  structures 
designated,  of  particular  interest  to  micro- 
scopists  and  students  of  the  Diato^nacce. 
The  authors  claim,  moreover,  a  kind  of  edu- 
cational interest  and  utility  for  studies  of  the 
class  to  which  this  one  belongs,  because  ac- 
quaintance with  the  exact  forms  of  the  va- 
ried and  delicate  designs  that  adorn  the  si- 
liceous envelopes  of  the  microscopic  algoe 
facilitates  the  interpretation  of  similar  im- 
ages that  appear  in  other  microscopic  inves- 
tigations, and  furnishes  a  safeguard  against 
the  causes  of  error  and  illusions  to  which 
microscopists  are  exposed  from  the  presenta- 
tion of  figures  under  their  instruments  which 
do  not  conform  to  the  reality. 

Geological  Survey  of  Alabama.  Report 
for  1881  and  1882.  By  Eugene  Allen 
Smith,  Ph.  D.,  State  Geologist.  Mont- 
gomery, Alabama :  W.  D.  Brown  &  Co. 
Pp.  614,  with  Maps. 

The  present  volume  of  the  reports  is 
devoted  chiefly  to  an  account  of  the  agricult- 
ural features  of  the  State.  The  author  was 
commissioned  to  prepare  the  cotton  report  of 
Alabama  in  connection  with  the  tenth  cen- 
sus, and  by  joining  the  two  works  has  been 
able  to  make  both  more  complete  than  he 
could  have  made  either  separately.  Special 
attention  is  given  to  the  descriptions  of  the 
soils,  as  to  the  State  and  by  counties,  of  tim- 
ber-trees and  other  plants,  and  to  cotton  pro- 
duction. Excellent  graphic,  colored  maps 
are  inserted,  showing  the  soils,  the  rainfall 
and  temperature  by  the  seasons  and  by  the 
year,  and  the  percentages  of  land  in  differ- 
ent parts  of  the  State  cultivated  in  cotton. 


First  Annual  Report  on  the  Injurious  and 
OTHER  Insects  of  the  State  of  New  York. 
By  J.  A.  Lintner,  State  Entomologist. 
Albany :  Weed,  Parsons  &  Co.     Pp.  383. 

Dr.  Lintner  has  given  a  large  amount  of 
information  on  the  subject  of  his  report. 
Beginning  with  an  exposition  of  the  impor- 
tance  of  entomological  study,  he  considers 
the  extent  of  insect  depredations  and  the 
losses  from  them,  particularly  in  the  United 
States,  the  immense  number  of  insects,  and 
the  necessity,  for  the  sake  of  contending 
with  them,  of  acquiring  knowledge  of  their 
habits.  He  then  reviews  the  progress  that 
has  been  made  in  economic  entomology, 
estimates  the  value  of  the  various  insecti- 
cides  that  have  been  introduced  and  of  other 
remedies  for  and  preventives  of  insect  dep- 
redations, after  which  he  furnishes  descrip- 
tions and  life-histories  of  the  more  injurious 
insects.  Among  the  preventives  of  insect 
depredations  suggested  by  Dr.  Lintner  is  one 
which  we  believe  is  new :  it  depends  upon 
the  theory  that  insects  are  attracted  to  the 
plants  they  infest  by  the  odor,  and  consists 
in  the  use  of  some  substance  by  which  that 
odor  may  be  overcome  or  neutralized. 

Hints  on  the  Drainage  and  Sewerage  of 
Dwellings.  By  William  Paul  Ger- 
hard, Civil  Engineer.  New  York :  Will- 
iam T.  Comstock,  G  Astor  Place.  1884. 
Pp.  302.     Price,  $2.50. 

This  little  work  has  grown  out  of  a  se- 
ries of  articles  contributed  by  the  author, 
under  the  signature  "  Hippocrates,"  to  the 
periodical  "  Building."  Its  object  is  to  give 
an  account  of  the  usual  condition  in  which 
plumbing-work  done  years  ago,  and  some 
quite  recently  done,  may  be  found,  and  to 
give  suggestions  on  the  proper  manner  of 
doing  the  work.  A  valuable  report  on  "Filth 
Diseases  and  their  Prevention,"  by  medical 
officer  John  Simon,  of  Great  Britain,  and 
other  works  on  dwelling-house  sanitation  are 
referred  to  to  fortify  conclusions.  The  book 
is  frequently  illustrated  with  examples  of 
bad  work  to  be  avoided  and  of  good  work  to 
be  patterned  after. 

The  Trichiniasis  Question. — D.  Ap- 
plcton  &  Co.,  of  New  York,  will  publish 
shortly  a  work  on  "  The  Relation  of  Animal 
Diseases  to  the  Public  Health,  and  their 


854 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 


Prevention,"  by  Frank  S.  Billings,  V.  S., 
Boston.  The  trichiniasis  question,  now  a 
snbjeet  of  congressional  investigation,  is 
fully  discussed  by  the  author,  whose  re- 
searches on  this  subject  have  been  thorough 
and  long  continued.  He  has  also  compiled 
many  valuable  statistics  having  a  direct 
bearing  on  the  question,  and  which  are  con- 
tained in  no  other  volume  in  the  English 
language.  The  book  should  be  read  by  all 
who  have  an  interest  in  the  settlement  of 
this  most  important  question. 


PUBLICATIONS  EECEIVED. 

The  Correspondence  University :  Announcement 
for  1864,  January.  Ithaca,  N.  Y. :  Lucien  A.  Wait. 
Pp.  about  50. 

Archaiological  Excursions  in  "Wisconsin  and  Ohio. 
By  F.  W.  Putnam.    Pp.  16. 

Massachusetts  Agricultural  College :  Twenty-first 
Annual  Keport.  Boston  :  Wright  and  Potter  Print- 
ing Company.    Pp.  73. 

Pilot  Chart  of  the  North  Atlantic  for  Fehruary, 
with  Supplement  of  3  pages  showing  position  and 
detail  of  floating  wrecks. 

Inaugural  Addresses  of  Stephen  A.  Walker, 
President  of  Board  of  Education,  etc.,  of  the  City  of 
New  York.    Pp.  22. 

Beitrag  zur  Kenntniss  der  Kobalt,-  Nickel,-  und 
Eisen-Kiese.  (Contribution  to  the  Knowledge  of 
Cobalt,  Nickel,  and  Iron  Stones.)  By  Leroy  W. 
McCay,  M.  A.    Freiberg  (Saxony).    Pp.  46. 

Out-Door  Relief,  State  of  New  York  :  Report  of 
Standing  Committee.     Albany,  N.  Y.    Pp.  15. 

New  York  State  Board  of  Charities  :  Report  on 
Establishment  of  a  State  A.'ylum  for  Indigent  Blind. 
Albany,  N.Y.    Pp.9. 

Yalue  of  the  Nearctic  as  one  of  the  Primary  Zoo- 
logical Regions:  Reply  to  Criticisms.  By  Professor 
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Radiation  :  A  Fimction  of  Gravity.  By  I.  E. 
Craig.    Camden,  Ohio.    Pp.  21. 

Renal  Circulation  during  Fever.  By  Walter 
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Bulletin  of  the  BuflTalo  Society  of  Natural  Sci- 
ences. Vol.  IV,  No.  4.  Julius  Pdhlman.  M.  D., 
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Connecticut  Agricultural  Experiment  Station: 
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120 

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de  Leon.  No.  5.  New  York :  N.  Ponce  de  Leon. 
Pp.  49.    50  cents. 

"  Reception -Dav."  No.  8.  (Readings  and  Recita- 
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Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology  :  Annual 
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lishing Company,     Pp.  ICO.    30  cents. 

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The  World's  Industrial  Cotton  Centennial  Ex- 
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Administrative  Organization.  By  LL.  B.  Wash- 
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Merv :  A  Story  of  Adventures  and  Captivity. 
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nails. 


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:  A 
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Momn  and  the  Diary  of  a  Superstitious  Man. 
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New  York:  Funk  &  Wagnalls.  1SS4.  Pp.  181. 
75  cents. 

Prusias :  A  Romance  of  Ancient  Rome.  By 
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ods. By  Lewis  M.  Haupt,  C.  K.  New  York  :  J. 
M.  Stoddart.    18S3.    Pp.  184.    Illustrated, 

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nett.    1884.    Pp.214. 

First  Annual  Report  of  the  Provincial  Board  of 
Health  of  Ontario.  Toronto  :  C.  Blackett  Robinson. 
1S88.    Pp.187. 

Journal  of  Proceedings  and  Addresses  of  the  Na- 
tional Educational  Association  of  the  United  States, 
Session  of  1883.  Boston:  J.  E.  Farwell  &  Co. 
printers.    1884.    Pp.210. 

Record  of  Family  Faculties,  consisting  of  Tabu- 
lar Forms  and  Directions  for  entering  Data,  pp. 
62,  90  cents ;  and  Life-History  Album.  By  Francis 
Galton,  F.  R.  8.  London  :  Macmillan  &  Ca  1884. 
Pp.172.    $1.25. 

Bacteria.  Bv  Dr.  Antoine  Magnin  and  George 
M.  Sternberg,  M,  D.  New  York:  William  Wood 
&Co.     1884.     Pp.454, 

A  Svstem  of  Rhetoric,  Bv  C.  W.  Bardeen.  New 
York  :  A.  S.  Barnes  .t  Co.    "lS84.     Pp.  673.     $1.50. 

Life  and  Times  of  the  Right  Hon.  John  Bright. 
Bv  William  Robertson.  London  and  2<ewYork: 
Cassell  &L  Co.    Pp.  688.    $2.50. 

The  Unitv  of  Nature.  By  the  Duke  of  Argyll. 
New  York  :  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  1884.  Pp.  671. 
$2.50. 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


855 


POPULAR   MISCELLANY. 

DnraWlity  of  Building  -  Stones.  —  Dr. 

Alexis  A.  Julien  has  made  examinations  of 
buildings  of  various  ages,  and  of  tombstones 
in  some  of  tiie  older  grave-yards  around 
New  York  city,  to  assist  in  determining  the 
durability  of  the  various  stones  used  in 
building.  The  coarse  brown-stone,  which 
is  largely  employed,  appears  to  be  one  of 
the  most  perishable  materials  in  use,  so 
that  many  builders  are  returning  to  brick, 
although  the  finer  varieties  of  brown-stone 
are  better  and  compare  favorably  with  other 
materials.  Among  the  causes  for  the  decay 
of  this  stone  are  mentioned,  erection  on 
the  edge  of  lamination,  the  heat  of  the 
sun  on  exposed  sides,  and  imperfect  point- 
ing, with  poor  mortar,  which  falls  away 
and  leaves  the  joints  exposed  to  the 
■weather.  The  presence  of  sea-salt  in  the 
atmosphere  has  exerted  no  appreciable  ef- 
fect, and  lichens  growing  on  the  stone  do 
not  appear  to  have  occasioned  any  decay  or 
corrosion.  The  light-colored  Nova  Scotia 
sandstones  have  been  too  recently  intro- 
duced to  show  marked  defect,  but  evidences 
of  exfoliation  and  of  slight  moldering  in 
damp  spots  have  begun  to  appear.  Build- 
ings constructed  of  the  Amherst  (Ohio)  sand- 
stone show  little  decay,  only  discoloration; 
and  that  is  regarded  as  a  favorable  sign 
rather  than  otherwise,  for  it  indicates  dura- 
bility, while  a  stone  that  cleans  itself  does 
so  by  disintegration  of  its  surface,  the 
grains  dropping  out  and  carrying  away  the 
dirt.  The  coarse  fossiliferous  limestone 
from  Lockport  has  disintegrated  rapidly 
within  the  last  ten  years,  chiefly  on  account 
of  careless  arrangement  in  masonry.  The 
oolitic  stone  from  Ellettsville,  Indiana,  shows 
an  almost  immediate  and  irregular  discolor- 
ation, said  to  be  produced  by  the  exudation 
of  oil.  The  oolite  from  Caen,  France,  has 
shown  decay  in  several  instances  where  it 
was  not  protected  by  paint.  The  dolomitic 
marble  of  Westchester  County  has  decayed 
considerably  after  sixty  years  of  use,  but 
much  of  this  is  owing  to  the  stone  having 
been  improperly  laid.  Often  marbles,  of 
various  kinds,  in  tombstones,  are  in  fairly 
good  condition.  Horizontal  slabs  show  a 
tendency  to  bend.  The  frequent  oblitera- 
tion of  inscriptions,  the  general  and  often 


rapid  granulation  of  the  surface,  and  the 
occasional  Assuring  of  slabs,  show  that  the 
decay  of  marble — in  the  varieties  hitherto 
long  used  in  New  York  city — is  steady,  in- 
evitable, and  but  a  question  of  time ;  and, 
if  unprotected,  this  material  is  likely  to 
prove  utterly  unsuitable  for  out-of-door  use, 
at  least  for  decorative  purposes  or  cemete- 
ry records,  within  the  atmosphere  of  a  city. 
A  blue-stone,  or  graywacke,  is  yearly  com- 
ing into  more  general  use,  and,  though  some- 
what somber  in  tone  and  difficult  to  dress, 
seems  likely  to  prove  a  material  of  remark- 
able durability.  The  bluish  Quincy  granite 
has  been  used  in  many  buildings,  and  rarely 
shows  as  yet  many  signs  of  decay.  A  fine- 
grained granite  from  Concord,  New  Hamp- 
shire, also  promises  to  be  durable.  The 
light-colored  and  fine-grained  granite  of  Hal- 
lowell,  Maine,  in  which  the  white  feldspar 
predominates,  has  shown  some  exfoliation, 
but  in  the  single  building  in  which  this  is 
remarked  the  stones  appear  to  have  been 
set  on  edge,  and,  as  their  structure  is  lami- 
nated, that  is  an  important  matter.  "  The 
weathering  of  granite  does  not  proceed  by 
a  merely  superficial  wear,  which  can  be 
measured  or  limited  by  fractions  of  an  inch, 
but  by  a  deep  insinuation  along  the  lines 
of  weakness,  between  grains,  through  cleav- 
age-planes, and  into  latent  fissures.  Thus, 
long  before  the  surface  has  become  much 
corroded  or  removed,  a  deep  disintegration 
has  taken  place  by  which  large  fragments 
are  ready  for  separation  by  frost,  from  the 
edges  and  angles  of  a  block.  When  directly 
exposed  to  the  heat  of  the  sun,  an  addi- 
tional agency  of  destruction  is  involved, 
and  the  stone  is  suddenly  found  ready  to 
exfoliate,  layer  after  layer,  concentrical- 
ly." The  following  is  an  approximative 
estimate  of  the  "life"  of  different  kinds 
of  stone,  signifying  by  the  term  life,  without 
regard  to  discoloration  or  other  objectiona- 
ble qualities,  merely  the  period  after  which 
the  incipient  decay  of  the  variety  becomes 
sufficiently  offensive  to  the  eye  to  demand 
repair  or  renewal :  coarse  brown-stone,  five 
to  fifteen  years ;  laminated  fine  brown-stone, 
twenty  to  fifty  years ;  compact  fine  brown- 
stone,  one  hundred  to  two  hundred  years ; 
blue-stone,  untried,  probably  centuries;  Nova 
Scotia  stone,  untried,  perhaps  fifty  to  two 
hundred  years ;   Ohio  sandstone  (best  sili- 


856 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


ceous  variety),  perhaps  from  one  to  many 
centuries ;  coarse  fossiliferous  limestone, 
twenty  to  forty  years ;  fine  oolitic  (French) 
limestone,  thirty  to  forty  years ;  fine  oolitic 
(American)  limestone,  untried  here;  coarse 
dolomite  marble,  forty  years  ;  fine  dolomite 
marble,  sixty  to  eighty  years ;  fine  marble, 
fifty  to  two  hundred  years ;  granite,  seventy- 
five  to  two  hundred  years ;  gneiss,  fifty 
years  to  many  centuries.  Many  of  the  best 
building-stones  in  the  country  have  never 
yet  been  brought  to  the  city. 

Peroxide  of  Hydrogen.  — Peroxide  of 

hydrogen,  though  it  was  discovered  in  1818, 
has  only  recently,  by  the  aid  of  cheapened 
processes  of  preparation,  come  into  general 
use.  When  pure,  it  is  a  colorless  liquid, 
which  in  decomposing  gives  off  four  hundred 
and  seventy-five  times  its  volume  of  oxygen. 
Diluted  solutions  of  it,  kept  in  the  dark 
at  a  temperature  of  not  more  than  80°,  may 
be  preserved  for  a  very  long  time  without 
decomposing.  It  is  obtainable  pure,  in 
large  quantities,  and  cheaply,  in  solutions 
of  three  per  cent  by  weight  or  ten  per  cent 
by  volume  ;  and  it  has  come  into  extensive 
use  as  a  bleaching  agent,  for  disinfection, 
household  purposes,  and  the  toilet.  It  is 
the  really  operative  agent  in  air-bleaching 
on  the  grass,  which  has  been  in  use  from  time 
immemorial,  and  is  well  adapted  for  bleach- 
ing substances  of  animal  origin,  in  which 
chlorine  agents  often  fail.  In  using  it  the 
substance  to  be  bleached  must  first  be  care- 
fully cleansed  from  dirt  and  oil.  It  may 
be  applied  as  a  bath  in  the  shape  of  a 
weakly  acid  solution  neutralized  with  a  few 
drops  of  ammonia,  or  the  substance  may  be 
dipped  in  it,  and  afterward  slowly  dried  in 
the  air.  As  the  water  evaporates,  the  con- 
centration of  the  peroxide  of  hydrogen  in- 
creases, and  the  bleaching  goes  on  more 
energetically.  Dumas  and  Pettenkofer  have 
applied  peroxide  of  hydrogen  with  much 
success  and  satisfaction  to  the  clean- 
ing of  oil-paintings  and  engravings.  This 
substance  has  recently  been  found  to  be 
one  of  the  most  valuable  and  effective  dis- 
infecting agents.  In  the  household  it  has 
proved  to  be  equal  to  the  best  of  other 
known  substances  for  purposes  of  washing 
and  cleansing  the  person.  It  is  adapted  to 
the  most  tender  skins.     It  has  been  pro- 


nounced preferable  as  a  tooth-wash  to  all 
powders  and  to  all  other  preparations  which 
do  not  depend  upon  it.  In  bathing,  with 
the  addition  of  a  drop  or  two  of  hartshorn, 
it  quickly  disintegrates  and  removes  the 
dead  skin  without  affecting  the  living  tissue, 
except  to  make  it  more  healthy  and  hardy. 
It  is  a  salutary  hair-wash,  provided  the  hair 
has  been  prepared  for  it  by  previous  wash- 
ing with  soap  or  spirit.  Professors  Alex. 
Classen  and  0.  Bauer  have  found  it  a  pow- 
erful agent  in  analytical  chemistry. — Die 
Natur. 

Fact  and  Fancy  regarding  Fingal's  Cave. 

— At  the  Montreal  meeting  of  the  American 
Association  in  1882,  Mr.  F.  Cope  Whitehouse 
offered  a  paper  on  "  The  Caves  of  Staffa, 
and  their  Connection  with  the  Ancient  Civ- 
ilization of  lona."  The  Committee  on  Pa- 
pers, having  heard  Mr.  Whitehouse  in  ex- 
position of  his  views,  and  examined  his 
maps  and  drawings,  and  the  testimonials 
which  he  was  able  to  produce  from  men  of 
authority  in  science,  adjudged  that  there 
were  sufficient  merit  and  originality  in  his 
paper  to  justify  giving  it  a  hearing.  The 
article  was  also  regarded  by  us  of  enough 
interest  to  be  given  to  the  readers  of 
"  The  Popular  Science  Monthly "  in  De- 
cember, 1882  ;  and  a  summary  of  it  was 
published  in  "Notes  and  Queries,"  Decem- 
ber 28,  1883.  In  it  the  author,  regarding 
the  situation  of  the  Island  of  Staffa,  which 
is  shown  in  the  map,  the  character  of  its 


J 

,-^"^- 

.« 

^^^f'-^fej^px 

rocks,  the  form  of  Fingal's  Cave,  and  the 
shape  and  direction  of  its  exposure,  con- 
cluded that  it  was  extremely  unlikely  that 
the  cave  could  have  been  hollowed  out 
by  the  natural  action  of  the  waves,  and 
suggested  the  question  whether  it  might 
not  have  been  artificially  excavated.  The 
paper    has   not    yet   been   adequately  an- 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


857 


swered.  But  the  author  was  held  up  to 
ridicule,  in  a  leading  article  in  "  Nature  "  of 
January  25,  1883,  as  the  victim  of  "  a  thirst 
for  scientific  renown,"  who  knew  nothing 
of  the  subject  concerning  which  he  had 
given  the  result  of  his  studies,  but  had 
succeeded  in  imposing  himself  upon  a  re- 
spectable scientific  body,  and  upon  a  scien- 
tific journal.  Mr.  Whitehouse  has  taken 
his  time  to  answer  this  attack,  and  has 
replied  to  it  with  vigor  and  to  the  point 
in  a  late  number  of  the  "  Manhattan." 
Setting  by  the  side  of  one  another  photo- 
graphs of  the  Island  of  Staffa  and  Fingal's 
Cave,  and  the  representations  of  them  given 
in  the  current  works  on  geology,  he  shows 
that  a  wonderful  ignorance  of  what  they 
are  like  exists  in  the  scientific  mind,  and  is 
transmitted  to  students.  German  works  ex- 
hibit a  structure  supposed  to  have  been  ex- 
posed for  millions  of  years  to  waves  capable 
of  hollowing  out  two  hundred  and  twenty- 
eight  feet  of  basalt,  and  open  at  both  ends, 
which  Fingal's  Cave  is  not,  compared  with 
which  "a  wall  of  bricks  without  mortar 
would  be  solidity  itself."  Hitchcock's  "  Geol- 
ogy "  long  gave  a  view  that  did  not  show 
any  part  of  Staffa,  but  the  adjoining  Island 
of  Boo-sha-la.  Dr.  A.  Geikie,  Director  of  the 
Geological  Survey  of  Scotland,  gave,  in  his 
"Primer"  in  1881,  "a  tolerable  engraving 
of  part  of  the  island"  ;  but,  in  1882,  he  of- 
fered to  more  advanced  students,  in  his 
"  Text-Book  of  Geology,"  "  a  problem  in 
physics  and  drawing  which  has  hitherto 
passed  uncriticised,"  "  the  bad  copy  of  a 
picture  for  which  its  author  apologized  in 
1819,"  "  which  picture  was  no  more  Staffa 
than  a  view  inside  the  railings  at  the  head  of 
Wall  Street  would  be  Trinity  Church."  If 
our  young  American  has  been  too  hasty  in 
his  theories,  upon  which  we  do  not  under- 
take to  decide,  it  certainly  behooves  his  crit- 
ics, and  especially  those  who  are  on  the  spot 
and  wear  official  titles,  to  attempt  some  ap- 
proach to  accuracy  in  fact. 

Why  some  Bodies  feel  colder  than  oth- 
ers.— It  is  a  familiar  fact  that,  when  we 
touch  with  the  fingers  different  substances 
of  the  same  temperature,  some  will  feel 
colder  than  others.  The  differences  of  the 
feeling  are  commonly  ascribed  to  differences 
in  the  heat-conducting  powers  of  the  several 


bodies.  A  correspondent  of  "  La  Nature  " 
suggests  that,  besides  this,  the  specific  heat 
of  the  bodies  and  the  degree  of  polish  of 
their  surfaces  should  be  taken  into  account. 
The  effect  of  specific  heat  may  be  observed 
by  pouring  alcohol  upon  water  and  plung- 
ing the  finger  in  so  that  a  part  of  it  shall  be 
in  the  water  and  a  part  in  the  alcohol.  The 
part  in  the  water  will  feel  much  colder  than 
that  in  the  alcohol.  So  brandy  may  be 
taken,  with  safety,  at  a  degree  of  cold  at 
which  water  would  infallibly  irritate  the 
skin.  The  effect  of  the  degree  of  polish 
may  be  tried  with  a  piece  of  marble  or  glass 
one  side  of  which  is  smooth  and  another 
rough,  with  a  file  one  side  of  which  has 
been  ground  down,  or  with  glazed  and  un- 
glazed  paper.  In  every  case  the  smooth 
side  or  substance,  at  ordinary  temperatures, 
will  appear  colder  than  the  rough  one.  The 
fact  may  be  accounted  for  by  remembering 
that  the  smooth  body  presents  vastly  more 
points  of  contact  with  the  fingers,  and  con- 
sequently more  conductors  for  the  heat  than 
the  rough  one.  In  like  manner  a  liquid  al- 
ways seems  colder  than  the  vessel  contain- 
ing it,  because  it  is  in  closer  contact  with 
the  skin. 

Are  there  Birds  with  Teeth  ?  —  The 

"  Transactions  "  of  the  Natural  History  Soci- 
ety of  Leipsic  contains  a  paper  by  Dr.  Paul 
Fraisse,  on  teeth  and  tooth-papillae  in  birds. 
It  is  generally  admitted  that  there  is  a  se- 
ries of  birds  having  real  teeth  in  their  bills. 
Among  these  are  the  fossil  archaeopteryx  of 
Solenhofen,  and  the  odontornithes,  discov- 
ered by  Professor  Marsh  in  the  North  Ameri- 
can cretaceous.  The  jaws  of  the  latter  birds 
were  furnished  with  teeth,  and  also  with 
cavities  containing  supplementary  teeth,  like 
those  of  crocodiles.  The  curious  relations 
which  these  birds  exhibit  with  reptiles,  as  a 
kind  of  transitional  stage  between  the  two 
orders,  suggest  the  question  whether  any 
living  birds  have  teeth.  On  this  point, 
Dr.  Fraisse  remarks  that  Geoffroy  Saint-Hi- 
laire  in  1821  discovered  in  two  embryos 
of  the  parrot  {Palceornis  torquatus)  papillae 
which  he  regarded  as  tooth-sacs  and  as  ho- 
mologous with  the  rudimentary  teeth  of  oth- 
er animals.  In  one  of  the  jaws  there  even 
seemed  to  be  duplicate  rudiments,  as  among 
the  mammalia.     Cuvier  accepted  this  an- 


858 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY 


nouncement  with  a  kind  of  reserve,  and  re- 
marked that  the  horny  texture  of  the  bill 
seemed  to  spread  over  these  vascular  papil- 
lae much  in  the  same  manner  as  the  enamel 
over  mammals'  teeth.  Blanchard  resumed 
the  investigation  in  1860,  and  found  in  cer- 
tain birds,  among  them  some  parrots,  for- 
mations imbedded  in  the  jaws,  which  when 
microscopically  examined  presented  consid- 
erable similarity  in  composition  with  den- 
tine and  in  structure  with  teeth ;  and  he 
concluded  that  those  birds  possessed  a  real 
dental  system.  Dr.  Fraisse  believes  that  pa- 
pilla}  are  frequently  present  in  the  horny 
bill  of  the  parrot,  that  they  are  rich  in  ves- 
sels and  covered  with  a  veneer  of  peculiarly 
adapted  horn-cells  which  Blanchard  took  to 
be  dentine,  and  which  in  microscopic  sec- 
tions have  quite  a  resemblance  to  that  for- 
mation ;  but  that  real  teeth  do  not  exist  in 
birds.  "  Whether  any  first  rudiments  of 
teeth  may  have  been  the  origin  of  the  growth 
of  horn-teeth  is  very  doubtful ;  but  in  all 
probability  the  horn-teeth  should  be  regard- 
ed as  secondary  formations."  The  teeth  of 
the  odontornithes,  in  which  Professor  Marsh 
has  found  dentine  and  enamel,  are  excepted 
from  this  conclusion. 

Aleohol  regarded  as  a  Beneficial  Agent. 

— Dr.  William  Sharpe,  an  English  physi- 
cian,  has  published  a  pamphlet  in  which  he 
seeks  to  demonstrate  that  alcohol  is  a  fac- 
tor in  human  progress.  Looking  into  the 
history  of  the  subject,  he  finds  that  the  vine 
and  the  product  of  the  vine  have  been  in 
olden  times  more  intimately  associated  with 
man's  intellectual  growth  and  development 
than  with  his  purely  physical  wants.  The 
stimulus  of  alcohol,  when  judiciously  con- 
trolled, "  always  leads  to  active  and  higher 
mental  efforts  on  the  part  of  individuals," 
thus  producing  a  contrary  effect  to  that 
of  other  stimulants,  which  tend  rather  "  to 
bring  about  a  contented  state  of  dreamy  in- 
action "  and  to  repress  effort.  "  To  under- 
stand fully,"  he  says,  "  the  beneficial  action 
of  alcohol  as  regards  mental  development, 
we  must  first  get  a  clear  view  of  the  value 
of  those  states  of  cerebral  excitement  which 
most  people,  though  in  varying  degrees,  ex- 
perience something  of,  rising  as  they  then 
do  mentally  above  the  level  of  what  may 
be  called  their  ordinary  every-day  thoughts. 


This  is  not  difficult,  if  we  bear  in  remem- 
brance that  it  is  during  such  periods  of  high 
mental  activity,  in  which  the  mind,  tran- 
scending the  more  circumscribed  limits  of 
reason,  sweeps  intuitively  into  the  veiled  and 
distant  regions  of  universal  truth,  that  all 
great  conceptions  arise  and  have  arisen  in 
times  past,  crudely  at  first  it  may  be,  but 
which,  nevertheless,  when  reduced  to  order 
and  embodied  in  works,  have  been  of  ines- 
timable value  to  mankind.  .  .  ,  The  stimu- 
lus produced  by  alcoholic  liquors,  if  not 
nearly  of  so  high  an  order,  is  more  easily 
called  into  play,  while  in  a  practical  sense, 
the  latent  ability  being  present,  it  is  more 
vigorous  and  effective  as  regards  actual 
work.  Hence  the  value  of  alcohol,  as  a 
stimulant,  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  produces 
artificially  and  sustains  temporarily  that 
state  of  mental  excitement  or  exaltation  ne- 
cessary to  the  conception  and  projection, 
though  not  to  the  detailed  elaboration,  of 
those  enduring  works  that,  whether  in  the 
domains  of  art,  architecture,  or  engineer- 
ing, are  remarkable  for  boldness  of  execu- 
tion, originality,  and  grandeur  of  design ; 
and  further,  that  it  is  the  only  manageable 
stimulant  which,  when  used  in  moderation, 
and  in  the  form  of  wine  or  spirits,  is  not 
only  not  injurious,  but  conduces  to  the  gen- 
eral health,  while  it  favors  both  mental  and 
physical  development."  Dr.  Sharpe  also  as- 
signs to  alcohol  a  beneficial  agency  in  stimu- 
lating gonial  thoughts  and  feelings. 

Japanese  Lacquers.— The  Japanese  dis- 
tinguish in  lacquers  between  crude  lacquer, 
which  is  obtained  from  the  trunks  of  live 
trees  and  forms  the  basis  of  nearly  all  the 
mixtures  used  in  making  lacquer-ware ; 
branch  lacquer ;  and  black  lacquer,  a  prep- 
aration. The  yield  of  branch  lacquer  is  only 
about  one  per  cent  in  comparison  with  that 
of  other  lacquers,  while  the  proportion  of 
ninety  per  cent  is  required  in  working. 
Hence  a  mixture  is  made  of  various  kinds  of 
lacquers,  sea-weed  jelly,  finely  grated  sweet- 
potatoes,  and  as  much  soot  as  is  needed  to 
color  the  mass.  Each  manufacturer  has  his 
own  special  mixture,  but  the  extraneous  ad- 
ditions are  believed  not  to  injure  the  qual- 
ity of  the  whole.  True  branch  lacquer  be- 
comes extremely  hard  when  dry ;  but,  since 
when  used  alone  it  will  not  dry  under  some 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


859 


twenty  days,  the  pure  sap  is  now  but  little 
used.  The  black  lacquer  is  made  by  adding 
to  crude  or  branch  lacquer  about  five  per 
cent  of  the  tooth-dye  used  by  women,  a 
liquor  formed  by  boiling  iron  filings  in  rice- 
vinegar,  exposing  to  the  sun,  and  stirring 
frequently  for  several  days.  In  preparing 
all  the  lacquers  it  is  an  essential  object  to 
get  rid  of  the  water  that  exudes  from  the 
tree  with  the  sap.  This  can  not  be  effected 
without  adding  water,  which  is  done  in  small 
quantities,  three  times  a  day,  for  two  or 
three  days.  All  the  water  then  evaporates 
together.  No  lacquer  will  dry  till  this  pro- 
cess has  been  gone  through.  If  crude  lac- 
quer, which  is  originally  of  the  color  and 
consistency  of  cream,  is  exposed  to  the  sun 
for  a  few  days  without  adding  water,  it  be- 
comes black,  or  nearly  so,  thinner  and  trans- 
lucent, but  will  not  dry  if  applied  to  an  ar- 
ticle. If,  now,  water  is  mixed  with  it,  it  at 
once  loses  its  black  color  and  its  transpar- 
ency, becomes  again  of  a  creamy  color,  only 
slightly  darker,  and  can  be  used  after  evapo- 
ration of  the  water,  like  any  ordinary  lac- 
quer, and  will  dry.  The  greatest  difficulty 
the  lacquer-workers  have  to  contend  with  is 
that  of  obtaining  a  clear,  transparent  var- 
nish. What  is  called  transparent  varnish  is 
really  black  to  the  eye,  and  has  to  be  ground 
and  polished  after  application  before  it  will 
present  a  brilliant  surface. 

Superstitions  about  Stone  Implements. 

— Richard  Andree,  a  German  anthropologist, 
has  remarked  that,wherever  prehistoric  stone 
implements  have  been  found,  whether  in 
Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  or  America,  identical 
ideas,  agreeing  frequently  in  the  minutest 
particulars,  have  been  associated  with  them 
in  the  popular  mind.  It  is  really  astonish- 
ing to  find  the  negroes,  the  South  American 
Indians,  the  Burmese,  and  the  different  Eu- 
ropean stocks  entertaining  the  same  super- 
stitions respecting  the  origin  and  supposed 
wonderful  properties  of  the  stone  axes.  Such 
conceptions  must  be  regarded  as  compara- 
tively new,  for  they  can  only  have  origi- 
nated after  the  implements  had  gone  out  of 
use,  and  the  casual  finding  of  them  would 
be  capable  of  exciting  a  mystified  curiosity. 
They  would  naturally  appear  to  the  finders, 
who  had  no  idea  of  their  use,  as  something 
wonderful,  perhaps  having  their  origin  in 


another  world ;  and  it  would  also  be  natural 
to  attribute  mysterious  properties  to  them. 
The  fall  of  meteoric  stones  would  give  a  kind 
of  a  justification  to  such  notions.  People 
everywhere  have  thought  the  stone  imple- 
ments were  the  product  of  the  lightning,  or 
its  bolts,  and  that  the  noise  of  thunder  was 
caused  by  their  striking  the  earth  ;  and  the 
belief  is  very  common  that  the  "  thunder- 
axe,"  which  is  driven  deep  into  the  ground, 
will  gradually  rise  to  the  surface  again  in 
the  course  of  some  definite  period,  as  seven 
days,  weeks,  or  years.  The  finder  of  one  of 
these  mysterious  objects  esteems  it  highly 
on  account  of  the  peculiar  properties  attrib- 
uted to  it,  and  transmits  it  to  bis  posterity. 
Such  stones  are  regarded  as  amulets  in  Asia 
and  Europe,  and  as  fetiches  on  the  Guinea 
coast.  They  are  believed  to  preserve  one 
against  harm,  to  prevent  sterility  in  women, 
to  give  protection  against  fire  and  lightning ; 
treasures  are  sought  with  them,  and  most 
effective  medical  properties  are  attributed 
to  them.  They  have  been  believed  to  have 
a  kind  of  life,  and  to  sweat  on  the  approach 
of  a  storm.  These  superstitions  have  no 
footing  among  people  who  are  still  in  the 
stone  age  and  acquainted  with  the  use  of 
stone  implements.  Thus,  no  trace  of  them 
is  found  in  the  South  Seas  and  Australia  ; 
although  a  foundation  for  them  appears  to 
be  laid  among  the  West  Australians,  in  the 
shape  of  a  belief  that  certain  smooth,  oval 
stones  have  fallen  from  the  sky. 

A  Snbterranean  River  in  Austria.— One 

of  the  recent  publications  of  the  Austrian 
Tourists'  Club  contains  a  description  of  the 
"  Recca  Cave,"  which  it  is  claimed  must  be 
ranked  among  the  greatest  natural  curiosi- 
ties of  the  Austro-Hungarian  monarchy. 
The  cave  is  situated  near  the  middle  of  the 
Karst  mountain-land,  in  the  bare  and  sterile 
plateau  that  spreads  out  above  Trieste,  in  a 
region  rich  with  caves,  and  has  been  formed 
by  the  flow  of  the  Recca  River  under  the  cre- 
taceous hills.  Similar  river-excavations  are 
common  in  the  region,  but  that  made  by  the 
Recca  surpasses  all  the  others  in  extent. 
Near  the  railroad-station  of  Vistrica-Ter- 
novo,  the  Recca  is  a  stream  some  fifteen  or 
twenty  paces  broad  and  two  or  three  feet 
deep.  Thence  it  flows  along  the  border  of 
the  chalk  and  tertiary  formations  in  a  deep- 


86o 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


ly  cut  but  pleasant  valley,  till  it  comes  to 
a  point  where  the  chalk  crosses  its  course 
in  a  semicircular  range,  and  seems  as  if  it 
would  stop  its  further  progress  with  a  dam 
nearly  four  hundred  feet  high.  The  river 
has,  however,  conquered  this  wall  by  boring 
under  it  a  tunnel  fifty  feet  high  and  half  as 
wide,  through  which  it  rushes  in  a  very  live- 
ly torrent.  In  the  course  of  a  little  over  a 
hundred  yards,  it  passes  a  chimney-shaped 
shaft,  which  extends  to  the  whole  height  of 
the  mountain  nnd  presents  an  opening  more 
than  thirty  feet  in  diameter  at  the  surface. 
After  another  hundred  yards  the  stream 
crosses  the  floor  of  a  doline  (or  sink-hole) 
four  hundred  feet  broad,  and  then,  after 
crossing  a  narrow  ledge,  enters  the  great 
doline  of  St.  Canzian.  Here  the  steep,  fre- 
quently impending  rocks  on  three  sides  form 
a  gigantic  kettle,  the  western  wall  of  which 
falls  perpendicularly  more  than  five  hundred 
feet.  On  the  southern  side  a  turf -covered 
slope  descends  toward  the  bed  of  the  river, 
to  end  abruptly  in  a  precipice  of  nearly  two 
hundred  and  fifty  feet.  Having  twice  bored 
the  hills  for  relatively  short  distances,  the 
Recca  continues  its  course  till  it  meets  the 
rock-wall  a  third  time  and  excavates  a  third 
subterranean  channel,  this  time  of  thirty- 
five  kilometres,  or  twenty-two  miles.  This 
is  the  Recca  Cave  proper,  and  from  it  the 
stream  emerges  near  San  Giovanni  di  Duino 
into  the  important  river,  though  a  short 
one,  the  Timavo,  the  mystery  of  the  origin 
of  which  has  been  solved  by  this  tracing  of 
the  course  of  its  main  affluent. 

Scottish  and  Irish  Crannogs.— Dr.  Rob- 
ert Munro,  in  his  "Ancient  Scottish  Lake- 
Dwellings  or  Crannogs,"  draws  a  parallel 
between  the  island-fortifications  of  the  west- 
ern Celts  and  the  lake-dwellings  of  Switz- 
erland, and  then  suggests  a  connection  of 
development  between  the  crannog  and  the 
moated  castle  of  the  middle  ages.  "Cran- 
nog "  is  a  Gaelic  term,  from  crann^  a  mast 
or  tree,  and  seems  to  point  to  the  fact  that 
wooden  piles  or  tree-trunks  formed  an  im- 
portant part  in  the  structure.  While  the 
crannogs  have  several  features  in  common 
with  the  Swiss  pile-dwellings,  they  exhibit 
also  some  important  points  of  difference, 
whereas  the  Irish  and  Scottish  structures 
are   essentially  similar.     The   latter   were 


really  fortified  islands,  sometimes  natural? 
but  generally  artificial.  When  complete 
and  in  use,  they  would  present  the  appear- 
ance of  small  islands  surrounded  by  strong 
palisades  for  defense,  with  buildings  of  va- 
rious kinds  on  their  surface,  dug-out  canoes 
ready  for  use,  and  in  some  cases  a  causeway 
or  gangway  communicating  with  the  shore. 
They  were  certainly  built  with  great  skill, 
and  with  a  solidity  of  which  the  endurance 
of  parts  of  them  to  the  present  time  is  the 
best  evidence.  Stone  weapons  have  been 
found  in  the  crannogs,  but  the  bulk  of  the 
remains  they  yield  are  of  bronze  and  iron, 
and  some  of  the  coins  and  pottery  point  to 
Roman  influences.  It  is  generally  admitted 
that  even  the  Irish  crannogs  are  long  sub- 
sequent in  date  to  the  earlier  Swiss  lake- 
dwellings.  The  crannogs,  moreover,  con- 
tinued much  longer  in  use  than  the  cor- 
responding lake-dwellings  in  Switzerland ; 
those  of  Ireland  down  to  the  seventeenth 
century,  those  of  Scotland  to  a  century  or 
two  earlier.  They  were  evidently  used 
mainly  for  defense.  In  the  more  northern 
and  wilder  parts  of  Scotland  the  wooden 
structures  gave  way  to  stone  castles,  and  in 
the  end,  as  Dr.  Munro  points  out,  instead 
of  the  castle  being  brought  to  the  water, 
the  water  was  brought  to  the  castle  in  the 
shape  of  a  moat.  It  is  certainly  possible 
that  some  individual  castles  may  be  the  di- 
rect representatives  of  former  crannogs,  but 
it  would  be  very  hard  to  prove  that  there 
has  been,  as  Dr.  Munro  seems  inclined  to 
think,  any  general  connection  of  the  kind 
between  the  two  structures. 

Effects  of  Gases  on  Insects.— Mr.  L.  P. 

Gratacap  reports,  in  the  "  American  Natu- 
ralist,"  respecting  experiments  he  has  made 
upon  the  power  of  different  insects  to  live 
in  various  gases.  The  Colorado  beetle 
proved  the  hardiest  of  them ;  it  was  killed 
outright  in  the  vapor  of  prussic  acid,  which 
it,  however,  stood  longer  than  any  other  in- 
sect experimented  with,  while  it  was  para- 
lyzed for  a  time  in  illuminating  gas,  and  died 
after  two  hours'  imprisonment  in  nitrous 
oxide.  The  effects  of  oxygen  were  not  very 
marked ;  hydrogen  produced  lethargy  in  flies, 
and  was  bad  for  snapping  beetles,  moths, 
and  a  wasp ;  carbonic  acid  killed  flies  at 
once,  and  threw  Colorado  beetles  on  their 


POPULAR  MISCELLANY. 


86i 


backs ;  carbonic  oxide  killed  ants,  but  not 
Colorado  beetles  ;  prussic-acid  vapors  and 
nitrous-acid  fumes  destroyed  everything,  as 
did  chlorine  everything  but  Colorado  bee- 
tles ;  nitrous  oxide  exhibited  but  slight  ef- 
fects ;  and  illuminating  gas  appeared  to 
produce  death  if  the  exposure  was  long 
enough.  Mr.  Gratacap  recommends  charg- 
ing from  time  to  time  with  illuminating  gas 
as  probably,  and  charging  with  diluted  prus- 
sic-acid fumes  as  certainly,  an  efficient  pre- 
ventive of  the  ravages  of  insects  in  cabinet 


Backsheesh  in  Arcadia. — "  How  much  to 
be  envied  are  you  Singalcse!"  says  Herr 
Ilacckel,  in  his  "Indian Letters  of  Travels." 
"You  are  not  troubled  either  about  the 
cares  of  to-morrow  or  of  the  distant  future. 
What  you  require  for  your  own  life  and  your 
children's  grows  of  itself  at  your  mouth  ; 
and  whatever  else  you  may  want  in  the  way 
of  luxury  you  can  get  with  the  slightest 
exertion.  You  are,  indeed,  like  the  lilies 
of  the  field,  that  grow  around  your  simple 
huts ;  they  sow  not,  neither  do  they  reap, 
and  still  heavenly  Nature  feeds  them.  You 
are  not  excited  with  political  or  military  am- 
bitions; no  anxious  thoughts  about  busi- 
ness, or  the  rise  and  fall  of  stocks,  disturb 
your  sleep.  The  highest  honors,  titles,  and 
orders  of  civilized  men  are  unknown  to  you. 
Yes,  I  believe  it  fully,  you  do  not  envy  us 
Europeans  for  our  thousand  superfluities ; 
you  are  happy  in  being  simple  men,  Nature- 
men,  living  in  a  paradise,  and  enjoying  that 
paradise.  Yes,  what  care -burdened  civil- 
ized man  would  not  envy  you  your  simple 
condition,  and  your  paradisiacal  content- 
ment ?  "  A  few  moments  after  indulging  in 
these  reflections,  Herr  Haeckel  reached  the 
last  post-station  before  arriving  at  Point  de 
Galle,  and  was  still  thinking  he  had  come 
upon  a  place  where  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence had  no  being.  His  porters  awakened 
him  from  his  dream  by  speaking  to  him  of 
their  "backsheesh."  It  was  now  time  to 
attend  to  that  matter,  for  it  might  be  for- 
gotten, in  the  hurry  and  confusion,  if  it  was 
put  ofE  till  they  got  to  the  city.  Herr 
Haeckel  had  remarked  that  a  native  gentle- 
man had  given  each  of  the  porters  a  "  double 
anna,"  and  reasoned  that,  in  consideration  of 
his  superior  distinction  as  a  "  white  man," 


it  would  be  proper  to  quadruple  the  amount 
and  give  a  shilling.  The  porters  returned 
the  coins  with  irritation,  and  gave  their  pa- 
tron a  very  flattering  lecture  about  the  dis- 
tinction to  which  he  was  entitled  by  reason 
of  his  purely  white  skin.  The  main  point 
which  they  presented  was,  that  every  white 
man  ought  to  give  double  what  he  had  given, 
or  a  rupee  ;  but  that  as  white  a  man  as  he 
was,  with  his  light  hair,  must  belong  to  the 
very  highest  caste,  the  dignity  of  which 
would  be  suitably  maintained  by  a  still 
larger  gift.  Without  acceding  to  the  full 
force  of  this  complimentary  argument,  Herr 
Haeckel  yielded  so  far  as  to  give  the  full 
white  man's  backsheesh  of  a  rupee  to  each 
man,  and  had  the  pleasure  of  hearing  himself 
pronounced  a  perfect  gentleman. 

The  Chinese  Superstition  of  Severed 
Qnenes. — Dr.  D.  J.  MacGowan,  in  a  report 
on  the  health  of  Wenchow,  has  published 
some  facts  concerning  "  epidemic  frenzies," 
or  "  popular  crazes,"  which  frequently  pre- 
vail among  large  portions  of  the  Chinese 
population.  One  of  them  raged  very  exten- 
sively in  1876,  when  it  was  believed  super- 
natural agencies  were  at  work  cutting  off 
the  queues  of  the  people.  A  sorcerer,  get- 
ting possession,  with  the  aid  of  a  spirit,  of 
one  of  these  queues,  was  believed  to  be  able 
thereafter  to  evoke  at  will  the  soul  of  the 
owner  and  use  it  as  a  servile  demon,  while 
the  man  was  fated  to  die.  The  only  remedy 
within  the  reach  of  a  person  who  has  lost 
his  queue  is  to  cut  oif  an  inch  or  more  of 
what  hair  he  has  left  and  soak  it  for  eighty 
days  in  a  cesspool ;  by  this  means  the  mys- 
terious connection  between  the  hair  remain- 
ing on  his  head  and  that  in  possession  of  the 
sorcerer  is  severed.  Amulets  and  charms 
are,  moreover,  relied  on  for  the  prevention 
of  disaster  to  the  queue.  A  charm  for  this 
purpose  was  invented  by  the  Governor  of 
Kiang-Su,  who  also  recommended  an  anathe- 
ma attributed  to  Tao  Tse,  which  was  to  be 
chanted  while  copying  it  on  yellow  paper 
with  the  blood  of  a  cock  mixed  in  vermil- 
ion, after  which  the  paper  was  to  be  burned 
and  the  ashes  swallowed.  The  panic  was 
created  by  some  revolutionists,  who  secretly 
cut  off  the  queues  of  a  few  passers-by  in 
each  large  city,  and  then  proclaimed  that  a 
diabolical  agency  was  at  work. 


862 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY 


The  Pygmies. — Dr.  Emin  Bey  gives  in  a 
recent  number  of  Petermann's  "  Mittheil- 
ungen"  some  later  notices  of  the  Akkas, 
the  pygmy  race  discovered  in  Africa,  and 
first  described  by  Schweinf  urth.  They  are 
a  hunting  people,  divided  up  into  numer- 
ous tribes  that  do  not  mingle  with  one 
another.  They  have  no  fixed  abodes,  but 
wander  around  in  the  countries  of  the  Mon- 
butte  and  the  Amadi.  When  a  small  soci- 
ety of  them  sojourns  temporarily  around  the 
settlement  of  some  chief,  they  build  little 
huts  for  the  married  ones,  while  the  unmar- 
ried satisfy  themselves  with  mere  shelters 
from  the  sun.  Usually  they  live  in  the 
groves  that  line  the  streams,  which  afford 
them  game  and  good  hiding-places.  The 
chiefs  provide  them  with  grain  and  roots, 
and  take  their  pay  in  the  proceeds  of  the 
hunt.  The  Akkas  are  vengeful  and  dan- 
gerous when  offended,  and  are  skilled  in  the 
use  of  the  bow  and  arrow.  Emin  Bey's 
measurements  gave  heights  of  between  four 
and  four  and  a  half  feet  for  full-grown  Ak- 
kas. The  color  of  their  skin  varies  from  a 
clear  yellow  to  a  glistening  red.  The  whole 
body  is  covered  with  a  thick,  stiff,  filthy 
growth  of  hair.  A  disposition  of  the  skin 
to  wrinkle,  peculiarly  observable  in  the  eye- 
lids, makes  them  look  much  older  than  they 
are. 

Origin  of  Fires  in  London.— The  statis- 
tics of  fires  in  London  for  the  thirteen 
years,  18'70-'82,  state  the  origin  and  nature 
of  22,262  fires,  of  which  ten  per  cent  at- 
tained serious  proportions.  The  most  fires 
were  started  in  private  houses,  but  they 
were  the  least  dangerous  ones,  for  only  2*4 
per  cent  of  them  became  serious,  while  in 
such  establishments  as  saw-mills,  furniture 
ware-rooms,  rag-stores,  and  builders'  shops, 
more  than  one  fourth  of  the  fires  were  de- 
structive. No  particular  influence  of  sea- 
sons in  promoting  or  diminishing  the  dan- 
ger of  fires  appears  from  the  London  re' 
ports,  where  the  difference  in  the  number 
of  outbreaks  in  the  several  months  is  com- 
paratively small  and  irregular,  but  in  agri- 
cultural  districts  the  most  fires  seem  to  take 
place  in  July  and  August.  According  to 
the  facts  presented  by  Mr.  W.  G.  McMillan, 
in  a  lecture  before  the  Society  of  Arts,  the 
distribution  of  fires  over  the  hours  of  the 


day  seems  to  be  governed  by  a  distinct  and 
well-defined  law.  The  curves  illustrating 
the  hourly  distribution,  through  several 
years,  show  a  remarkable  symmetry  and  a 
wonderful  agreement  in  general  form.  The 
most  outbreaks  occur  between  eight  and 
nine  in  the  evening,  whence  the  numbers 
fall  somewhat  rapidly  to  a  minimum  at  be- 
tween six  and  nine  in  the  morning.  Thence 
the  curves  rise  gradually  to  the  evening 
maximum.  By  far  the  greatest  number  of 
the  fires  recorded  originated  in  the  use  or 
abuse  of  light-  and  heat-giving  apparatus. 
The  most  prolific  source  of  danger  still  ap- 
pears to  be  the  candle,  less  dangerous  than 
when  the  old-fashioned,  spark-emitting  tal. 
low-candles  were  in  use,  but  still  operative 
by  means  of  the  ease  with  which  it  may  be 
set  under  a  shelf  or  carried  within  reach 
of  light  drapery.  Surrounding  the  candles 
with  tall  shades  like  lamp-chimneys  is  rec- 
ommended as  a  precautionary  device.  Pe- 
troleum is,  with  due  precautions,  a  safe 
fluid,  but  there  are  other  burning-fluids,  and 
some  kinds  of  petroleum,  that  are  highly 
dangerous.  Coal-gas  is  entirely  safe,  except 
from  the  danger  of  leaks  at  the  joints  of 
the  pipes,  which  may  be  guarded  against ; 
but  all  burners  should  be  fixed,  else  they 
may  be  carelessly  brought  within  reach  of 
drapery.  Many  fires  are  caused  by  careless- 
ness in  throwing  away  matches  after  they 
have  been  used.  Directly  and  indirectly, 
artificial  heating  is  responsible  for  a  large 
proportion  of  fires.  It  operates  through 
sparks  shot  out  from  open  grates  ;  through 
defects  in  flues  ;  through  the  proximity  of 
wooden  beams  and  planks  to  flues,  steam- 
pipes,  or  register-furnaces ;  and  through 
carelessness  in  disposing  of  hot  ashes.  The 
red  fire  used  in  theatres  is  very  liable  to 
spontaneous  combustion  ;  plumbers  some- 
times allow  their  portable  furnaces  to  set 
fires ;  and  the  sun  shining  through  a  body 
so  shaped  as  to  act  as  a  lens  to  concentrate 
its  rays,  has  been  known  to  set  papers  on 
fire.  Water  is  still  the  cheapest  and  most 
effective  extinguisher ;  and  other  agents  in 
use  are  good  in  their  way.  Gypsum,  used  as 
a  plaster  and  in  concrete,  is  an  excellent 
fire-proofing  material.  Wood  may  be  made 
uninflammable  by  painting  it  with  asbestus  ; 
by  impregnating  its  fibers  with  such  sub- 
stances as  tungstate  or  silicate  of  soda,  or 


NOTES. 


863 


with  two  soluble  substances  which,  coming 
together,  will  form  an  insoluble  one.  If 
wood  is  impregnated,  too,  with  a  substance 
capable  of  volatilization,  its  taking  fire  will 
be  delayed  till  the  volatile  substance  has 
been  driven  off.  Warning  of  fires  is  auto- 
matically and  surely  given  by  means  of  de- 
vices by  which  the  expansion  of  a  column  of 
mercury  by  the  developed  heat  is  made  to 
close  the  circuit  of  a  galvanic  battery  and 
sound  an  electric  bell. 

The  Sanny  Skies  of  Kamchatka.— M. 

Leonhard  Stejneger  has  published  in  the 
Norwegian  journal,  "  Naturen,"  a  paper  on 
the  fauna  and  flora  of  Eastern  Kamchatka 
and  the  Commander  Islands,  which  adjoin 
our  own  Aleutian  Islands.  While  the  cli- 
mate of  the  islands  is  foggy  and  their  vege- 
tation scanty,  Kamchatka  is  represented  as 
rejoicing  in  Italian  skies,  smooth  seas,  and 
a  mild  temperature.  The  flora  is  so  exu- 
berant that  some  species,  which  only  grow 
to  be  three  feet  high  in  Norway,  there  at- 
tain the  height  of  a  man.  Among  them 
are  the  birch,  alder,  willow,  and  service-tree, 
whose  berries  as  well  as  those  of  a  honey- 
suckle are  finely  flavored,  and  well  relished 
by  the  inhabitants.  The  flowers  of  the  wild 
rose,  rhododendron,  potentillas,  and  taraxa- 
cum, might  be  mistaken  for  Norwegian  spe- 
cies. The  birds  arc  also  well  represented, 
and  one  of  them,  a  warbler,  is  distinguished 
by  a  plumage  that  suggests  the  tropics,  and 
a  voice  comparable  with  that  of  the  nightin- 
gale. The  fauna  is  generally  palfe-Arctic, 
and  few  American  forms  are  found. 


NOTES. 

Mr.  James  Stevenson,  of  the  Fnited 
States  Geological  Survey,  has  discovered 
some  new  cave  and  cliff  cities  in  which  a 
few  peculiar  features  have  been  observed. 
One  of  them  is  a  village  of  sixty-five  under- 
ground dwellings  situated  near  the  top  of 
one  of  the  volcanic  foot-hills  of  the  San 
Francisco  Mountaias  in  Arizona.  A  com- 
mon roof  was  furnished  for  the  whole  com- 
munity by  the  hardened  surface  stratum  of 
the  hill. 

Mr.  Herbert  McLeod  has  determined, 
by  experiments  instituted,  for  the  purpose, 
that  India-rubber  is  altered  under  the  com- 
bined influence  of  light  and  oxygen — ab- 
sorbing oxygen  and  becoming  cracked — but 
not  by  either  agent  alone. 


Last  year  included  the  fiftieth  anniver- 
sary of  the  lucifer-match,  which  was  first 
made,  in  England,  by  John  Walker,  of 
Stockton-on-Tees,  and  also  at  Vienna,  in 
1833.  In  1847  the  red  amorphous  phos- 
phorus was  substituted  for  the  more  dan- 
gerous, corroding,  ordinary  phosphorus. 

Professor  Cohn  has  called  attention  to 
the  fact  that  bacteria  were  first  seen  two 
hundred  years  ago,  by  the  Dutch  microsco- 
pist,  Leeuwenhoek,  who,  in  1683,  gave  to  the 
Royal  Society  a  description  of  "  very  little 
animals  moving  in  a  very  lively  fashion," 
which  he  had  detected,  with  his  instrument, 
in  the  white  substance  adhering  to  his  teeth. 
His  drawings  are  very  correct,  and  have 
never  been  surpassed  till  within  the  last  ten 
years. 

Captain  T.  G.  Een,  a  well-known  Swed- 
ish explorer,  died  from  heart-disease  on  the 
Congo,  while  on  his  way  to  join  Mr.  Stanley. 

M.  Fatal,  directing  engineer  of  the  coal- 
mines of  Commentry,  France,  has  published 
an  account  of  his  discovery  of  coal  at  that 
place,  which  has  preserved  to  the  very  cen- 
ter of  the  beds  the  histological  structure  of 
the  plants  from  which  it  is  formed.  The 
preservation  is  said  to  have  been  so  distinct 
that  M.  Renault  has  been  able  to  make 
specific  determinations  of  several  species  of 
the  carbonized  plants. 

A  great  impulse  has  been  given  to  fruit- 
growing within  the  last  ten  years.  The 
area  of  land  devoted  to  this  purpose  in 
England  increased,  between  1872  and  1882, 
26,696  acres ;  while  the  importations  of 
fruit  from  different  countries  increased  from 
1,218,668  bushels  in  1871  to  4,045,690 
bushels  in  1882.  Much  of  this  fruit  is  used 
for  making  jam.  The  acreage  of  fruit-land 
in  Canada  has  been  largely  extended  wathin 
the  last  fifteen  years,  and  great  interest  in 
the  promotion  of  the  industry  is  taken  by 
the  Government  and  the  land-owners.  In 
the  United  States,  two  million  acres  were 
under  cultivation  as  apple-orchards  in  1878, 
and  the  value  of  the  products  had  increased 
in  twenty  years  from  $6,600,000  to  over 
$50,000,000.  The  drying  and  the  canning  of 
fruits  have  become  very  prominent  branches 
of  industry. 

The  author  of  the  work  on  "  World- 
Life,"  recently  reviewed  in  our  pages,  re- 
grets that  the  book  contains  a  number  of 
errata,  and  desires  us  to  announce  that  slips 
of  corrections  will  be  mailed  to  any  who  will 
kindly  signify  their  desire  to  receive  them. 
Address  Alexander  Winchell,  Ann  Arbor, 
Michigan. 

M.  Arthur  Roche,  Professor  in  the 
Lycee  of  Montpellier,  France,  who  died  a 
few  months  ago,  was  well  known  for  his 
researches  on  the  figures  of  planets  and 


864 


THE  POPULAR   SCIENCE  MONTHLY. 


comets  and  the  cosmogonic  theory  of  La- 
place, lie  was  the  author  of  various  mem- 
oirs on  the  equilibrium  of  a  homogeneous 
fluid  mass  in  rotation ;  on  the  effect,  upon 
the  figure  of  equilibrium,  of  attraction  ex- 
erted by  a  center  situated  at  a  great  dis- 
tance ;  on  the  physical  constitution  and  in- 
ternal condition  of  the  globe,  in  which  he 
held  that  the  density  of  the  earth  at  the 
center  is  nearly  double  the  mean  density, 
and  pronounced  against  the  theory  of  the 
complete  fluidity  of  the  interior ;  on  the  fig- 
ures of  comets  ;  and  on  the  constitution  of 
the  solar  system. 

Arch^ological  investigations  in  the  Af- 
rosnab  suburb  of  Samarcand  have  brought 
many  interesting  relics  to  light.  Among 
them  are  marble  ornaments,  mosaics,  and 
articles  of  bronze,  clay,  and  glass,  belong- 
ing to  the  Arabian,  Graeco-Bactrian,  or  old 
Iranian  schools,  all  of  which  have  in  their 
time  flourished  at  that  place.  Chinese 
coins  have  been  found  at  a  depth  of  three 
or  four  metres. 

At  the  December  meeting  of  the  Natu- 
ral Science  Association  of  Staten  Island, 
New  York,  Mr,  Hollick  gave  a  description 
of  the  leaf-fossils  which  have  been  found 
at  Tottenville.  The  fossils  occur  in  thi^ee 
kinds  of  rock,  all  supposed  to  be  cretaceous 
— a  hard  red  or  gray  ferruginous  sandstone, 
a  soft  gray  sandstone,  and  a  conglomerate 
composed  chiefly  of  vegetable  remains  ce- 
mented with  an  oxide  of  iron.  They  are  car- 
bonaceous in  the  soft  gray  sandstone,  only 
impressions  in  the  other  rocks.  The  rocks 
are  found  scattered,  in  blocks  not  more  than 
a  foot  square,  along  the  beach.  The  leaves 
are  of  willow,  arbor-vitse,  viburnum,  sour- 
gum,  grass,  a  small  fruit  or  nut,  an  equi- 
setum,  and  indistinguishable  fragments. 
Similar  sandstones  with  similar  fossils  oc- 
cur near  Glen  Cove,  Long  Island.  At  the 
January  meeting  of  the  Association,  Mr.  C. 
W.  Leng  read  a  paper  on  the  "  Cicindelidoe  " 
(beetles)  of  Staten  Island,  of  which  he  dis- 
tinguished eight  species 

New  pests  are  appearing,  to  consume  our 
apples.  The  apple-maggot  ( Trijpeta  Pomo- 
nella),  leaving  the  outside  of  tlie  apple  fair 
to  look  upon,  honey-combs  its  interior  till 
nothing  is  left  of  it.  The  marauder  is  of  a 
greenish-white  color  about  one  fifth  of  an 
inch  long,  and  comes  from  a  fly  not  unlike 
our  house-fly,  having  whitish  glassy  wings, 
vrith  dusky  bands  shaped  somewhat  like  the 
letters  IF.  It  comes  from  Illinois,  where 
it  feeds  upon  the  hawberries,  but  has  learned 
the  merits  of  Eastern  summer  apples,  and 
is  said  to  be  trying  the  virtues  of  later  varie- 
ties. Information  is  wanted  by  Professor 
J.  A.  Lintner,  State  Entomologist,  of  New 
York,  concerning  its  life-history,  and  all 
assistance  that  observers  can  give  him  in 


studying  its  habits  and  learning  the  best 
method  of  contending  against  it. 

The  International  Electrical  Exhibition, 
to  be  held  in  Philadelphia  under  the  au- 
spices of  the  Franklin  Institute,  will  open  on 
the  2d  of  September  and  close  on  the  11th 
of  October.  The  exhibits  will  be  classified 
under  seven  heads  or  sections,  viz. :  I.  Pro- 
duction of  Electricity ;  II.  Electric  Conduct- 
ors ;  III.  Measurements  ;  IV.  Applications 
of  Electricity  (A,  apparatus  requiring  cur- 
rents of  comparatively  low  power;  and  B, 
apparatus  requiring  currents  of  compara- 
tively high  power) ;  V.  Terrestrial  Physics ; 
VI.  Historical  Apparatus  ;  and,  VII.  Edu- 
cational and  Bibliographical.  The  build- 
ing will  be  opened  for  the  reception  of 
articles  for  exhibition  on  the  11th  of  Au- 
gust. Applications  for  space  must  be  made 
before  the  30th  of  August.  Exhibitors  are 
required  to  pay  five  dollars  as  entrance- 
fee,  and  space-charges  for  their  exhibits  in 
addition.  Address  Committee  on  Exhibi- 
tions, Franklin  Institute,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

The  life-saving  stations  of  the  United 
States  Signal  Service  are  now  designated  by 
name,  the  former  designation  by  numbers 
having  been  abandoned  on  the  first  day  of 
June  last.  As  the  new  names  are  for  the 
most  part  descriptive,  or  refer  to  some 
locality  in  the  immediate  neighborhood,  the 
identification  of  them  is  greatly  facihtated 
to  persons  who  are  not  connected  with  the 
service,  while  it  is  not  made  any  harder  to 
those  who  are  connected  with  it.  The  cir- 
cular of  the  Bureau  gives,  together  with  the 
names,  exact  descriptions  of  all  the  stations. 

A  REMARKABLE  story  of  cauinc  partial- 
ity is  told  in  the  English  papers.  Two  men 
were  out  from  Mil  ford  Haven  in  a  boat, 
which  was  swamped.  A  dog,  who  was  with 
them,  caught  one  of  them  to  help  him  out 
of  his  trouble,  but,  finding  he  was  not  his 
master,  dropped  him  to  drown,  sought  his 
master,  and  rescued  him. 

Successful  experiments  have  been  made 
at  Coblenz,  in  Germany,  into  the  practica- 
bility of  substituting  ravens  for  carrier- 
pigeons.  Kavens,  being  stronger  and  bolder 
birds  than  pigeons,  are  less  liable  to  be  at- 
tacked and  destroyed  by  birds  of  prey. 

The  people  of  Doll,  M.  Pasteur's  native 
village,  have  set  up  a  memorial  tablet  in  the 
house  where  the  great  microbe-hunter  was 
born.  M.  Pasteur  was  present  on  the  occa- 
sion of  the  inauguration  of  the  monument, 
and  made  a  short  address. 

M.  E.  Peyrusson  has  called  attention  to 
the  danger  following  the  use  of  delf-ware 
in  cases  of  infectious  disease.  It  is  liable 
to  be  marred  by  cracks  and  flaws  in  which 
germs  may  lurk.  Only  glass  or  porcelain 
should  be  trusted. 


INDEX 


PAGE 


Acids,  Effect  of  Watering  Plants  with 570 

Africa,  The  Stone  Age  in 717 

Alcohol  regarded  as  a  Beneficial  Agent 858 

Allen,  Professor  Grant 387,  606 

Alloys,  New  Serviceable  Metallic 143 

Alps,  The,  in  Roman  Times 134 

America,  Prehistoric  Art  in 818 

Animal  Friendships 264 

Animals,  Defenses  of  the  Lesser 484 

Anthropological  Studies,  Scope  and  Value  of 282 

Anthropology  and  Philanthropy 283 

Anthropology  in  Italy 718 

Asthma  and  its  Treatment , .    262 

Astley,  A.  F 542 

Athletics,  College 446,  587 

At  Lee,  Samuel  Yorke 357 

Aurora  Borealis,  The 474 

Backsheesh  in  Arcadia • 861 

Baldwin,  A.  S.,  M.  D 554 

Big  Trees,  The,  of  Turkistan 283 

Birds,  The  Ancestry  of 606 

Birds  with  Teeth  ?  Are  there 857 

Birth-Rate  in  a  New  Hampshire  Town 555 

Bixby,  Professor  J,  T 6 

Black,  Dr.,  Dr.  Oswald  again  replies  to 112 

Bleunard,  M.  A 574 

Boardman,  A.  G 410 

Bodies,  why  some  feel  colder  than  others : 857 

Bodin,  Dr.  Th 234 

Book  Notices : 

"  French  and  German  Socialism  in  Modern  Times  "  (Ely) 122 

"  The  Vertebrates  of  the  Adirondack  Region  "  (Merriam) 123 

"  Dynamo-Electric  Machinery  "  (Thompson) 125 

"  Local  Government  in  Illinois  "  (Shaw) 125 

"  Local  Government  in  Pennsylvania  "  (Gould) 125 

"  Local  Government  in  Michigan  and  the  Northwest  "  (Bemis) 125 

*'  The  Sciences  among  the  Jews  before  and  during  the  Middle  Ages  " 

(Schleiden) 125 

"  Lake  Agassiz  "  (Upham) 126 

VOL.  XXIV. — 55 


866  INDEX. 

Book  notices :  page 

"  The  Iroquois  Book  of  Rites  "  (Hale) 126 

"  The  Homoeopathic  Leader  "  (Cowl). 126 

"  A  Practical  Arithmetic  "  (Wentworth  and  Hill) 126 

"  The  Yellowstone  National  Park  "  (Winser) 127 

"  How  can  we  escape  Insanity  ?  "  (Page) 127 

"  Chemistry,  Inorganic  and  Organic  "  (Bloxara) 127 

"  Manual  of  Taxidermy  "  (Maynard) 127 

*'  Revista  de  Agricultura  "  (De  Adan) 127 

"  Brain-Rest "  (Corning) 128 

"  On  the  Conservation  of  Solar  Energy  "  (Siemens) 128 

"  A  New  Theory  of  the  Origin  of  Species  "  (Ferris) 128 

"  The  American  Citizen's  Manual  "  (Ford) 128 

"  Faust's  Laws  of  Health  "  (Kopp) 128 

"  Cobbett's  How  to  get  on  in  the  World  "  (Waters) 129 

"  French  Forest  Ordinance  of  1669  "  (Brown) 129 

"  The  Pine  Moth  of  Nantucket "  (Scudder) 129 

"  A  Book  about  Roses  "  (Hale) 129 

"  Authors  and  Publishers  " 130 

"  Record  for  the  Sick-Room  " 130 

"  Contributions  to  the  History  of  Lake  Bonneville  "  (Gilbert) 130 

"  Libraries  and  Readers  "  (Foster) 130 

"  Libraries  and  Schools  "  (Green) 130 

"  Handsaws,  their  Use,  Care,  and  Abuse  "  (Hodgson) 131 

"  Studies  in  Logic  " 131 

"  Deep  Breathing  "  (Ciccolina) . . .    131 

"  Books  for  the  Young  "  (Hewins) 131 

"  The  Modern  Sphinx  "  (Savage) 131 

"  On  the  Relations  of  Micro-organisms  to  Disease  "  (Belfield). . . 132 

"  Hand-Book  of  Vertebrate  Dissection  "  (Martin  and  Moale) 132 

"  Die  Kupferlegirungen,"  etc.  (Reyer) 132 

"  Die  Korperliche  Eigenschaften  der  Japaner  "  (Baelz) 132 

"  What  Social  Classes  owe  to  each  other  "  (Sumner) 271 

"  Report,  New  York  State  Experiment  Station,"  1882 272 

"  Report,  Connecticut  State  Board  of  Health  " 272 

"  Report,  Smithsonian  Institution,"  1881 273 

"  God  and  Creation  "  (Howison) 273 

"  Worcester's  New  School  Dictionary  " 273 

"  Historical  Studies"  (Coan) 274 

"  The  Factors  of  Civilization" 274 

*'  History  of  the  New  York  State  Teachers'  Association  "  (Kirk) 274 

"  Verbal  Pitfalls  "  (Bardeen) 274 

"  Astronomy  "  (Newcomb  and  Holden) 274 

"  Finland ;  its  Forests  and  Forest  Management "  (Brown) 274 

"  God  out  and  Man  in"  (Piatt) 275 

A  Correction  (Spencer's  "  Descriptive  Sociology  ") 275 

"  The  Law  of  Heredity  "  (Brooks) 416 

"  Cobbett's  English  Grammar"  (Ayres) 417 

"  Das  Stadium  der  Staatswissenschaften  in  Amerika  "  (James) 418 

"Twelfth  Report  Geological  and  Geographical  Survey  of  Territories" 

(Hayden) 418 


INDEX,  867 

Book  notices :  pagb 

"  Sea-Sicknes3  "  (Hudson) 418 

"  Cumulative  Method  for  learning  German  "  (Dreyspring) 418 

"  Questoes  Hygienicas  "  (Farinha) 418 

"  Dangers  to  Health  "  (Teale) 419 

"  Limestones  and  Marbles  "  (Burnham) ^. 419 

"  Muster  Altitalienischer  Leinenstickerei "  (Lipperheide) 420 

"  Report  on  Division  of  Philosophical  Faculty  "  (University  of  Berlin) .  420 

"  Bulletin  of  the  United  States  Fish  Commission  " 421 

"Animal  Life"  (Wright) 421 

"  Mineral  Resources  of  the  United  States  "  (Williams) 421 

"  Ueber  das  Galvanische  Verhalten  der  Amalgame  des  Zinkes  und  des 

Cadmiums  "  (Robb) 421 

"  Physician's  Visiting  List  for  1884  " 422 

"  Handy  Book  of  Object-Lessons  "  (Walker) 422 

"  King's  Hand-Book  of  Boston  " 422 

''  World-Life  "  (Winchell) 561 

"  Man  a  Creative  First  Cause  "  (Hazard) 564 

"  The  Organs  of  Speech  "  (Von  Meyer) 565 

"  Ocean  Grove  Camp-Meeting  Association  "  (Report) 666 

"  The  Evolutionary  Significance  of  Human  Character  "  (Cope) 567 

"  Horses,  their  Feed  and  their  Feet "  (Page) 567 

"  Photo-Micrographs  "  (Sternberg) 667 

"  Pamphlets  on  Sewer-Gas  and  Typhoid  Fever  "  (Hamilton  and  Ayer)  568 

"  The  Influence  of  Athletic  Games  upon  Greek  Art "  (Waldstein) 668 

"  Index  to  Articles  on  History,  Biography,  Literature,  Society,  and 

Travel  "   (Griswold) 568 

"  A  Physician's  Sermon  to  Young  Men  "  (Pratt) 568 

"  Hydraulic  Tables  "  (Flynn) 569 

"  The  Oyster  Epicure  " 569 

"  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist "  (Fiske) 706 

"  Fallacies  "  (Sidgwick) 707 

"  A  Natural  History  Reader  "  (Johonnot) 708 

"  Lectures  on  Painting  "  (Armitage) 709 

'  "  Archivos  do  Museu  Nacional  do  Rio  de  Janeiro  "  (Netto) 709 

*'  Tertiary  History  of  the  Grand  Cation  District "  (Dutton) 710 

"  Electricity  in  Theory  and  Practice  "  (Fiske) 710 

"  Mounds  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  "  (Carr) 711 

*'  Materia  Medica  and  Therapeutics  "  (Bartholow) 711 

"  Human  Proportion  and  Anthropometry  "  (Fletcher) 711 

"  Motions  of  Fluids  and  Solids  "  (Ferrel) 712 

"  Meteorological  and  Physical  Observations  "  (Sherman) 712 

"  Report  of  United  States  Life-saving  Service,"  1882 712 

*'  Distribution  of  Rainfall  in  United  States  "  (Dunwoody) 712 

"  North  Atlantic  Cyclones  of  August,  1883  "  (Southerland) 712 

"  Horological  and  Thermometrical  Bureau  of  Yale  College  Observa- 
tory"  (Waldo) 712 

"  Chemical  Problems  "  (Foye) 713 

*'  Steam-Heating"  (Briggs) 713 

"  Hand-Book  of  Sanitary  Information  "  (Tracy) 844 

"Concepts  and  Theories  of  Modern  Physics  "  (Stallo) 845 


868  INDEX. 

Book  notices :  page 

"  Aboriginal  American  Authors  "  (Brinton) 846 

"  Cassell's  Family  Magazine  " 847 

"  Natural  Philosophy  "  (Sharpless  and  Philips) 847 

"  Transactions  of  the  American  Dermatological  Association  "  (Van 

Harlingen) 847 

"  Winter  Resorts  of  Florida,"  etc.  (Graves) 847 

"  God  and  the  State  "  (Bakunin) 848 

"  Movements  of  the  Atmosphere  "  (Ferrel) 848 

"  Elementary  Botany  "  (Macloskie) 848 

"  The  Sun  not  at  Pvest  "  (Tischner) 848 

"  Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians  "  (Grove) 848 

"  Evolution  "  (Adams) 849 

"  Qualitative  Chemical  Analysis  "  (Beilstein) 849 

"  Manual  of  Chemistry  "  (Watts) 849 

"  Geology  of  the  Eureka  District "  (Hague) 850 

"  United  States  Geological  Survey,  Second  Eeport "  (Powell) 850 

"  The  Natural  Genesis  "  (Massey) 850 

"  Contents  of  a  Bone-Cave  "  (Cope) 851 

*'  Cruise  of  the  Revenue  Steamer  Corwin  " 851 

"  Report  on  Oyster-Beds  "  (Winslow) 851 

"  Explosive  Materials  "  (Berthelot) .' 852 

"  Ores  of  Leadville  "  (Ricketts) 852 

"  Berly's  Electoral  Directory  " 852 

"  Recberches  sur  des  Diatom^es  "  (Prinz  and  Van  Ermengen) 853 

"  Geological  Survey  of  Alabama  "  (Smith) 853 

"  Report  on  Injurious  Insects  of  New  York  "  (Lintner) 853 

"  Drainage  and  Sewerage  of  Dwellings  "  (Gerhard) 853 

"  The  Trichiniasis  Question  " 853 

Boys  and  Girls,  Growth  of 571 

Brazil,  Science  in 428 

British  Association,  The > 278 

Brush,  E.  F.,  M.  D 793 

Bulbs,  The  Poisonous  Principle  of 282 

Building-Stones,  Durability  of 855 

Burnett,  Swan  M.,  M.  D 813 

Buzzards,  How,  find  their  Prey 425 

Caribs,  The,  and  the  Greeks 716 

Caro,  M.  E 191 

Carter,  Joseph 90 

Chad,  Lake,  Trees  of 137 

Chance,  The  Illusion  of 209 

Changes,  Recent  Geological,  in  Western  Michigan 826 

Check-Reins,  Use  and  Abuse  of 281 

Child,  A.  L.,  M.  D 259 

China,  Deforestization  and  Floods  in 142 

Choate,  J.  B 248 

Cholera,  Bacteria  and 429 

Circumstances,  The  Control  of 335 

City,  Magnetism  of  a  Great 429 


INDEX.  869 

PAGE 

Classical  Question,  The,  in  Germany 289 

Classical  Schools,  Science  in 409 

Classics,  Queer  Defenses  of  the 269 

Classics,  Science  versus  the 6Y4 

Classics,  The  Current  Study  of,  a  Failure 117 

Clouston,  T.  S.,  M.  D 214,  319 

Cold,  Catching 368 

"  Colds  " 714 

College  Athletics 446,  587 

Collegiate  Influence  upon  the  Lower  Education 702 

Combustion-Products  from  Different  Lights 575 

Comet,  The,  of  1812  and  1888 488 

Cooke,  Professor  Josiah  P 1 

Cookery,  The  Chemistry  of 98,  228,  361,  496,  686,  773 

Copper,  Antiseptic  Qualities  of 135 

Correspondence 112,  262,  409,  554,  700,  834 

Craighead,  James  B 836 

Crannogs,  Scotch  and  Irish 860 

Crystals,  The  Natural  Setting  of. 248 

Date-Palm,  the.  Cultivation  of 281 

Daubr6e,  M 515 

Dawson,  Dr.  J.  W 61 

Dead  Languages,  "  Church-and-State  "  Function  of 413 

Dead  Languages,  Education  without 538 

Dead-Language  Studies  necessarily  a  Failure 265 

Decay,  Sub-aerial,  of  Rocks 714 

De  Saporta,  M.  Antoine 474 

Disease,  Communicability  of,  by  Food 138 

Dogs,  Can,  be  taught  to  read  ? 715 

Du  Bois-Reymond,  Emil 145 

Dyspepsia,  Infantile , 115 

Earthquakes,  The  Causes  of 515 

East-African  Tribes,  Two 719 

Eclipse,  The  Recent,  of  the  Sun 573 

Eddy,  William  A 209,  335 

Editor's  Table 117,  265,  412,  556,  702,  839 

Education,  Collegiate  Influence  upon  the  Lower 702 

Education,  Female,  from  a  Medical  Point  of  View 214,  319 

Education  without  Dead  Languages 558 

Eggert,  Professor  C.  A 674 

Egyptian,  Ancient  and  Modern,  Schools  and  libraries 141 

Electricity  from  Gas 286 

Electric  Railway,  The 742 

Elephants'  Tricks '    411 

Energy,  Muscular,  The  Source  of 377 

Engineering,  Mechanical,  Fifty  Years  of 530 

Erie,  Lake,  Origin  of  the  Eastern  End  of 423 

Evolution,  The  Physician's  Part  in 141 


870  INDEX, 

PAGE 

Eye-sight,  Defective 357 

Eyes,  Why  the,  of  Animals,  shine  in  the  Dark 813 

Farming  in  Japan 284 

Farrer,  J.  A 53 

Feet,  the,  Fashion  and  Deformity  in 645 

Female  Education  from  a  Medical  Point  of  View 214,  319 

Fernald,  F.  A 491 

Fever  and  Ague,  The  March  of. 425 

Fingal's  Cave,  Fact  and  Fancy  regarding 856 

Fires,  Origin  of,  in  London 862 

Fishes,  Food-,  of  Lake  Erie 426 

Fiske,  Lieutenant  Bradley  A 742 

Fluid  Currents,  Carrying  Power  of 555 

Fodders,  Artificial  Drying  of 285 

Food,  Communicahility  of  Disease  by 139 

Food-Fishes  of  Lake  Erie 426 

Foot-prints,  Human,  in  Stratified  Rock 262 

Forbes,  George  J 409 

Force,  Vital,  Physiological  Significance  of 760 

Forel,  F.  A ' 306 

Forests,  The  Geographical  Distribution  of 115 

Fossils,  Ideas  about 279 

Foster,  Thomas 187,  311,  808 

Fox,  George  Henry,  M.  D 797 

France,  The  Check  in  the  Growth  of 718 

Function  and  Structure  573 

Funeral- Weddings,  Karen 427 

Gas,  Electricity  from 286 

Gases,  Efifect  of,  on  Insects 860 

Genius  and  Heredity 191 

Geoff roy  Saint-Hilaire,  Etienne,  Sketch  of 403 

Geology,  Some  Unsolved  Problems  in 61 

Germany,  The  Classical  Question  in 289 

Glacial  Period,  the.  Temperature  of 571 

Glacial  Theories  at  the  American  Association 276 

Glaser,  Professor  L 484 

Greek  in  the  Colleges 424 

*'  Greek  Question,"  The 1 

Greeks,  The  Caribs  and  the T16 

Greer,  Henry 254 

Grim,  George  W 207,  411 

Growth  of  Boys  and  Girls 571 

Habitation,  The,  and  the  Atmosphere 169 

Hallock,  Edward  J.,  Ph.  D 831 

Happiness,  The  Morality  of 187,  311,  469,  808 

Harding,  A.  C 580 

Hasheesh,  An  Overdose  of 509 


INDEX,  871 

PAGE 

Hearing,  Defective,  in  School-Children 280 

Hedgehogs  and  tlieir  History 428 

Heredity,  Genius  and 191 

Higgins,  Dr.  P.  J 639 

Hofmann,  August  Wilhelm,  Sketch  of 831 

Holt,  TVilliani  T 837 

Honey,  Ancient  Love  of 137 

Horses,  Work  of  Shod  and  Unshod 837 

Horses,  "Working  Capacity  of  Unshod 542 

House-Building  in  the  East 544 

Hubbell,  Herbert  P 262 

Humr.n  Foot-prints  in  Stratified  Rock 262 

Humboldt,  Alexander  von 145 

Humboldt,  Professor  Virchow  on 140 

Hungerford,  Mary  0 609 

Hydrogen,  Peroxide  of 856 

Hygiene  in  Schools 425 

Ice  Age,  The 570 

Idiosyncrasy S87 

Iguanodon,  The 351 

Infants,  Superstitions  about 429 

Infection,  Inlets  for 73 

Insects,  Effects  of  Gases  on 860 

Ischia  and  its  Earthquakes 24 

Jackal,  The,  Fox  Fables,  and  the  Dog-Star 142 

Jacques,  Dr.  William  W 503 

James,  Davis  L 411 

James,  E.  J.,  Ph.  D 289 

Jury  System,  The 676 

Kanachatka,  The  Sunny  Skies  of 8G3 

Karen  Funeral-Weddings 427 

Kepley,  Ada  H 645 

Kerosene,  Dangerous 461 

Kirkwood,  Professor  D 488 

Lacquers,  Japanese 858 

Lakes,  Early  Colonists  of  the  Swiss 806 

Larrabee,  W.  H 598 

Lamarck,  Sketch  of 105 

Land-Birds  in  Mid-Ocean 207 

Language,  Learning  one,  by  studying  others 414 

Leaves,  Transparent  Points  in 286 

Le  Conte,  Joseph 555 

Leprosy,  Biblical  and  Modern 797 

Le  Sueur,  William  D 780 

Lightning,  Photographing  a  Streak  of 752 

Lightning  without  Audible  Thunder 575 


872  INDEX. 

PAGB 

Lights,  Combustion  Products  from  Different 575 

Limbs,  Centripetal  and  Centrifugal  Movements  of  the 136 

Literary  Notices 122,  271,  416,  561,  706,  844 

Loess-Deposits,  American 837 

Loess,  The,  Deposits  of  Northern  China 243 

Ltiders,  M.  A 539 

Malaria  and  the  Progress  of  Medicine 238 

Malaria,  How  and  where  it  thrives 715 

Malaria,  Mosquitoes  and 700 

Malaysian  Ideas,  Fogginess  of 286 

Mars,  Surface  Characters  of  the  Planet 249 

Massage  and  Mental  Hygiene  as  Curative  Agents 139 

McFarland,  K.  W 555 

McGee,  W.  J 115 

Mechanical  Engineering,  Fifty  Years  of 530 

Mexico  aud  its  Antiquities 618 

Michigan,  Western,  Recent  Geological  Changes  in 826 

Microphone,  A  Home-made 574 

Mineralogy,  Methods  of  Instruction  in 754 

Mitchel,  Ormsby  Macknight,  Sketch  of 695 

Modern  Thought,  A  Defense  of 780 

Moner,  From,  to  Man 577 

Mounds^  The  Aboriginal  Significance  of 280 

Muscular  Energy,  The  Source  of. 377 

Nadaillac,  The  Marquis  de 818 

Nature,  The  Remedies  of 45,  196,  454,  628,  800 

Notes 143,  287,  431,  575,  719,  863 

Omahas,  Parental  Rights  and  the  Gens  among  the 277 

Oswald,  Dr.,  again  replies  to  Dr.  Black 112 

Oswald,  Felix  L.,  M.  D 45,  112,  196,454,  628,  800 

Pacific  Slope,  The  Extinct  Volcanoes  of  the 572 

Page,  C.  E.,  M.  D 115,  368 

Pear,  the,  Pathology  of 571 

Philanthropy,  Anthropology  and 283 

Physician's,  The,  Part  in  Evolution 141 

Pigs  as  Wine-Bibbers 426 

Plagues,  Animal 284 

Plants,  Phosphorescence  in 149 

Politics,  Science  as  a  Hope  in 556 

Pond-Mud  as  a  Diarrhoea-Breeder 426 

Popular  Miscellany 133,  276,  423,  570,  714,  855 

Proctor,  Richard  A 692 

Profession,  The  New 254 

Pyburn,  George 85 

Pygmies,  The 862 


INDEX,  873 

PAGE 

Queues,  Severed,  The  Chinese  Superstition  of. 861 

Race  Divisions,  Indistinctness  of 717 

Eadau,  M.  R 169 

Rainbows,  On 659 

Raisins,  How,  are  dried 135 

Randall,  O.  E 555 

Religion,  Influence  of  the  Environment  on 6 

Religious  Retrospect  and  Prospect 340 

Remedies,  The,  of  ITature 45,  196,  454,  628,  800 

Reply,  A,  to  Editorial  Statements 701 

Richards,  Professor  E.  L 446,  587 

River,  A  Subterranean,  in  Austria 859 

Rocks,  Sub-aerial  Decay  of 714 

Rowland,  Professor  H.  A 30 

Salt,  Use  of 430 

Salts  in  Rivers  and  in  the  Sea 716 

Sands,  The  Singing,  of  Manchester,  Massachusetts 280 

School-Children,  Defective  Hearing  in 280 

School  Examinations 133 

School-Recesses,  The  Utility  of 90 

Schools  and  Libraries,  Egyptian,  Ancient  and  Modern 141 

Schools,  Hygiene  in 425 

Science  and  Jack-Puddings 572 

Science  and  Safety  at  Sea 692 

Science  in  Classical  Schools 409 

Science,  Pure,  A  Plea  for 30 

Science,  Remarks  on  the  Influence  of 82 

Science  nenus  the  Classics 674 

Sea,  Science  and  Safety  at 692 

Serviss,  Garrett  P 180 

Sewage,  Disposition  of 138 

Sidereal  System,  The  Study  of  our 279 

Siemens,  Sir  Charles  William,  Sketch  of 649 

Slavery,  The  Coming 721 

Smith,  Theodore 837 

Snakes,  The  Yenom  of 134 

Sneeze,  How  we,  laugh,  stammer,  and  sigh 491 

Social  Subjects,  Suggestions  on 160 

Speech,  The  Faculty  of 793 

Spencer,  Herbert 340,  433,  721 

Spencerian  Philosophy,  The  Edinburgh  Review  on  the 839 

Spider,  Turret-,  Intelligence  of  a 430 

Stebbins,  F.  R 700 

Steel-Iron 427 

Stephen,  Leslie 82 

Stevenson,  William  C,  M.  D 760 

Stillman,  J.  M.,  Ph.  B 377 

Stoddard,  Professor  John  T 461 


874  INDEX. 

PAGTB 

Stone  Age,  The,  in  Africa 717 

Stone  Implements,  Superstitions  about 859 

Structure,  Function  and 673 

Study,  Physiologjically  considered 639 

Stump-Wells,  Old,  in  the  Mississippi  Bottom 836 

Sumner,  Professor  W.  G 160 

Suns,  Green,  and  Ked  Sunsets 598 

Sun-Spots,  A  Belt  of. 180 

Sun,  The  Recent  Eclipse  of  the 573 

Superstitions,  Yinous 234 

Sutphen,  Joseph  W 520 

Tarantula-Bites  and  the  Dancing-Cure 277 

Telescope,  A  Home-made 85 

Telescope,  The  Home-made 410 

Thorne,  R.  T 73 

Thought,  A  Defense  of  Modern 780 

Tidal  Anomalies 411 

Time,  The  New  Standard  of 423 

Tissandier,  Gaston 752 

Toryism,  The  New 433 

Trees,  Concentric  Rings  of 259 

Trees,  The  Age  of 53,  554 

Trees,  The  Big,  of  Turkistan 283 

Tyndall,  John,  F.  R.  S 659 


Under-ground  Wires 503 

Y^lain,  M.  Ch .24 

Vinous  Superstitions 234 

Vital  Force,  Physiological  Significance  of 760 

Volcanoes,  The  Extinct,  of  the  Pacific  Slope 572 

Wadsworth,  M.  E k 754 

Water-System,  A  Prehistoric 539 

White,  Frances  Emily,  M.  D 577 

Williams,  F.  W 243 

Williams,  W.  Mattieu 98,  228,  361,  496,  686,  773 

Wills,  Last,  and  Testaments 520 

Wilson,  Henry  II 676 

Wind-Sounds  in  the  Desert 285 

Wires,  Under-ground 503 

Wooldridge,  C.  W.,  M.  D 826 


END    OF   VOL.    XXIV. 


'oL.  XXIV.]  NovEMBEB,  1883.  [No.  I. 

T  IT  E 

POPUIAE  SCIENCE 

lOSTELT.  .„;.; 

CONDUCTED  BY  E.  L,  AND  W,  J,  YOUMANS, 

CONTKNTS.  p^^, 

I.  "  The  Greek  Question."    By  Professor  Josiah  P.  Cooke 1 

II.  Influence  of  the  Environment  on  Religion.  By  Prof .  J.  T.  Bixby.  6 

III.  Ischia  and  its  Earthquakes.    By  M.  Ch.  VsLAm.    (Illustrated.).  24 

IV.  A  Plea  for  Pure  Science.     By  Professor  H.  A.  Rowlaito 30 

V.  The  Remedies  of  Nature.— The  Alcohol-Habit.    II.     By  Felix 

L.  Oswald,  M.  D 45 

VI.  The  Age  of  Trees.     By  J.  A.  Faeeer 53 

VII.  Some  Unsolved  Problems  in  Geology.  II.  By  Dr.  J.  W.  Dawson.  61 

VIII.  Inlets  for  Infection.     By  R.  T.  Thoene,  F.  R.  C.  P.     (Illus.)  . .  73 

IX.  Remarks  on  the  Influence  of  Science.     By  Leslie  Stephen.  . .  82 

X.  A  Home-made  Telescope.     By  Dr.  George  Pyburn.     (Illus.).  85 

XL  The  Utility  of  School-Recesses.     By  Joseph  Carter 90 

XII.  The  Chemistry  of  Cookery.     By  W.  Mattieu  Williams 98 

XIII.  Sketch  of  Lamarck.     (With  Portrait.)  ...    105 

XIV.  Correspondence  :  Dr.  Oswald  again  Replies  to  Dr.  Black. — The  Geological 

Distribution  of  Forests. — Infantile  Dyspepsia 112 

XV.  Editor's  Table  :  The  Current  Study  of  Classics  a  Failure 117 

XVI.  Literary  iSTotices , 122 

XVII.  Popular  Miscellany 133 

XVIII.  Notes 143 

NEW  YORK: 
D.     APPLETON      AND      COMPANY, 

1,  3,  AND    5    BOND    STREET. 
Single  Number,  50  Cents.  Yearly  Subscription,  $5,00. 

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COMPOUND    OXYGEN 

FOR   CHRONIC   DISEASES. 


NERVOUS    PROSTRATION  AND    GREAT 
DEBILITY. 

The  subjoined  report  in  the  case  of  a  young  lady  in 
Minneapolis,  Minn.,  shows  how  quickly  Compound  Oxy- 
gen acts  upon  the  nervous  centers  and  gives  a  new  vi- 
tahty  to  the  whole  nervous  system: 

"It  is  now  six  weeks,"  writes  the  mother  of  our 
patient,  ''since  our  daughter  began  taking  your  Home 
Treatment,  and  we  can  truly  say  that  it  has  done  more 
for  her  during  this  time  than  any  other  medicine  could 
have  done. 

"  She  was  suffering  from  severe  nervous  pros/ra- 
tion and  great  debility  of  the  whole  system,  which  had 
only  been  aggravated  for  two  months  previous  by  using 
medicines  harsh  for  the  stomach,  causing  much  gastric 
irritation. 

"  We  truly  feel  more  than  gratified  with  the  result 
of  the  Compound  Oxygen,  and  wish  her  to  continue  its 
use  until  she  is  relieved  from  some  of  the  standing  dif- 
ficulties she  has  had  from  a  young  girl.  She  is  now  able 
to  be  around  the  house,  can  eat  any  easily  digested  food 
with  moderation,  and,  as  a  rule,  sleeps  much  better 
nights,  ,  .  .  She  has  been  troubled  with  chronic  con- 
stipation from  a  child.  The  Oxygen  has  given  more 
relief  to  her  than  any  other  remedy  ever  tried." 

In  this  case,  as  in  many  others  where  there  is  a 
diseased  and  highly  sensitive  nervous  organization,  a 
seeming  aggravation  of  symptoms  occurred  on  first 
using  the  Oxygen,  showing  its  quick  penetration  and 
active  force.  "  Her  symptoms,"  says  the  report,  •'  were 
worse  for  awhile,  and  she  was  more  nervous  and  very 
sensitive  to  the  effect  of  the  Oxygen  on  inhaling,  but  she 
can  now  take  it  regularly  without  diflBculty." 

•♦NO   FAITH   IN  IT." 

It  is  but  natural  that  physicians  who  know  little  or 
nothing  of  Compound  Oxygen  should  class  it  with  the 
nostrums  of  the  day,  and  when  inquired  of  in  regard  to 
it,  answer  that  they  have  "  no  faith  in  it."  It  rarely 
happens,  however,  that  a  change  of  opinion  does  not 
take  place  whenever  they  can  be  induced  to  give  it  a 
trial,  as  in  the  case  mentioned  below,  which  we  take  from 
the  letter  of  one  of  our  patients  in  Shelby  County,  Ind,: 

"  When  we  moved  here  the  physician  of  this  place, 

Dr ,  was  treating  a  woman  for  consumption,  and  of 

course  I  knew  that  he  was  only  helping  her  into  the 
grave.  So  I  took  him  your  treatise  on  Compound  Oxy- 
gen and  insisted  that  he  try  it,  but  h«  had  no  faith  in 
it.  After  two  or  three  months,  I  concluded  to  advise 
the  woman  herself  to  use  it,  even  if  it  was  stepping  in 
ahead  of  our  M.  D.  So,  as  soon  as  I  told  the  lady  about 
it,  she  wanted  me  to  send  for  a  Treatment.  But  when 
the  physician  heard  of  it  he  insisted  on  sending  for  it 
himself.  The  woman  improved  from  t/ie  commence- 
ment of  its  use.  Since  then  the  doctor  has  used  it  in 
several  other  cases  with  gratifying  results.'''' 

"BOUNDLESS  GRATITUDE." 

Writing  from  Crockett's  Depot,  Va.,  in  March  last, 
a  patient  says  : 

"  Your  chronic  grumbler  is  still  living,  but  he  does 
not  come  to-day  as  a  grumbler,  but  with  fx>undlejis 
gratitude  to  the  Eternal  for  directing  me  to  you,  his 
agent,  and  eternal  thanks  to  you  for  your  kindness.  .  .  . 
With  all  the  terrible  weather  we  have  been  experiencing, 
I  am  better." 


DROPSY. 

A  patient  in  Texarkana,  Ark.,  in  writing  for  a  new 
supply  of  (Xxygen,  makes  the  following  report  of  the 
effects  of  our  Treatment  in  a  case  ol  dropsy.    She  says : 

''  I  divided  my  last  supply  of  Oxygen  with  a  sick 
child,  who  had  the  dropsy,  and  who  also  had  heart-dis- 
ease from  his  birth.  When  I  began  using  the  Oxygen 
with  him  it  seemed  as  hopeless  a  case  as  I  ever  saw. 
He  is  now  able  to  be  up  and  walk  about  the  house. 
The  dropsy  is  all  gone,  and  1  would  have  great  hopes 
of  his  entire  recovery  if  it  were  not  for  the  heart-dis- 
ease. Those  who  saw  him  when  I  b*-gan  to  treat  him 
say  it  is  more  like  bringing  the  dead  to  lij'e  than  any- 
thing they  ever  witnessed." 

"HAVEN'T  WORDS    TO    EXPRESS    MY 
HAPPINESS.'' 

So  writes  a  gentleman  from  Minersville,  Pa.,  a  year 

after  using  our  Treatment : 

"  By  referring  to  your  Kecord,"  he  says.  "  you  will 
I  see  that  I  ordered  your  Home  Treatment'about  a  year 
I  ago.  I  followed  your  instructions  in  every  particular, 
I  and  am  happy  to  say  that  I  feel  better  now  than  I  ever 
I  remember  feeling: 'in  fact,  am  well.  Only  one  thing 
i  troubles  me,  and  that  is  raising  of  phlegm'on  taking  a 
I  slight  cold.  Digestion  almost  perfect;  can  eat  any- 
!  thing.  So  much  lor  my  case.  I  can  say  no  more.  / 
I  haven't  words  to  express  my  happiness.    I  can  only 

thank  you." 

There  are  many  of  our  patients  who  would  be  able 
to  make  as  good  a  report  as  this  if  they  were  as  careful 
as  the  writer  of  the  above  in  following  our  instructions 
"in  every  particular." 

BRONCHIAL.  TROUBLE. 

A  gentleman  in  Warren.  Pa.,  who  had  a  Treatment 
last  fall,  sent  for  another  in  April  last  In  ordering  it 
he  wrote : 

"  For  the  past  two  or  three  years  I  have  been  troubled 

I  more  or  less  with  inflammation  of  the  bronchial  tubes. 

I  and  I  think  also  from  some  form  of  dyspepsia,  causing 
a  depressed  feeling  in  the  chest,  especially  so  late  in  the 
day  after  eating  and  becoming  tired.    Last  fall  I  thought 

,  I  would  be  obliged  to  leave  my  business.  My  brother 
sent  for  an  Oxygen  Treatment,  and  by  using  it  /  re- 
ceived so  much  beneft  that  I  have  been  attending  to 
business  all  winter.  I  am  to-day  comfortably  well, 
although  I  still  have  a  little  inflammation  in  my  chest  at 
times.    I  have  recommended  it  to  several  of  my  friends 

;  who  are  unwell,  and  am  going  to  continue  its  use  my- 

,  self." 

I  "CAN    NOT    TELL  YOU    HOW  THANK- 
FUL I   AM." 

A  patient  in  Bridgeport,  Ind.,  says  : 
'        "  It  is  almost  a  year  since  I  wrote  you,  but  had  I  not 
!  been  feeling  exceedingly  well  you  would  have  been 

bothered  frequently  with  my  letters.  It  is  a  year  the 
}  15th  of  March  since"  I  received  my  last  Treatment,  and 
I  I  have  yet  about  an  eighth  left,  and  when  my  lungs  get 

to  feeling  bad  I  inhale  a  time  or  two  and  then  1  am  all 

right.  lean  not  tell  you  Jww  thankfid  I  am  to  you 
\  for  the  relief  and  health  you  have  given  me.  Why, 
i  when  I  think  of  the  person  you  undertook  to  cure  and 
I  then  of  my  present  self,  I  can  scarcely  beUeve  myself 

to  be  that  person." 


Our  Treatise  on  Compoimd  Oxygen  is  sent  free  of  charge.  It  contains  a  history  of  the  discovery,  nature,  and 
action  of  this  new  remedy,  and  a  record  of  many  of  the  remarkable  results  which  have  so  far  attended  its  use. 

Depositoky  in  Nkw  York.— Dr.  John  Turner,  8r>2  Broadway,  who  has  charge  of  our  Depository  in  New  York 
city,  will  fill  orders  for  the  Compound  Oxygen  Treatment,  and  inay  be  consulted  by  letter  or  in  por.'^on. 

Depository  on  Pacific  Coast.— H.  E.  Mathew.s  606  Montgomery  Street,  Saii  Francisco,  California,  will  fill 
orders  for  the  Compound  Oxygen  Treatment  on  Paeific  Coast. 

Frauds  and  Imitations.— Let  it  be  cl'^arly  understood  that  Compound  Oxygen  is  only  made  and  dispensed 
by  the  undersigned.  Any  substance  made  elsewhere,  and  called  Compound  Oxygen,  is  spurious  and  wortfUess, 
and  those  who  buy  it  simply  thiow  away  their  money,  as  they  will  in  the  end  discover. 


Drs.    STARKEY  &   PALEN. 


G,  R.  STARKEY,  A.  M.,  M.  D. 
G.  E.  PALEN,  Ph.  B.,  M.  D. 


1109  &  nil  Girard  St.  (between  Chestnut  and  Market). 
PHILADELPHIA,    PA. 


THE  FAMOUS  SELTZER  SPRING 

OF   GERMANY 

I  IT      E"VEIf5r      XI  O  3S£  S  !  1 


TARRANT'S  SELTZER  APERIENT 

Is  based  uporx  a  scientific  analysis  of  the  celebrated  Germaix 

Spring  w^hose  name  it  bears,  and  ^whose  virtues  it  so 

enainently  contains. 

Each  Bottle  representing^  from  Xbirty  to  Forty  Glasses  of 
Sparkling;,  Foaming;  Seltzer. 


It  is  Worth  Remembering 

That  Tarrant's  Seltzer  Aperient  represents  in  each  bottle  thirty  to  forty  glasses  of 
Sparkling  Seltzer  Water,  containing  all  the  virtues  of  the  celebrated  German  Spring. 

It  is  always  Fresh  !    Always  Ready! 

One  of  the  advantages  that  Tarrant's  Seltzer  Aperient — being  a  dry  white  powder 
— has  over  many  natural  mineral  waters,  is  the  fact  that  it  never  becomes  vapid  or  stale. 
It  is,  therefore,  the  most  admirable  preparation  not  only  for  travelers  on  land  and  sea, 
but  for  all  who  need  a  bright,  fresh,  sparkling  alterative  and  corrective,  and  it  is  always 
ready. 

Tarrant's  Seltzer  Aperient  thus  stands  at  the  very  front  of  all,  and  is  admitted  to 
be  the  best  remedy  known  for  constipation,  biliousness,  and  all  disorders  of  the  stomach 
and  bowels. 

MANUFACTURED   ONLY   BY 

TARRANT    &    COMPANY, 


SOLD  BY  ALL   DRUGGISTS. 


DECKER  BROTHERS' 

PIANOS 

Have  shown  themselves  to  be  so  far  supe- 
rior to  all  others  in  Excellence  of  Work- 
manship, Elasticity  of  Touch,  Beauty 
of  Tone,  and  great  Durability,  that 
they  are  now  earnestly  sought 
for  by  all  persons  desiring 

THE  VERY  BEST  PIANO. 


CAUTION. — All  genuine  Decker  Pianos  have  the  following  name 
(precisely  as  here  shown)  on  the  pianos  above  the  keys: 

I^"  SEND  FOR  ILLUSTRATED  CATALOGUE.  ,MS 

No.  33  Union  Square, 

NE\Rf   YORK. 


roL.   XXIV.] 


December,  1 


THE 


POPULAR 


MONTHLY. 


CONDUCTED  BY  E.  L.  AND  W.  J,  YOUMANS. 

CONTENTS.  p^QB 
I.  Alexander  von  Humboldt.    By  £mil  du  Bois-Reymond.    With 

Portrait 145 

II.  Suggestions  on  Social  Subjects.     By  Professor  W.  G.  Sumnee.  160 

III.  The  Habitation  and  the  Atmosphere.     By  M.  R.  Radau 169 

IV.  A  Belt  of  Sun-Spots.     By  Garrett  P.  Serviss.     (Illustrated.)  180 
V.  The  Morality  of  Happiness.     By  Thomas  Foster 187 

VI.  Genius  and  Heredity.     By  M.  E.  Card 191 

VII.  The  Remedies  of  Nature. — Enteric  Disorders.      By  Felix  L. 

Oswald,  M.  D 196 

VIII.  Land-Birds  in  Mid-Ocean.     By  George  W.  Grim 207 

IX.  The  Illusion  of  Chance.     By  William  A.  Eddy 209 

X.  Female  Education  from  a  Medical  Point  of  View.     By  T.  S. 

Clouston,  M.  D 214 

XL  The  Chemistry  of  Cookery.     By  W.  Mattieu  Williams 228 

XIL  Vinous  Superstitions.     By  Dr.  Th.  BoDm 234 

XIII.  Malaria  and  the  Progress  of  Medicine 238 

XIV.  The  Loess-Deposits  of  Northern  China.     By  F.  W.  Williams.  243 
XV.  The  Natural  Setting  of  Crystals.     By  J.  B.  Choate 248 

XVI.  Surface  Characters  of  the  Planet  Mars 249 

XVIL  The  New  Profession.     By  Henry  Greer 254 

XVIIL  Concentric  Rings  of  Trees.     By  A.  L.  Child,  M.  D 259 

XIX.   Correspondence  :   Human  Foot-prints  in  Stratified  Rock. — Asthma  and  its 

Treatment. — Animal  Friendships 262 

XX.   Editor's  Table  :   Dead-Language  Studies  necessarily  a  Failure.— Queer  De- 

fenses  of  the  Classics - 265 

XXI.  Literary  Notices '. , 271 

XXII.  Popular  Miscellany , 276 

XXIII.  Notes 287 

NEW   YORK: 
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Entered  at  the  Post-OflSce  at  New  York,  and  admitted  for  transmission  through  the  mails  at  second-class  rates. 


COMPOUND    OXYGEN 

FOR  THE  CURE  OF  CHRONIC  DISEASES. 


CATARRH. 

A  lady  at  Oberlin.  O..  reports  the  following  results 
in  a  caseof  long-standing  catarrh: 

"  I  first  took  Compound  Oxygen  two  years  and  a 
lialf  As^o  /or  catarrh.  I  had  had  it  nearly  all  my  life. 
The  flow  of  mucus  was  almost  constant,  and  it  formed 
lumps  which  became  very  oflTensive  before  I  could  dis- 
lodge them.  My  breath  was  very  bad,  indeed,  and  my 
health  wretched.  One  Treatment  of  ComjMund  Oxy- 
gen cured  my  catarrh  so  that  my  breath  has  not  l>een 
had  since ^  a  period  of  two  years,  although  the  discharge 
from  mv  nose  is  still  considerable. 

*•  I  got  another  Treatment  for  my  mother,  who  was 
in  the  first  stages  of  consumption,  and  ft  helped  her 
jrreatlv.  At  first  her  lungs  were  so  sore  that  she  could 
not  fill  them  when  inhaling,  but  this  gradually  grew 
better,  and  she  has  had  no  return  of  lung  trouble.  .  .  . 

"  The  Compound  Oxygen  hdped  my  catarrh  when 
everything  else  had  failed— saXt  water,  iodide  of  pot- 
ash, snuflf,  carboUc  acid,  and  all  other  things  usually  pre- 
scribed. Idonot  fed  now  a^  if  my  breath  made  me  a 
nuisance."' 


TUBERCULAR  CONSU3IPTION  COMPLJ- 
CATED  WITH  ASTH3IA. 

Another  of  the  marvelous  results  which  we  are  con- 
stantly meeting  with  in  our  administration  of  Compound 
Oxygen  is  described  in  the  following  letter  from,  a  pa- 
tient in  South  CaroUna : 

Columbia,  S.  C,  May  14, 18S3. 

^  Dks.  Starket  it  Palen  :  It  is  a  pleasure,  yet  it  is 
a  duty,  to  tell  you  of  the  great  benefit  derived  ft-om  the 
use  of  the  contents  of  one  of  your  blue  bottles.  For 
some  years  I  have  been  afllicted  with,  tubercular  con- 
mmpiion^  CDmplicated  with  severe  asthma,  both  dis- 
eases inherited.  Upon  taking  cold  I  suffer  intensely, 
my  lungs  becoming  clogged,  and  breathing  and  raising 
are  painful  eflForts  and  at  times  almost  an  impossibility. 
In  these  paroxysms  I  have  often  been  thought  to  be 
dying,  and,  on  two  or  three  occasions,  had  not  relief  been 
obtained  I  should  have  died.  I  have  had  the  best  med- 
ical treatment,  and  every  physician  who  has  attended 
me  has  i*egarded  my  recovery  from  some  of  my  attacks 
as  a  marvel.  Only  the  most  powerful  medicines  had 
any  effect,  while,  for  my  asthma,  nothing  had  ever  given 
me  as  much  relief  as  tobacco- smoking. 

"  From  the  early  part  of  last  May  until  the  26th  of 
July,  I  was  not  able  to  lie  down  day  or  night,  and  then 
got  relief  only  by  going  from  Hendersonville,  North 
Carolina,  to  the  top  of  Caesar's  Head  Mountain,  where 
the  stricture  seemed  loosened,  and  profuse  expectora- 
tion began. 

•'  A  few  weeks  eabsequent  I  took  another  cold,  and 
my  physician  told  me  if  I  did  not  get  speedy  relief  I 
would  die  from  siiffocation  :  that  I  was  beyond  the  help 
of  any  medicine  he  could  give.  My  only  hope  was  to 
start  at  once  for  an  ocean-trip.  On  my  way  to  the  coast 
I  stopped  in  Aiken  for  rest,  expectoration  suddenly  be- 
gan, and  I  obtained  relief 

'•■  After  my  return  home  I  ordered  your  Compound 
Oxygen  apparatus  as  an  experiment,  and,  I  confess, with 
but  a  faint  hope  of  benefit. 

"  I  began  your  Treatment  in  December,  using  only 
the  blue  bottle,  and  my  improvement  has  been  an  as- 
tonishment to  erery  one  knowing  the  circumstances.  I 


I  have  not  had  a  severe  attack  since  beginning  the  Treat- 
ment, although  I  have  had  a  severe  cold.  The  Oxygen 
seemed  to  loosen  the  mucus,  and  expectoration  waseasy 
and  painless.  I  am  thirty-one  years  old.  I  have  gained, 
while  using  the  Oxygen,  thirty  jMunds,  which,  to  one 
weighing  ninety  pounds,  is  a  considerable  increase. 
Five  of  my  friends  have  bought  your  apparatus  on  ac- 
count of  its  wonderful  effect  on  me.  and  all  of  them  feel 
benefited.  This  is  the  first  testimonial  I  have  ever 
given,  and  I  did  not  suppose.  I  could  write  such  a  state- 
ment, with  its  liabiUty  to  publication,  but  I  feel  so  thank- 
ful to  you  for  the  great  benefit  I  have  derived,  end  am 
so  desirous  that  others  suffering  as  I  have  may  test 
your  Treatment,  that  I  waive  all  scruples  to  addressing 
you  as  I  do.  My  husband  is  the  Collector  of  Internal 
Revenue  for  the  Sute,  and  he  will  confirm  all  1  have 
said.  With  the  most  sincere  gratitude  for  this  new  en- 
joyment of  life,  believe  me 

••  Very  truly  yours, 

'•  IIelkn  B.  Bbatton." 


INDUCING  SLEEP. 

In  our  reports  from  patients  we  have  a  uniform  tes- 
timony to  the  influence  of  Compound  Oxygen  in  pro- 
j  ducing  sleep.    A  gentleman  writing  from  Mansfield, 
Ohio,  says : 

"  On  the  day  after  your  Treatment  came  my  wife 
I  took  her  first  inhalation'  having  carefully  posted  herself 
i  beforehand  regarding  your  instructions.    Her  first  in- 
j  halation  was  in  the  eVenine  before  retiring,  a/id.  al- 
though she  had-  not  been  able  peacefully  to  go  to  sleep  one 
'  evening  in  a  week  for  a  month  or  more  before,  on  ac- 
count of  neinous  tzcitchings,  she  at  once  fell  asleep, 
and  enjoyed  the  first  good  refreshing  nighVs  re-^t  for 
weeks.    She  remarked  immediately  after  inhaling  that 
she  had  such  a  comfortable  feeling  in  her  breast  and 
lungs,  and  that  there  was  a  warmth  and  freedom  there 
that  teas  entirely  new  and  exceedingly  pleasant.    Her 
rest  has  not  been  disturbed  but  one  single  night  since 
that  time." 


"IN  A  CRITICAL  CONDITION." 

The  wife  of  a  patient  at  Jackson,  Mich.,  referring  to 
the  great  change  in  her  husband's  condition  after  using 
Comi)Ound  Oxygen  for  a  short  time,  says  : 

"  You  will  know  that  when  Mr.  6 commenced 

your  Treatment  he  was  in  a  pretty  critical  condition, 
and  that  this  was  the  last  resort  before  trying  a  change 
of  climate.  But  I  must  say  that  the  Oxjgen  has  done 
wonderfully  in  his  case,  it  has  quieted  his  nervous 
system,  brought  life  and  waiiiith  into  his  once  cold 
and  benumbed  limbs,  and  helped  digestion.  He  has  a 
clearer  complexion  (it  was  yellow  before),  and  has  gained 
in  flesh." 


BETTER  IN  EVERY  WAY. 

A  patient,  writing  of  the  effects  of  the  Treatment, 
says : 

"  /  am  much  better  in  evei-y  way.  I  still  hare  a 
cough,  but  it  is  not  near  so  troublesome.  The  severe 
pain  through  my  chest  has  left,  and  /  have  a  springi- 
ness in  my  feelings,  when  I  before  felt  a  terrible  de- 
pression. I  can  fill  my  lungs  to  their  full  extent  with- 
out pain  of  any  kind." 

Our  Treatise  on  Compound  Oxygen  is  gent  free  of  charge.  It  contains  a  history  of  the  discovery,  nature,  and 
action  of  this  new  remedy,  and  a  record  of  many  of  the  remarkable  results  which  have  so  far  attended  its  use. 

Dei'ositokt  in  New  York.— Dr.  John  Turner.  8G2  Broadway,  who  has  charge  of  our  Depository  in  New  York 
city,  will  fill  orders  for  the  Compound  Oxygen  Treatment,  and  inay  be  consulted  by  letter  or  in  person. 

"Depository  on  Pacific  Coast.— H.  E.  Mathews,  6(H)  Montgomery  Street,  San  Francisco.  California,  «ill  fill 
orders  for  the  Compound  Oxygen  Treatment  on  Pacific  Coast. 

Frauds  and  Imitations.— Let  it  be  clearly  understood  that  Compound  Oxygen  is  only  made  and  disp)ensed 
by  the  undersigned.  Any  substance  made  elsewhere,  and  called  Compound  Oxygen,  is  spurious  and  worthless, 
and  those  who  buy  it  simply  throw  away  their  money,  as  they  will  in  the  end  discover. 

Drs.    STARKEY  &    PALEN, 


G.  R.  STARKEY,  A.  M.,  M.  D. 
Q.  E.  PALEN,  Ph.  B.,  M.  D. 


1109  &  nil  Girard  St.  (l)etffeeD  Chestnut  and  Market), 
PHILADELPHIA,    PA. 


WILLIAM   KNABE  &  CO.'S 


PIANO    FACTORY. 

^.^lXjO'ZIVEC^HX:,     3VC3D. 

These  Instruments  have  been  before  the  public  for  nearly  fifty  years,  and  upon  their  excellence  alone  have 
attained  an  unpurchased  pre-eminence^  which  establishes  them  as  unequaled  in  Tone,  Touch,  Workman- 
ship, and  Durability.  Every  Piano  fully  warranted  for  five  years.  Prices  greatly  reduced,  lUiiBlrated 
Catalogues  and  Price-Lists  promptly  furnished  on  application. 

^VILLIAM  .KISTABE    &    CO., 

112  Pifth  Avenue,  New  York.  204  &  206  W.  Baltimore  St.,  Baltimore. 


AS  INFORMATION  OR  AS  TRAIN- 
ING. 

BY  A  SCOTCH  GRADUATE. 


8vo.     Limp  cloth,     -     -     50  cents. 


"  Containing  an  interesting  discussion 
of  an  old  question  from  the  most  recent 
point  of  view.  It  is  not  only  fresh  and 
pungent  in  its  statements,  but  is  liberal  in 
its  spirit  and  practical  in  its  aim.  The  ar- 
gument was  spoken  of  very  highly  by  Pro- 
fessor Bain,  of  the  University  of  Aberdeen, 
and  excited  so  much  attention  upon  its  ap- 
pearance in  England  as  to  warrant  its  re- 
production here." — Note  to  the  American 
Edition. 


WEBSTER'S 

UNABRIDGED 

In  Sheep,  Russia  and  Turkey  Bindings. 


yOlGTIONAiyMuPPLEMEHTk 


THE  STANDARD. 
^  P^  Webster— it  has  118,000  Words, 
^^^  '     a  New  Biographical  Dictionary 
and  3000  Engravings. 

"rUET  Standard  in  the  Gov't  Printing  Office. 
■  ■■^    33,000  copies  in  Public  Schools. 
Sale  20  to  1  of  any  other  series. 

BEST  HOLIDAY  GIFT 

Always  acceptable  to  Pastor,  Parent, 
Teacher,  Child  or  Friend ;  for  Holiday,  Birth- 
day, Wedding,  or  any  other  occasion. 

"A  LIBRARY  IN  ITSELF." 

The  latest  edition,  in  the  quantity  of  matter  it 
contains,  is  believed  to  be  the  largest  volume 
published.  It  has  3000  more  Words  in  its  vo- 
cabulary than  are  found  in  any  other  Am.  Dict'y, 
and  nearly  3  times  the  number  of  Engravings. 
G.  &  C.  MERRIAM  &  CO.,  Pub'rs, Springfield, Mass. 


New  York:  D.  APPLETON  &  CO. 

1,  3,  &  5  Bond  Street. 


DECKER  BROTHERS' 
PIANOS 

Have  shown  themselves  to  be  so  far  supe- 
rior to  all  others  in  Excellence  of  Work- 
manshipj  Elasticity  of  Touch,  Beauty 
of  Tone,  and  great  Durability,  that 
they  are  noAV  earnestly  sought 
for  by  all  persons  desiring 

THE  VERY  BEST  PIANO. 


CAUTION. — All  genuine  Decker  Pianos  have  the  following  name 
(precisely  as  here  shown)  on  the  pianos  above  the  keys: 

m-  SEND  FOR  ILLUSTEATED  CATALOGUE.  ==^ 

No.  33  Union  Square, 

NEwr  iroRK. 


Vol.  XXIV.]  January,  1884.  [No.  III. 

rp  TT   xp 

POPULAR  SCEM 

CONDUCTED  BY  E.  L.  AND  W.  J,  l^b^^^£a^,U^ 

CONTENTS. 
I.  The  Classical  Question  in  Germany.     By  E.  J.  James,  Ph.  D. .     289 
II.  Early  Colonists  of  the  Swiss  Lakes.     By  F.  A.  Forel.     (Illus.)     306 

III.  The  Morality  of  Happiness.     By  Thomas  Foster 311 

IV.  Female  Education  from  a  Medical  Point  of  View.     II.     By 

T.  S.  Clouston,  M.  D 319 

V.  The  Control  of  Circumstances.     By  William  A.  Eddy 335 

VI.  Religious  Retrospect  and  Prospect.     By  Herbert  Spencer.  . .  340 

VII.  The  Iguanodon.     (Illustrated.) 351 

VIII.  Defective  Eye  sight.     By  Samuel  Yorke  At  Lee 357 

IX.  The  Chemistry  of  Cookery.     By  W.  Mattieu  Williams 361 

X.  Catching  Cold.     By  C.  E.  Page,  M.  D 368 

XL  The  Source  of  Muscular  Energy.     By  J.  M.  Stillman,  Ph.  B. .  377 

XII.  Idiosyncrasy.     By  Professor  Grant  Allen 387 

XIII.  :&tienne  Geoffroy  Saint-Hilaire.     With  Portrait 403 

XIV.  Correspondence  :  Science  in  Classical  Schools.— The  Home-made  Telescope. 

—Tidal  Anomalies.— Elephants'  Tricks 409 

XV.  Editor's  Table  :   "  Church-and-State  "  Function  of  Dead  Languages  —Learn- 
ing one  Language  by  studying  others 412 

XVI.  Literary  Notices 416 

XVII.  Popular  Miscellany 423 

XVIIL  Kotes 431 

NEW   YORK: 
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1,  3,  AND    5    BOND    street. 
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Copyright  by  D.  APPLETOX  AND  CO.,  1883. 
:::ntere<i  at  the  Post-OflSce  at  New  York,  and  admitted  for  transmission  through  the  mails  at  second-class  rates. 


A  GREAT  SUFFERER 

FROM   DEBILITY,  NERYOUSNESS,  AND   LOSS   OF   SLEEP 
AND  APPETITE,  RESTORED  TO  HEALTH  BY 

COMPOUND  OXYGEN. 


IMPORTANT  LETTER  FROM  THE  EDI- 
TOR   AND    PUBLISHER    OF   THE 
"  ODD-FELLOWS'  JOURNAL." 

"  HuLMEviLLE,  Pa.,  September  1,  1883. 

"Drs.  Stabket  &  Palen— S'i/'5 ;  Haviii<;  expe- 
rienced so  great  a  beneflt  from  your  COMPOUND 
OXYGEN,  I  desire  to  give  my  testimony  as  to  its 
great  value  as  a  curative  agent. 

"  In  the  spring  of  1881  my  health  beaan  to  fail,  so 
that  I  became  a  arreat  sufferer  from  debility,  nervous- 
ness, and  loss  of  sleep  and  appetite. 

*'  After  trying  several  remedies  and  continuing 
to  grow  weaker,  I  almost  in  despair  gave  up  the 
hope  of  living. 

*'  To  add  to  my  sufferings,  in  October  of  the  same 
year  I  was  afflicted  with  a  severe  cold,  which  seemed 
to  induce  congestion  of  the  liver  and  kidneys,  threat- 
ened paralysis  of  the  right  side,  and  haemorrhoids, 
and  the  prescribed  remedies  aggravate!  rather  than 
allayed  the  suftliring. 

'•  About  the  first  of  November  I  heard  of  your 
Compound  Oxygen,  and  was  induced  to  try  it.  At 
this  time  I  was  losing  about  half  a  gill  of  blood  a 
day  I  could  not  sleep  soundly,  very  little  appetite, 
and  a  very  flighty  memory. 

•'  In  less  than  two  weeks  after  taking  the  Com- 
pound Oxygen  I  was  like  a  new  person.  The  bleed- 
ing had  stopped  entirely,  ray  appetite  became 
healthy,  my  sleep  improved,  and  my  memory  became 
good  and  steady. 

'*  I  have  continue  1  its  use  until  the  present  time, 
Se^itember  1, 1883,  enjoying  good  healtli,  excellent 
spirits,  and  improved  powers  of  endurance,  both 
mentally  and  phy:?ically. 

"During  the  first  six  months,  I  took  the  Com- 
pound Oxygen  regularly,  as  prescribed  ;  since  that 
time  only  occasionally,  as  needed  to  keep  my  health 
good.  I  might  mention  that  I  have  had  three  attacks 
of  incipient  pneumonia,  at  different  times,  but  that 
I  no-v  feel  that  ray  lung  power  is  excellent  and  more 
active  than  at  any  time  in  my  life. 

"There  have  alf^o  been  a  number  of  wonderful 
results  that  have  come  within  my  observati  )n  from 
the  086  of  Compound  Oxygen,  a  few  of  which  I  will 
relate  to  you : 

I. 

"  A  lady  friend  wa-J  taken  sick  in  1863  with  a  se- 
vere attack  of  abdominal  infl  immation.  She  was 
treated  by  an  old-!<chool  (allopathic)  physician,  and 
was  confined  to  her  bed  for  eight  months.  She  be- 
came a  suffering  invalid  :  deaf,  from  taking  a  large 
quantity  of  quinine ;  neuralgic,  from  taking  solu- 


tions of  arsenic,  and  strychnia,  and  morphia.  She 
had  a  number  of  skillful  physiciar-s  atteijding  her 
during  the  many  years  which  past^ed  until  Decem- 
ber, 1881,  without  much  relief  or  er.coura^iement. 
She  then  began  the  use  of  Compound  Oxygen. 
Scarcely  three  months  had  elapsed  before"  she 
showed  signs  of  great  improvement,  and  has  con- 
tinued to  improve  steadily,  until  at  present  she  con- 
siders herself  enjoying  a  large  share  of  good  health. 
Her  hearing  is  much  improved,  the  neuralgia  has 
almost  entirely  disappeared  ;  the  nervousness  is 
scarcely  noticed,  and  she  is  able  not  (mly  to  attend 
to  her  household  and  other  duties,  but  to  walk  sev- 
eral miles  at  a  time  when  it  is  required.  She  re- 
joices to  bear  testimony  to  the  blessing  Compound 
Oxygen  has  conferred  upon  her. 

II. 

•'  Another  lady  friend,  of  advanced  years  (nearly 
seventy),  was  suffering  from  debility  induced  by  an 
injury  received  about  a  year  before.  Her  spirits  be- 
came depressed,  her  appetite  failed,  her  meniory 
became  flighty,  and  her  judgment  weak.  After 
using  Compound  Cxygen  only  a  short  time,  great 
improvement  was  noticeable,  until  at  present  she  is 
enjoying  excellent  health,  her  appetite  and  sleep  are 
normal,  she  is  lively  and  contented,  and  her  mind  is 
restored  to  its  usual  activity  and  balance. 

"  I  could  give  many  instances  of  its  good  effects 
which  havp  come  to  my  notice,  and  only  recom- 
mended from  friendly  motives,  and  a  desire  to  alle- 
viate suffering.  I  have  known  it  to  relieve  bronchi- 
tis, asthma,  catarrh,  partial  blindness,  abdominal 
pain,  cuts,  bruises,  and  sores— cure  measles,  fever 
and  ague,  and  dyspepsia— in  fact,  I  have  never 
known  it  to  be  used  properly  that  it  did  not  accom- 
plish more  than  is  claimed  for  it. 

"  I  take  pleasure  in  adding  my  testimony  to  those 
of  the  many  others  you  have  relieved,  and  agree 
with  them  in  believing;  that  in  your  discovery  we 
have,  if  not  the  real  Ehxir  of  Life,  yet  a  prolonger 
of  life,  and  what  adds  relief  and  happiness  to  that 
which  can  not  be  prolonged. 

"  Permit  me  to  say  that  in  your  liberal  efforts 
and  great  expenditure  to  hring  a  knowledge  of  this 
great  alleviator  of  human  suffering  to  tne  public 
notice,  you  show  a  most  benevolent  and  praise- 
worthy spirit,  and  I  trust  you  may  be  liberally  re- 
warded for  your  labor. 

"  I  remain,  very  respectfully, 

"  W.  G.  P.  Brinckloe. 
"  Editor  and  Publisher  of  the  '  Odd- Fellows'  Jour- 
nal.'' " 


Our  Treatise  on  Compound  Oxygen  is  sent  free  of  charge.  It  contains  a  history  of  the  discovery,  nature,  and 
action  of  this  new  remedy,  and  a  record  of  many  of  the  remarkable  results  which  have  so  far  attended  its  use. 

Dbpositoky  in  New  York. — Dr.  John  Turner,  862  Broadway,  who  has  charge  of  our  Depository  in  New  York 
city,  will  fill  orders  for  the  Compound  Oxygen  Treatment,  and  may  be  consulted  by  letter  or  in  person. 

Depository  on  Pacific  Coast.— H.  E.  Mathews,  606  Montgomery  Street,  San  Francisco,  California,  will  fill 
orders  for  the  Compound  Oxygen  Treatment  on  Pacific  Coast. 

Frauds  and  Imitations.— Let  it  be  clearly  understood  that  Compound  Oxygen  is  only  made  and  dispensed 
by  the  undersigned.  Any  substance  made  elsewhere,  and  called  Compound  Oxygen,  is  spurious  and  ivorthless, 
and  those  who  buy  it  simply  throw  away  their  money,  as  they  will  in  the  end  discover. 


Drs. 


G.  R.  9TARKEY,  A.  M.,  M.  D. 
Q.  E.  PALEN,  Ph.  B.,  M.  D. 


STARKEY  &   PALEN, 

1109  &  nil  Girard  St  (between  Chestnnt  and  Market), 
PHILADELPHIA,   PA. 


Mt  §m-%0xl  Stmts. 

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DECKER  BROTHERS' 

PIANOS 

Have  shown  themselves  to  be  so  far  supe- 
rior to  all  others  m  Excellence  of  Work- 
manship, Elasticity  of  Touch,  Beauty 
of  Tone,  and  great  Durability,  that 
they  are  now  earnestly  sought 
for  by  all  persons  desiring 

THE  VERY  BEST  PIANO. 


CAUTIOK — All  genuine  Decker  Pianos  have  the  following  name 
(precisely  as  here  shown)  on  the  pianos  above  the  keys: 

S^°  SEND  FOE  ILLUSTEATED  CATALOGUE,  .,m 

No.  33  Union  Square, 

NEW   YORK. 


Vol.   XXIV.]  February,  1884.      I  f^}^^^  I^ilS^y] 

THE         \}^^30/ 

POPULAE  SCIENCE 
MONTHLY. 

CONDUCTED  BY  E.  L.  AND  W.  J.  YOUMANS/ 

CONTENTS. 

I.  The  New  Toryism.     By  Herbert  Spencer 433 

II.  College  Athletics.     I.     By  Professor  E.  L.  Richards 446 

III.  The  Remedies  of  Nature. — Nervous  Maladies.      By  Felix  L. 

Oswald,  M.  D 454 

IV.  Dangerous  Kerosene.     By  Prof.  Johx  T.  Stoddard.     (Ill us.)  461 
Y.  The  Morality  of  Happiness.     By  Thomas  Foster 469 

VI.  The  Aurora  Borealis.     By  M.  Antoixe  De  Saporta 474 

YII.  Defenses  of  the  Lesser  Animals.     By  Professor  L.  Glaser 484 

YIII.  The  Comet  of  1812  and  1883.     By  Prof.  D.  Kirkwood 488 

IX.  How  we  Sneeze,  Laugh,  Stammer,  and  Sigh.    By  F.  A.  Fernald.  491 

X.  The  Chemistry  of  Cookery.     By  W.  Mattieu  Williams 496 

XL  Under-Ground  Wires.     By  Dr.  William  W.  Jacques 503 

XII.  An  Overdose  of  Hasheesh.     By  Mary  C.  Hungerford 509 

XIII.  The  Causes  of  Earthquakes.     By  M.  Daubree 515 

XIY.  Last  Wills  and  Testaments.     By  Joseph  W.  Sutphen 520 

XV.  Fifty  Years  of  Mechanical  Engineering.     By  A.  C.  Harding  . .  530 

XYL  A  Prehistoric  Water-System.     By  M.  A.  Luders 539 

XYIL  Working  Capacity  of  Unshod  Horses.    By  A.  F.  Astley.  (Illus.)  542 

XYIIL  House-Building  in  the  East 544 

XIX.  Sketch  of  Sir  Charles  William  Siemens.     With  Portrait 549 

XX.   Correspondence  :    The  Age  of  Trees.—"  Tidal  Anomalies,"  etc 554 

XXI.   Editor's  Table  :   Science  as  a  Hope  in  Politics.— Education  without  Dead 

Languages -  •  •  556 

XXII.  Literary  Notices , 561 

XXIII.  Popular  Miscellany 570 

XXIY.  Notes 575 

NEW   YORK: 
D.     APPLETON      AND      COMPANY, 

1,  3,  AND    5    BOND    street. 
Single  Number,  50  Cents.  Yearly  Subscription,  $5.00. 

~  Copyright  bt  D.  APPLETON  AND  CO.,  1884. 

Entered  at  the  Post-Office  at  New  York,  and  admitted  for  transmission  through  the  mails  at  second-class  rates. 


THIRTY-EIGHTH  ANNUAL  REPORT  OF  THE 

New  York  Life  Insurance  Co. 

Offl.ce,  JSFos.  346  ^  348  Sroa-away. 


JANUARY  I,  1883. 


Amount  of  Net  Cash  Assets,  January  1,  1883 

REVKNUE   ACCOUNT. 

Premiums $9,604,788.38 

Less  deferred  premiums  January  1,  1882 452.161.00- 

Interest  and  rents  (including  realized  gains  on  real  estate  sold) 3,089.273.21 

Less  interest  accrued  January  1,  1882 .      291,254.80- 

DISBUKSEMENT   ACCOUNT. 

Losses  by  death,  including  Reversionary  additions  to  same 

Endowments  matured  and  discounted,  including  Keversinnary  additions  to  same 

\nnuities,  dividends,  and  returned  premiums  on  cancelled  policies 

Total  paid  Policy-holders $6,210,809.71 

Taxes  and  re-insurances 

Commissions,  brokerages,  agency  expenses,  and  physicians'  fees 

OiBce  and  law  expenses,  salaries,  advertising,  printing,  etc 

ASSETS. 

Cash  in  bank,  on  hand,  and  in  transit  (since  received) 

Invested  in  United  states.  New  York  CHty,  and  other  stocks  (market  value,  $19,953,956.52). 

Real  Estate.   

Bonus  and  mortgages,  first  lien  on  real  estate  (buildings  thereon  it.sured  for  $17,950,000.00 

and  the  policies  assigned  to  the  Company  as  additional  collateral  security) 

Tempor.iry  loans  (secured  by  stocks,  market  value,  $.\19l,  139.50) " 

*  Loans  on  existing  policies  (the  reserve  held  by  the  Company  on  these  policies  amounts 

to$2.6J0,961) .■ 

*  Quarterly  and  semi-annual  premiums  on  existing  policies,  due  subsequent  to  Jan.  1, 1883 

*  Premiums  on  existing  pohcies  in  course  of  transmission  and  collection 

Agents' balances  

Accrued  interest  on  investments  January  1,  1SS3 

Excess  of  market  value  of  securities  over  cost 

*A  detailed  schedule  of  these  items  will  accompany  the  usual  annual  report  JUed 
with  the  Insurance  Department  of  the  State  of  New  York. 


$45,130,006.86 


-$9,152,627.88 

-  2,798,018.41— $11,950,645  79 

$57,080,652.65 

$1,955,292.00 

4-27,258  95 

8,827,758,76 

234.678.27 
1,882.038.38 
385,1 11.18—  $8,162,13754 

$48,918,515.11 

$1,276,026.67 
18,072.074.81 
4.138,065.13 

19,806.940.16 
4,813,000.00 

494.032  23 
510.555.91 
894.8H5.19 
62,424.95 

326,000.06-$48.918,515.11 
1,881,681.71 


CASH  ASSETS,  January  1,  1883,  -  $50,800,396.82 

Appropniated  as  follows: 

Adjusted  losses,  due  subsequent  to  January  1,  1883 $351,451.21 

Reported  losses,  awaiting  proof,  etc 1.S8.970.23 

Matured  endowments,  due  and  unpaid  (claims  not  presented) 5;^.350.43 

Annuities,  due  and  unpaid  (uncalled  for) 6,225.86 

Reserved  for  re-insurance  on  existing  policies  ;   participating  insurance  at  4  per  cent. 

Carlisle  net  premium ;  non-participating  at  5  per  cent.  Carlisle  net  premium 43,174,402.78 

Reserved  for  contingent  liabilities  to  Tontine  Dividend  Fund,  Januarj'l,  1882, 

over  and  above  a  4  per  cent,  reserve  on  existing  policies  of  that  class $2,054,244.03 

Addition  to  the  Fund  during  1SS2  for  surplus  and  matured  reserves l,Ki9,966.00 

DEDUCT-  $S,1C4.210J:3 

Returned  to  Tontine  policy-holders  during  the  year  on  Matured  Tontines. ..  1,072,S87.87 

Balance  of  Tontine  Fund  January  1,  1883 2,091.872.16 

Reserved  for  premiums  paid  in  advance 85,782.86 

$45,851,555.03 

DIVISIBLE  SURPLUS  at  4  per  cent  4,948,841.79 

Surplus  by  New  York  State  Standard  at  4J  per  cent.,  estimated  at 10,000,000.00 

From  the  undivided  surplus  of  $4,948,841  the  Board  of  Trustees  has  decLired  a  Reversionary  dividend  to  participat- 
ing policies  in  proportion  to  their  contribution  to  surplus,  available  on  settlement  of  next  annual  premium. 
During  the  year  13,178  policies  have  been  issued,  insuring  $41,325,520. 


Number  of  Policies 

in  Force. 
Jan.  1,1 879..  45,005. 
Jan.  1,1880.. 45.705. 
Jan.  1,1 881..  48,548. 
Jan.  1,1 882..  58,927. 
Jan.  1,1883..  60,150. 


Amount  at  Risk. 

Jan.  1, 1879. .  .$12.').2S2.144. 
Jan.  1,1880...  127.417.763. 
Jan.  1,1881...  13.').726.916. 
Jan.  1,1882...  151,760.824. 
Jan.  1,1888...  171,415,097. 


Death-claims  Paid. 

1878 $1,687,676. 

1879 1,569.8.54. 

laSO 1.731.721. 

1881   ....  2.018.208. 
1882 1,955,292. 


Income  from  Inter- 
est. 

1878 $1,948,665. 

1879 2,0.3;i6.50. 

1880 2.317,889. 

1881 2,4.^2.654. 

1882.....  2,798,018. 


MoBRis  Franklin, 
W.VI.  H.  Appleton, 
William  Barton, 
William  A.  Booth, 


H.  B.  Claflin, 
John  M.  Furman, 
David  Dows, 
Henry  Bowers, 


TRUSTEES 

LooMis  L.  White. 
Robert  B.  Collins, 
S.  S.  Fisher, 
Chas.  Wkight,  M.  D., 


Wii.LUM  H.  Beers, 
EnwARn  Martin, 
John  Mairs. 
Henry  TrcK,  M.  D., 


Divisible  Surplus  at  4 

per  cent. 
Jan.  1,1879..  $2,811,436. 
Jan.  1,1880..  8,120.871. 
Jan.  1,1881..  4.29.Vt96. 
Jan.  1,1882..  4.827.036. 
Jan.  1,1883..  4,948,841. 


Alex.  Sttdwell, 
R.  SrYDAM  Grant, 
Archibald  H.  Welch. 


THEODOBE  M.  BANTA,  Cashier. 
D.  O'DELL,  Superintendent  of  Agencies. 
CHARLES  WRIGHT,  M.D.,  |  „   ,.     ,  ^^„    .„„  „ 
HENRY  TUCK,  M.  D.,  [Medical  Exammera. 


MORRIS  FRANKLIN,   President. 
WILLIAM  H.  BEERS  vice  Pres.  and  Actuary. 


WILLIAM  KNABE  &  CO.'S 


PIANO    FACTORY. 

These  Tnstrnments  have  been  before  the  public  for  nearly  fifty  years,  and  upon  their  excellence  alone  have 
i*^tained  an  unpurchased  pi^e-eminence,  which  establishes  them  as  unequaled  in  Tone,  Touch,  Workman- 
ship, and  Durahility.  Every  Piano  fully  warranted  for  five  years.  Prices  greatly  reduced.  Illustrated 
Jatalogues  and  Price-Lists  promptly  furnished  on  application. 

"WILLIAM    KNABE    &    CO., 


112  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York. 


204  &  206  ¥.  Baltimore  St.,  Baltimore. 


Reii]ii]gtoi]*t'  Staiidard  •!*%pe-inriter. 


THE  STANDARD  WRITING-MACHINE 
OF  THE  WORLD. 


Bugy  people  appreciate  the  saving  of  time 
which  is  effected  by  the  use  of  the  Type- 
Writer. 

Moreover,  it  relieves  the  operator  from  the  fatigue  incident  to  pen- 
writing. 
Its  work  is  so  clear  and  neat  that  it  prevents  any  mistakes  on  the  part 

of  the  compositors  or  others  in  reading  manuscripts. 
It  facilitates  composition. 

All  classes  of  business  and  professional  men  throughout  the  world  are 
using  the  machine  with  the  greatest  satisfaction. 


SEND  FOR  NEW  ILLUSTRATED  PAMPHLET,   WITH  TESTIMONIALS. 


Wyckoff,  Seamans,  &  Benedict, 


281  &  283  Broadway,  New  York. 


Winter:  Its  Risks  and  its  Dangers. 


We  are  now  in  the  season  when  a  large  number 
of  persons  And  it  difficult  to  escape  the  contraction 
of  colds,  which  too  olten  extend  to  the  throat  and 
lungs,  or  result  in  attacks  of  Neurali^ia,  Catarrh,  or 
Rheumatistn.  A  special  danger  having  its  origin 
here  is  in  Acute  Pneumonia,  which  numbers  so  many 
victims  every  winter.  How  to  certainly  guard  against 
colds  is  considered  an  unsolved  problem,  even  in  the 
medical  profession. 

Writers  on  hygiene  give  various  rules  and  sugges- 
tions, some  of  them  excellent,  through  tlie  careful 
observance  of  which  people  arvi  promised  exemption 
from  colds.  But,  do  what  we  will,  be  as  careful  and 
prudent  as  we  may,  colds  will  be  taken,  the  "  how  " 
and  the  "  wheu  "  being  often  a  mystery,  as  every 
one  who  reads  this  knows  too  well. 

Now,  from  our  experience  of  over  thirteen  years, 
we  can  confidently  offer  Compound  Oxygen  as  an  al- 
most certain  protection  from  colds,  and  as  a  sure 
means  of  breaking  them  up  when  contracted. 

In  that  rapidly-developing  and  too  often  fatal  dis- 
ease, P^fEaMONIA,  we  are  warranted  from  this  expe- 
rience in  saying  that  it  can  be  arrested  and  cured,  in 
nine  cases  outoften.,  if  a  prompt  resort  is  had  to  Coin- 
pound  Oxygen. 

In  Neuhalgia  our  Treatment  rarely  fails  to  give 
immediate  relief,  and,  if  its  use  is  continued,  to 
eradicate  the  dis;!ase. 

In  the  case  of  a  lady,  whose  husband  wrote  to  us, 
giving  her  condition,  the  neuralgic  headache  wis  al- 
ien led  u'ith  the  most  intense  suffering.  On  th'i  subsi- 
dence of  pain  her  hands  would  get  numb  and  un- 
contrcllable,  and  she  would  lose,  for  a  time,  the 
power  of  speech.  In  a  month  after  commencing  the 
use  of  Compound  Oxygen  her  husband  wrote  : 

"  Since  my  wife  commenced  the  use  of  Compound 
Oxygen  she  has  not  had  an  attack  of  headache.  She 
was  threatened  once  or  twice,  but  it  passed  off,  and 
she  tehs  me  to-day  that  her  head  feels  clearer  and 
more  natural  now  than  it  has  since  she  commenced  to 
suffer  with  the  neuralgia.  Since  writing  you  last, 
her  side,  especially  the  numbness,  is  much  better ; 
in  fact,  the  numbness  and  pain  then  complained  of 
are  gone.  We  feel  happy  that  we  were  induced  to  try 
your  Treatment,  and  think  that  it  has  saved  my  w?je 
from  the  grave  or  the  asylum,  to  one  of  which  she 
certainly  would  have  gone  had  relief  not  been  found.'"' 

Another  of  the  diseases  to  the  contraction  of 
which  we  are  exposed  in  winter  is  Cataiirh.  An 
ordinary  "cold  in  the  head"  is  an  acute  attack  of 
nasal  catarrh.  The  mucaus  membrane  linini,'  the 
nasal  passages  at  first  becomes  ccmgested,  and  s  > 
swollen  that  the  passages  are  filled  by  it ;  the  "nose 
is  stuffed  up,"  the  passagf-s  are  dry  and  heated,  and, 
of  course,  very  uncomfortable  (sometimes  a  scald- 
ing water  runs  from  it).  In  a  few  days  the  inflam- 
mation subsides,  a  reaction  takes  place,  and  the  en- 


gorged glands  relieve  themselves  by  flooding  the 
membrane  with  a  thick,  opaque  semi-fluid,  which  is 
very  different  from  tlie  transparent  normal  mucus. 
Other  changes  take  place  in  the  direction  of  health, 
and  the  parts  return  slowly  toward  their  natural 
state,  which  they  may  completely  attain  ;  but,  if  con- 
ditions favor  it,  the  increased  secretion  of  mucus 
may  continue  for  a  long  time  ;  and  this  is  Chronic 
Catarrh. 

Catarrh  presents  different  phases,  according  to 
the  locality  of  the  membrane  affected.  This  fact  has 
given  rise  to  many  iiamrs  of  diseases  which  are 
supposed  to  be  very  unlike  each  other. 

Almost  everybody  understands  by  the  word 
Catarrh  an  affection  of  the  mucous  membrane 
which  lines  the  passages  of  the  nose.  This  is  be- 
cause that  form  of  it  is  not  only  the  most  prevalent, 
but  also  the  most  apparent  to  the  senses  The  other 
varieties  of  catarrh  take  diflerent  names  according 
to  the  different  parts  of  the  body  aftected  ;  hence 
we  have  laryngeal,  bronchial,  intestinal,  gastiic 
catarrh,  etc. 

This  affection  of  the  mucous  membrane,  wherever 
located,  is  a  sluggish  disease,  as  any  one  who  re- 
members the  tedious  process  of  getting  well  over  a 
severe  influenza  can  testify.  Hence,  the  tenacity 
with  which  it  sometimes  resists  the  action  of  the 
best  remedial  application  is  truly  wonderful. 

The  results  which  have  followed  our  treatment  of 
the  disease  with  "  Compound  Oxygen  "  are  of  the 
most  gratifyiiig  character.  Ca^es  wnich  had  for 
years  defied  all  other  curative  airents  have  yielded 
quickly  under  the  effect  of  Oxygen. 

As  in  the  case  of  throat  and  lung  disease,  neu- 
ralgia and  rheumatism,  our  Treatment  will  not  only 
put  the  system  in  a  condition  to  prevent,  in  most 
cases,  the  taking  of  a  "cold  in  the  head,"  but,  when 
taken  promptly,  will  arrest  its  progress. 

"An  ounce  of  j)revention  is  worth  a  pound  of 
cure."  If  you  are  liable  tf>  take  cold  you  can  have 
the  ounce  of  "  prevention"  if  you  will.'  If  you  have 
taken  a  cold,  and  are  threatened  with  any  one  of  the 
many  diseases  which  have  their  oriiiin  in  colds,  the 
ounce  of  "prevention"  is  within  your  reach  if  you 
choose  to  avail  yourself  of  it.  The  question  as  to 
whether  Compound  Oxygen  will  remove  the  liability 
to  take  cold,  or  break  up  a  cold  prompUy  alter  it  has 
set  in,  is  no  longer  an  open  one.  The  result  of  our 
long  administration  of  this  remarkable  substance  has 
settled  it  beyond  a  doubt. 

With  a  "  Home  Treatment "  of  Compound  Oxy- 
gen in  the  house,  to  be  used  whenever  any  one  con- 
tracts a  cold,  the  membtrs  of  almost  any  family  may 
pass  through  a  winter  and  escape  the  many  risks  and 
dangers  from  disease  that  attend  that  inclernent  sea- 
son. In  saying  this,  we  speak  as  well  from  our 
knowlcdse  of  the  peculiar  action  of  the  Treatment 
as  from  the  results  in  hundreds  of  cases  which  have 
come  under  our  care. 


Our  Treatise  on  Compound  Oxygen  is  sent  free  of  charge.  It  contains  a  history  of  the  dis- 
covery, nature,  and  action  of  this  new  remedy,  and  a  record  of  many  of  the  remarkable  results 
which  have  so  far  attended  its  use. 

Dkposito:iy  in  New  York  — Dr.  John  Turner,  862  Broadway,  who  has  charge  of  our  De- 
pository in  Xew  York  city,  will  fill  orders  for  the  Compound  Oxygen  Treatment,  and  may  bo 
consulted  by  letter  or  in  person. 

Depository  on  Pacific  Coast. — II.  E.  Mathews,  606  ]\Iontgomery  Street,  San  Francisco, 
California,  will  fill  orders  for  the  Compound  O.wgen  Treatment  on  Pacific  Coast. 

Frauds  and  Imitations. — Let  it  be  clearly  understood  that  Compound  Oxygen  is  only  made 
and  dispensed  by  the  undersigned.  Any  substance  made  elsewhere,  and  called  Compound  Oxy- 
gen, is  spurious  and  worthless,  and  those  who  bw/  it  simply  throw  away  their  money,  as  they  will 
in  the  end  discover. 


Drs. 


G.  R.  STAKKEY,  A.  M.,  M.  D. 
G.  E.  PALEN,  Ph.  B.,  M.  D. 


STARKEY  &   PALEN, 

1109  &  nil  Girard  St.  (between  Chestnut  and  Market), 
PHILADELPHIA,    PA. 


Vol.  XXIV.] 


POPULAR  SCMCB 
lOSTHLT. 

CONDUCTED  BY  E.  L.  AND  W.  J.  Y0UMAN8. 

CONTENTS.  j.^g^ 

I.  From  Moner  to  Man.     By  Fraxces  Emily  White,  M.  D 577 

II.  College  Athletics.    II.    By  Prof essor  E.  L.  Richards.    (Illus.).  587 

III.  Green  Suns  and  Red  Sunsets.     By  W.  H.  Larrabee 598 

IV.  The  Ancestry  of  Birds.     By  Professor  Grant  Allex 606 

•         V.  Mexico  and  its  Antiquities.     (Illustrated.) 618 

VI.  The  Remedies  of  Nature. — Catarrh,  Pleurisy,  Croup.    By  Felix 

L.  Oswald,  M.  D 628 

VII.  Study — Physiologically  considered.     By  Dr.  P.  J.  Higgins 639 

VIII.  Fashion  and  Deformity  in  the  Feet.    By  Ada  H.  Kepley.    (111.).  645 

IX.  On  Rainbows.     By  John  Tyndall,  F.  R.  S 659 

X.  Science  versus  the  Classics.     By  Professor  C.  A.  Eggert 674 

XL  The  Jury  System.     By  Henry  H.  Wilson 676 

XII.  The  Chemistry  of  Cookery.     By  W.  Mattieit  Williams 686 

XIII.  Science  and  Safety  at  Sea.     By  Richard  A.  Proctor 692 

XIV.  Sketch  of  Ormsby  Macknight  Mitchel.     (With  Portrait.) 695 

XV.   Correspondence  :  Mosquitoes  and  Malaria. — A  Reply  to  Editorial  Statements.  700 

XVI.   Editor's  Table  :   Collegiate  Influence  upon  the  Lower  Education 702 

XVII.  Literary  Notices , 706 

XVIII.  Popular  Miscellany ...  714 

XIX.  Notes 719 

NEW   YORK: 
D.     APPLETON      AND      COMPANY, 

1,  3,   AND    5    BOND    street. 
Single  Number,  50  Cents.  Yearly  Subscription,  §5.00. 

CopYKifiHT  BT  D.  APPLETON  AND  CO.,  18S4. 
Entered  at  the  Post-OflSce  at  New  York,  and  admitted  for  transmission  through  the  mails  at  eecond-class  rates. 


TWENTY-FOURTH  ANNUAL  STATEMENT  OF  THE 

WASHINGTON  LIFE  INSURANCE  CO. 

W.  A.  BREWER,  Jr.,  President. 

Net  assets,  December  31.  1S82 $6,095,189  87 

Receipts  during  the  year  for  premiums $1,347,955  29 

For  interest,  rents,  etc 446.99S  07 

— 1,794,953  86 


DiSBrRSEMENTS :  $7,890,143  23 

Claims  by  death $331.677  70 

Matured  and  discounted  endowments 135,S4l  49 

Surrendered  policies,  cash  dividends,  and  return  premiums 502.777  70 

Annuities 2,756  98 


Total  paid  policy-holders $973,053  87 

Taxes  11,998  80 

Coramuteil  Commissions  25,366  89 

ProfitandLoss 27,198  20 

Dividends  to  stockholders 8,636  25 

Expenses,  rent,  commission,  salaries,  postage,  advertising,  medical  examina- 
tions, etc - 256,020  14 


1,302.264  15 


Net  Assets,  December  31,  1883 $6,587,879  08 


ASSETS. 

United  States  and  Xew  York  City  stocks $709,703  42 

Bonds  and  mortgages,  being  firstliens  on  real  esute    5,186.115  67 

Eeal  estate  ....  .^ 443.99664 

Cash  on  hand  in  banks  and  Trust  Company ^t^-^^  ^^ 

Loans  on  collaterals 7S.73S  16 

Agents"  balances 2s,278  8S 

$6,587,879  08 

Add  excess  of  market  value  of  stocks  over  cost 156.546  58 

Market  value  real  estate  in  excess  of  cost  as  per  department  valuation 22.902  81 

Interest,  ^crued,  and  due  and  unpaid 49,507  97 

Deferred  and  unpaid  premiums  less  20  twenty  per  cent 190,049  01 

Gross  Assets,  December  31,  1883 «i7,006,885  45 

'  LIABILITIES. 

Reserve  bv  New  York  Standard  Company's  valuation $6,015,344  00 

Unsettled  "claims 71,789  22 

Premiums  paid  in  advance 3,S80  7T 

Unpaid  dividends  to  stockholders 8S5  00 

Unpaid  expenses , 2.041  68 

Surplus  as  regards  policy-holders 913,544  78 

$7,006,885  45 

Policies  issued  in  1883 2.644 

Amount  of  insurance  in  18S3 $6,889,470 

Total  immber  of  policies  in  force 14425 

Total  amount  insured,  with  additions 31,994,723 

W.  HAXTUN,  Vice-Pres.  and  Sec'y.  I.  C.  PIERSON,  Actuary. 

CYRTJS  MUNN,  Assistant  Sec'y.  B.  W.  McCREADY,  M.D.,  Medical  Examiner. 

E.  S.  FRENCH.  Sup't  of  Agencies.  FOSTER  &  THOMSON,  Attorneys. 

QUESTIONS  OF  VITAL  INTEREST  TO  INSURERS. 

Do  the  policies  of  any  other  Companif  in  a  plain  statement^  or  by  implication^  provide 
for  tJie  application  of  dividends  to  prevent  policies  from  lapsing,  if  premiums  are  not  paid 
when  due?  r  r  j  .  THEY  DO  NOT. 

Do  the  laws  of  any  State,  or  the  policies  of  any  other  Company,  provide  for  the  applica- 
tion of  dividends  to  prevent  policies  from  lapsing  if  premiums  are  not  paid  irhen  due? 

Do  the  policies  of  any  other  Company,  or  the  laws  of  any  State,  compel  a  Company 
to  receive  a  premium  overdue  upon  a  policy,  without  a  medical  re-examination,  as  long  as 
any  dividend  remains  to  its  credit  ?  THEY  DO  NOT. 

Do  the  policies  of  any  other  Company,  or  the  laws  of  any  State,  compel  a  Company  to 
ptay  the  full  amount  of  the  policy  after  payment  of  one  year's  premium,  shotdd  the  second 
yearns  premium  he  overdue  and  unpaid  at  the  time  of  death,  when  there  are  dividends  stand- 
ing to  the  credit  of  the  policy?  THEY  DO  NOT. 

No  intelligerU  man  icill  question  this  fact:   The  non- forfeitable  dividend  protection  in  the 

pohcice  issued  ty  THE   WASHINGTON 

is  not  furnished  in  the  policies  of  any  other  Company,  nor  by  the  laws  of  any  State  ;  there- 

^''''  THE   WASHINGTON 

gives  the  most  insurance  for  the  money,  and  its  policies  are  the  cheapest  and  the  best. 


WILLIAM   KNABE   &  CO.'S 


PIANO    FACTORY, 

These  Instrnments  have  been  before  the  public  for  nearly  fifty  years,  and  upon  their  excellence  alone  have 
attained  an  unpurchased  pre-eminence,  which  establishes  them  as  unequaled  in  Tone,  Touch,  "Workman- 
ship, and  Durability.  Every  Piano  fully  warranted  for  five  years.  Prices  greatly  reduced.  Ilhistrated 
Catalogues  and  Price-Lists  promptly  furnished  on  application. 


WILLIAM 

112  Pifth  Avenue,  New  York. 


KNABE    &>    CO., 

204  &  206  W.  Baltimore  St.,  Baltimore. 


^en]ingtoi]  •!•  Standard  v^pe-lllriter. 


THE  STANDARD  WRITING-MACHINE 
OF  THE  WORLD. 


Busy  people  appreciate  the  saving  of  time 
which  is  effected  by  the  use  of  the  Type- 
Writer. 

Moreover,  it  relieves  the  operator  from  the  fatigue  incident  to  pen- 
writing. 
Its  work  is  so  clear  and  neat  that  it  prevents  any  mistakes  on  the  part 

of  the  compositors  or  others  in  reading  manuscripts. 
It  facilitates  composition. 

All  classes  of  business  and  professional  men  throughout  the  world  are 
using  the  machine  with  the  greatest  satisfaction. 


SEND  FOR  NEW  ILLUSTRATED  PAMPHLET   WITH  TESTIMONIALS. 


Wyckoff,  Seamans,  &  Benedict, 


281  &  283  Broadway,  New  York. 


THREE  REMARKABLE  CASES. 


A  PHYSICIAN'S  ESTIMATE. 

Dr.  John  W,  Williamson,  of  Danville,  Va.,  has 
been  using  Compound  Oxygen  in  his  own  ca!<e  and 
in  a  number  of  castes  which  he  was  not  able  to  cure 
u«der  ordinary  medical  treatment.  Writing  to  us 
in  regard  to  hi^  estimate  of  the  value  of  Compound 
Oxygen,  and  of  his  tneory  as  to  the  laws  governing 
its  action,  he  says  : 

"  On  this  hypothesis  cmly  can  I  account^or  t?ie 
extensive  and  remarkabte  curative  powers  of  your 
Treatment ;  for  it  is  certainly  tft£  mod  valuable  and 
reliable  treatment  I  know  in  all  chronic  diceases. 
It  cures  diseases  of  different  types  from  the  special 
diseases  for  which  it  is  prescribed,  as  in  my  own 
case.  For  twenty-five  yaars  I  had  suffered  with 
haemorrhoids,  which  had  resi8t:ed  all  treatment,  and 
1  never  expected  to  be  relieved,  but  to  my  6urprisf>, 
after  I  teas  cured  of  my  bronchial  and  lung  trouble 
by  the  use  of  your  Treatment  for  three  weeks,  I 
found  myself  entirely  relieved  of  piles,  and  they 
have  not  returned. 

"It  is  my  opinion,"  savs  Dr.  Williamson, 
"formed  from  close  observations  of  the  nervous 
system  in  a  long  protet'sional  career,  that  something 
like  your  Oxygen  Treatment  ought  to  be  introduced 
for  the  relief  of  diseases.  .  .  .  Humanity  is  nnder 
inestimable  obligations  to  you  for  the  introduction  of 
a  treatment  so  valuable  to  cure  them. 

'•  1  am  now  treating  three  cases  of  paralysis,  two 
of  which  have  improved  in  a  week." 

The  following  appeared  in  the  editorial  columns 
of  the  Salem  (Mass.)  Observer,  November  10,  1883, 
written  by  one  of  the  proprietors  of  that  journal : 

A  STATEMENT. 

"  The  writer  desires  to  call  the  attention  of  the 
readers  of  the  Observer  to  an  article  known  as  '  Com- 
pound Oxygen,'  manufactured  and  sold  by  Drs. 
Starkey  &  Palen,  of  Philadelphia.  These  gentle- 
men are  not  quacks,  but  intelligent  physicians,  who 
are  held  in  hish  esteem  in  the  circle  of  their  ac- 
cjuiiintances.  The  article  which  they  manufacture 
is  not  a  medicine,  exce[)t  in  the  sense  that  it  is  a 
remedy  for  disease.  It  is  not  a  drug,  but  oxygen 
that  can  be  inhaled  with  even  better  results  tiiau  one 
may  derive  from  breathini'-  pure  mountain  air. 

•*  Tlie  writer  speaks  fro;n  personal  knoA  ledge, 
having  8ou'.:ht  relief  from  nervous  prostration  for  a 
numl)er  of  years  by  the  methods  ordinarily  em- 
ployed. Temporary  relief  was  sometimes  obtained, ' 
but  nothing  permamnt  was  efected  until  he  was  in- 
duced to  try  '  Compound  Oxygen.''  The  relief  af- 
forded by  this  remidy  was  so  unconscious  and  effect- 
ual in  its  opzration  that  even  now  it  excites  a  fesling 
ofwowler  and  mystery.  The  apoetite  was  improved, 
sound  and  restful  sleep  was  induced,  and  a  general 
toning  up  of  the  whole  system  was  the  result,  until 
my  weight  was  irreater  than  ever  before,  and  7vhere 
work  had  bee-i  for  months  a  heavy  burden,  it  is  now 
accomplish",  I  ivith  comparative  ea^e  and  pleamre. 
These  results  continue  after  a  long  abstinence  from 
the  use  of  I'omp&und  O.^ygen. 

'•  Tliis  is  notapaid  notice.  The  writer  never  has, 
and  never  will  receive  any  personal  benefit  from  it. 


It  is  written  without  the  advice  or  knowledge  of  any 
one.  in  the  interest  of  any  reader  of  the  '  Observer ' 
who  may  have  been  iivable  to  obtain  relief  by  the  use 
of  ordinary  remedies.  Any  lurther  information  will 
be  cheerfully  given  by  the  writer,  or  t^ucli  informa- 
tion may  be  secured  by  addressing  the  parties  above 
named.  F.  A.  Fielden." 

We  copy  from  the  Spencer  (Indiana)  Fepublican 
of  November  14,  1883.  an  accoui.t.  written  by  the 
editor,  of  the  remarkable  recovery  of  a  lady  whose 
case  was  considered  hopeless,  her  physicians  hav- 
ing given  her  up  to  die.  The  statement  is  so  clear, 
emphatic,  and  circurrstantial,  that  no  comment  on 
our  part  is  needed.  If  Compound  Oxygen  will  reach 
a  case  like  this,  what  limit  can  be  assigned  to  itB 
curative  power  ? 

A  REMARKABLE  CASE. 

"  Mrs.  Fleming,  of  Spencer,  had  been  in  declin- 
ins  health  for  twelve  or  fifteen  years.  She  had  suf- 
fered from  dyspepsia,  catarrh,  and  incidentally  from 
other  affections,  and  had  yrown  weaker  gradually 
until  last  spring,  when  she  was  greatly  emaciated 
and  unable  to  stand  up  a  minute  at  a  time.  Her  case 
was  considered  hopeless,  and  she  was  removed  to  her 
father's  in  the  country,  where  it  was  expected  that 
she  wotdd  soon  pass  away  with  consumption.  She 
had  no  appetite  whatever,  and  the  sight  of  food  was 
disgusting.  She  weighed  but  eighty-three  pounds, 
and  was  but  a  shadow  ot  her  former  self.  She  had 
h;id  hectic  fever  for  several  m^iiths,  and  had  been 
given  up  by  her  physicians. 

"  S(mie  time  in  May  she  was  supplied  with  a 
small  part  of  a  Treatment  of  Drs.  Starkey  &  Palen's 
Compound  Oxygen,  with  a  view  of  testing  it  a  few 
days.  and.  if  it  proved  beneficial,  to  procure  a  full 
supply  and  give  it  a  fair  trial.  'Ihe  trial  was  so 
satii?factory  that  in  ten  days  she  sent  to  Philadel- 
phia for  a  Treatment  of  the  Oxygen.  From  the  first, 
such  was  its  peculiarly  sootJiing  and  beneficial  effect, 
she  was  convinced  that  she  had  found  something 
that  would  cure  her,  hopeless  as  her  case  seemed. 
Her  rest  at  night,  which  had  been  broken  by  rest- 
lessness and  loss  of  sleep,  was  improved  from  the 
first,  and  in  less  than  a  week  she  began  to  hove  a  de- 
sire and  relish  for  food.  Gradually  a  decided  im- 
provement in  other  respects  was  plainly  lercepiible. 

'•  This  Treatment  lasted  her  over  three  months. 
In  the  mean  time  she  had  gained  fo^tr  orfve  jovnds 
in  weight,  and  had  returned  to  her  home  in  Spencer. 
She  is  now  taking  the  second  Treatment,  and  her 
imj,rovemcnt  is  even  more  ncficealle  than  during  the 
first.  She  has  a  healthier  color  than  for  yea  is  past. 
While  she  is  not  yet  well,  she  is  confident  that  in 
time  the  Oxygen  will  effect  a  permanent  cure. 

"  It  has  been  a  slow  return  to  health,  tut  it  must 
be  remembered  that  the  decline  had  been  slow  and 
insidious,  and  that  her  case  was  thought  to  have 
been  beyond  the  reach  of  medical  science  when  she 
began  the  use  of  the  Compound  Oxygen,  and  that 
any  recovery  in  a  case  so  desperate  must  be  regarded 
as  almost  miraculous. 

"  The  above  account  can  be  verified  at  any  time  by 
any  one  desiring  to  do  fo.  We  beueve  it  is  not  over- 
drawn,  but  rattier  understated." 


Our  Treatise  on  Compound  Oxysen  is  se^t  free  of  charge.  It  contains  a  history  of  the  discovery,  nature,  and 
action  of  this  now  remedy,  and  a  record  of  many  of  the  remnrkable  r^sult^  which  have  so  far  attended  its  use. 

Dehository  in  Nrw  Yo"k.— Dr.  John  Turrier.  802  l^roadway,  who  has  ch.irge  of  our  Iicpository  in  New  York 
city,  will  fill  orders  for  the  Compound  Oxygen  Treatment,  and  inay  be  consulted  by  letter  or  in  person. 

Depository  on  PAciFtr  Coast.— H.  E.  Mathews.  GO  Montgomery  Street,  San  Francisco,  Calilornia.  will  fill 
orders  for  the  Compound  Oxygen  Treatment  on  Pa<^ific  Coast. 

Frauds  and  Imitations— Let  it  be  ci°arly  understood  that  Compound  Oxygen  is  only  made  and  dispensed 
by  the  undersigned.  Any  substance  mads  elsewhere,  and  called  (Compound  Oxytren,  is  spurious  and  worthless, 
and  those  who  buy  it  simply  thiow  away  their  money,  as  they  will  in  the  end  discover. 


Drs. 


G.  R.  STARKEY.  A.  M.,  M.  D. 
Q.  E.  PALEN,  Ph.B.,M.D. 


STARKEY  &L   PALEN, 

1109  &  nil  Girard  St  (hd^m  Chestnut  and  Market), 
PHILADELPHIA,   PA. 


Vol.  XXIV.]  April,/188^.  ,,^.e=^w^     ^><\      [No.  VI. 


POPULAR 


PAGE 


MOflTHLT. 

CONDUCTED  BY  E.  L.  AND  W.  J.  YOUMANS. 

CONTENTS. 

I.  The  Coining  Slavery.     By  Herbert  Spencer 721 

II.  The  Electric  Railway.    By  Lieut.  Bradley  A.  Fiske.     (Illus.).  742 

III.  Photographing  a  Streak  of  Lightning.   By  G.  Tissandier.    (111.).  752 

IV.  Methods  of  Instruction  in  Mineralogy.    By  M.  E.  Wadsworth.  754 
V.  Physiological  Significance  of  Vital  Force.      By  William  G. 

Stevenson,  M.  D 760 

VI.  The  Chemistry  of  Cookery.     By  W.  Mattieu  Williams 773 

VII.  A  Defense  of  Modern  Thought.     By  William  D.  Le  Sueur.  .  780 

VIIL  The  Faculty  of  Speech.     By  Dr.  E.  F.  Brush 793 

IX.  Biblical  and  Modern  Leprosy.     By  George  H.  Fox,  M.  D 797 

X.  The  Remedies  of  Nature. — Miscellaneous.     By  Dr.  Oswald.  . .  800 

XL  The  Morality  of  Happiness.     By  Thomas  Foster 808 

XII.  Why  the  Eyes  of  Animals  shine  in  the  Dark.     By  Swan  M. 

Burnett,  M.D.     (Illustrated.) 813 

XIII.  Prehistoric  Art  in  America.      By  the  Marquis  de  Nadaillac  . .  818 

XIV.  Recent  Geological  Changes  in  Western  Michigan.     By  C.  W. 

Wooldridge,  B.  S 826 

XV.  Sketch  of  August  Wilhelm    Hofmann.      By  E.  J.  Hallock, 

Ph.  D.     (With  Portrait.) 831 

XVI.   Correspondence  :  Old  Stump-Wells  in  the  Mississippi  "  Bottom."— Work  of 

Shod  and  Unshod  Horses. — American  Loess-Deposits 836 

XVII.   Editor's  Table  :   The  "  Edinburgh  Review  "  on  the  Spencerian  Philosophy .  .  839 

XVIII.  Literary  Notices 844 

XIX.  Popular  Miscellany 855 

XX.  Notes 863 

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PEEIAIEIT  RESULT  11  A  CASE 
OE  TUEEECULOSIS. 


The  following  report  of  the  caie  of  a  gentle- 
man whose  phj'sicians  had  ordered  him  to 
leave  England  on  account  of  Tuberculosis,  and 
seek  a  climate  more  favorable  for  the  disease 
from  which  he  was  suffering,  is  a  very  remark- 
able one.  He  made  his  way  to  Colorado,  but 
found  that  the  air  of  that  high  region  did  not 
suit  him.  Hearing  of  the  Oxygen  Treatment, 
he  wrote  to  Drs.  Starkey  &  Palen,  of  Phila- 
delphia, and  obtained  a  supply.  In  January, 
18 S3,  two  months  after  commencing  its  use, 
he  reported  the  result  as  highly  favorable. 
We  make  an  extract  from  his  letter : 


"  Almost  from  the  first  your  Oxygen  did  me  per- 
ceptible good.  I  slspi  better,  appetite  iricreased,  di- 
gestion improved.  I  felt  more  hopeful  and  life 
seemed  brighter.  There  were  times,  however,  when 
the  Oxygen  did  not  seem  to  be  of  any  service  at  all, 
but,  halving  been  warned  in  your  pamphlet  of  these 
times,  I  was  not  afraid.  2  persevered  with  your 
Treatment,  and  have  been  rewarded. 

"After  some  six  weeks'  Treatment,  I  began  to 
improvs  with,  marvelous  rapidity.  1  seemed  to  bound 
forwiird  into  new  life.  My  color  returned,  I  gained 
flesh  and  strength,  my  spirits  rose,  the  effect  of  ten 
years'  overwork  disappeared,  and  I  was  awake— 
aiive  again. 

"  A.nd  these  pleasant  sensations  are  warranted 
by  the  physician's  recent  examination.  He  says 
the  chest  is  filling  out,  particularly  under  the  shoul- 
der-blades— a  good  sign.  Respecting  the  lung,  he 
says  thare  is  just  one  little  spot  that  does  not  sound 
quite  well,  but  the  diflference  is  so  slight  that  it  can 
only  be  detected  by  a  very  quick  ear.  The  doctor 
added  that  he  knew  of  a  number  of  cases  where  Oxy- 
gen had  been  a  signal  benefit,  and  hs  believed  that 
Starkey  and  Palen  toere  doing  much  good. 

"How  thankful  lam  for  this  happy  change  in 
my  condition  can  not  be  expressed.  I  shall  ever 
acknowledge  my  indebtness  to  you,  and  do  my  best 
to  spread  the  knowledge  of  your  Treatment.  It  has 
given  me  a  Merry  Chridmas,  and  made  me  look  hope- 
fully for  a  happy  New  Year.''' 


was  written,  we  had  another  report,  in  which 
he  says : 

"  This  morning  I  saw  my  doctor,  and  barton  to 
give  you  the  gratifying  result  of  his  examination  : 

"First  for  the  heart :  The  vcdvular  dii^turbance 
has  been  quite  removed,  but  there  is  a  eiight  un- 
steadiness.   Pulse  lull  and  stnmg. 

"  The  lung  has  quite  cleared,  with  the  exception 
of  a  small  spot  at  tlie  apex,  which  has  shrunk  a  lit- 
tle. I  said,  •  Well,  doctor,  suppose  I  was  examined 
by  a  stranger,  could  he.  excepting  the  shrunken 
spot,  toll  whether  I  had  been  ill?'  The  answer 
was  firm  and  unhesitating:  'No,  and  he  might 
easily  overlook  that  spot.  The  only  difl'erence  is 
that  the  right  breast  is  not  \  et  as  Itill  as  the  other  ; 
that  might  be  detected  by  laying  on  the  hands.* 

"  Can  amjthing  be  more  satisfactory?  Dr.  Andrew 
Clark  (of  London)  has  remarked  of  me  to  my  friends 
there,  that  I  can  not  be  better  yet.  and  what  im- 
provement there  is  he  attributes  to  the  climate, 
not  to  Compound  Oxygen.  Those  on  the  spot  can 
judge  better  than  those  v.ho  are  away.  My  doctor 
here  says,  '  Ck>  ahead  with  Compound  Oxygen.' " 

This  great  improvement,  it  is  gratifying  lo 

know,  has  been  permanent,   as  will  be  seen 

from  the  following  letter,  received  from  him 

under  date  of  October  12,  1883,  a  year  after 

he  began  the  Compound  Oxygen  Treatment 

"  It  is  interesting  to  me  that  a  year  has  just 
elapsed  since  I  began  using  Compound  Oxygen. 
Ill  as  I  was,  the  first  Treatment  effected  the  cure  of 
the  lung.  I  have  taken  two  other  Treatments  to 
make  assurance  doubly  sure,  and  for  the  sake  of 
the  throat,  which,  indeed,  was  progressing  nicely 
until  the  hot  weather  threw  me  down, 

"One  of  its  mo.'t  noteworthy  qualities  is  the 
protection  it  affords  from  cold,  isince  before  last 
Christmas  I  have  hi.d  but  (me  cold,  and  that  re- 
cently, when  I  had  no  Oxygen  to  take  on  the  first 
symptoms  appearing.  The  sweet  sleep  it  gives  is  also 
noteworthy,  and  then  the  improved  breathing  ! 

"  Throuirh  inhaling  Oxygen,  and  the  steady  prac- 
tice of  deep  abdominal  breathing,  the  increase  of 
chest  capacity  is  remarkable.  As  one  who  has  de- 
rived the  greatest  benefit  from  your  discovery,  I  grate- 
fully wish  you  God-speed.'''' 

Nothing  could  be  more  satisfactory  than 

the  results  which   have  followed  the  use  of 


In  February,  two  months  after  the  above  |  Compound  Oxygen  in  this  case. 


Our  Treatise  on  Compound  Oxygen  is  sent  free  of  charge.  It  contains  a  history  of  the  discovery,  nature,  and 
action  of  this  new  remedy,  and  a  record  of  many  of  the  remarkable  results  which  have  so  tar  attended  its  use. 

Depository  in  New  York.— Dr.  John  Turner.  8G2  Broadway,  who  has  charge  of  our  Depository  in  New  York 
city,  will  fill  orders  for  the  Compound  Oxygen  Treatment,  and  may  be  consulted  by  letter  or  in  person. 

Depository  on  Pacific  Coast.— H.  E.  Mathews,  606  Montgomery  Street,  San  Francisco,  California,  will  fill 
orders  for  the  Compound  Oxygen  Treatment  on  Pacific  Coast. 

Frauds  and  Imitations. — Let  it  be  clearly  understood  that  Compound  Oxygen  is  only  made  and  dispensed 
by  the  undersigned.  Any  substance  made  elsewhere,  and  called  Compound  Oxygen,  is  spurious  and  wortJdess, 
and  those  who  buy  it  simply  throw  away  their  money,  as  they  will  in  the  end  discover. 

Drs.    STARKEY  &    PALEN, 


G.  R.  STARKEY,  A.  M.,  M.  D. 
G.  E.  PALEN,  Ph.  B.,  M.  D. 


1109  &  nil  Girard  St  (between  Chestnut  and  Market), 
PHILADELPHIA,    PA. 


WILLIAM   KNABE   &  CO.'S 


PIANO    FACTORY, 

These  Instrnments  have  been  before  the  public  for  nearly  fifty  years,  and  upon  their  excellence  alone  have 
attained  an  unpurchased  pre-eminence.,  which  establishes  them  as  unequaled  in  Tone,  Touch,  Workman- 
ship, and  Durability.  Every  Piano  fully  warranted  for  five  years.  Prices  greatly  reduced,  llhislratcd 
Catalogues  and  Price-Lists  promptly  furnished  on  application. 


112  Pifth  Avenue,  New  York. 


KNABE    &    CO., 

204  &  206  W.  Baltimore  St.,  Baltimore. 


^en]iiigtoi]  •'•  Standard  't'^pe-inriter. 


i^T^f^J' 


THE  STANDARD  WRITING-MACHINE 
OF  THE  WORLD. 


Busy  people  appreciate  the  saving  of  tirae 
which  is  effected  by  the  use  of  the  Type- 
Writer. 

Moreover,  it  relieves  the  operator  from  the  fatigue  incident  to  pen- 
writing. 
Its  work  is  so  clear  and  neat  that  it  prevents  any  mistakes  on  the  part 

of  the  compositors  or  others  in  reading  manuscripts. 
It  facilitates  composition. 

All  classes  of  business  and  professional  men  throughout  the  world  are 
using  the  machine  with  the  greatest  satisfaction. 


SEND  FOR  NEW  ILLUSTRATED  PAMPHLET  WITH  TESTIMONIALS. 


Wyckoff,  Seamans,  &  Benedict, 


281  &  283  Broadway,  New  York. 


THIRTY-NINTH  ANNUAL  REPORT  of  the 

New  York  Life  Insurance  Co. 

Offl.ce.,  Nos,  346  ^  34^8  BroctcLway,  JsT.  Y. 
JANUARY  I,  1884. 

Amount  of  Net  Cash  Assets,  January  1,  1883 S48,918,515.11 

REVENUE   ACCOUNT. 

Premiums $1 1,489.042. 6S 

Less  deferred  premiums  January  1,  1S83 540,555.91— $10,948,486.77 

Interest  and  rents  (including  realized  gains  on  real  estate  sold) 8,088,863.95 

Less  interest  accrued  January  1, 1SS3 826,000.06—    2,712,863.89— $13.€61.850  6i5 

DISBURSEMENT   ACCOUNT.  $63,579,865.77 

Losses  by  death,  including  reversionary  additions  to  same $2,263,092.29 

Endowments,  matured  and  discounted^  including  reversionary  additions  to  same 452,229.80 

Annuities,  dividends,  and  returned  premiums  on  cancelled  policies 8,984,068.31 

Total  paid  Policy-holders $6,699,390.40 

Taxes  and  re-insurances 262.492.91 

Commissions,  brokerages,  agency  expenses,  and  physicians'  fees    1,690.207.13 

OlHce  and  law  expenses,  salaries,  advertising,  printing,  etc 449,925.44 —  19,102,01 5.88 

ASSETS.  »53,47  7,849.89 

Cash  in  bank,  on  hand,  and  in  transit  (since  received) $1,393,615.02 

Invested  in  United  States,  New  York  (.^ty,  and  other  stocks  (market  value,  $25,455,743.81). .  23,390.690.98 

Real  Estate 4.508,779.89 

Bonds  and  mortgages,  first  lien  on  real  estate  (buildings  thereon  insured  for  $18,316,000.00 

and  the  policies  assigned  to  the  Company  as  additional  collateral  security) 20,681.471.72 

Temporary  loans  (secured  by  stocks,  market  value,  $1,624,887.00) 1,893,500.00 

*  Loans  on  existing  policies  (the  reserve  held  by  the  Company  on  these  policies  amounts 

to  $2.570,617.00) 461.445.57 

*  Quarterly  and  semi-annual  premiums  on  existing  policies,  due  subsequent  to  Jan.  1, 1884       &45.047.46 

*  i'remiums  on  existing  policies  in  course  of  transmission  and  collection 536.811.05 

Agents' balances 104,216.55 

Accrued  interest  on  investments  January  1,  1 884 362,272.15— $53,477,8-19.89 

Excess  of  market  value  of  securities  over  cost 2,065.052.83 

*A  detailed  schedule  of  these  items  will  accompany  t'.e  usual  annual  report  filed 

with  the  Insurance  Department  of  the  State  of  New  York.  

CASH  ASSETS,  January  1,  1884,   -  $55,542,902.72 

Appropriated  as  follows : 

Adjusted  losses,  due  subsequent  to  January  1,  1884 $251,403.43 

Reported  losses,  awaiting  proof,  etc 359,368.00 

Matured  endowments,  due  and  unpaid  (claims  not  presented) 29,763.00 

Reserved  for  re-insurance  on  existing  policies;    participating   insurance  at  4  per  cent. 

Carlisle  net  premium ;  non-participating  at  5  per  cent,  drlisle  net  premium 47,635,147.00 

Reserved  for  contingent  liabilities  to  Tontine  Dividend  Fund,  Januarj'  1. 1883. 

over  and  above  a  4  per  cent,  reserve  on  existing  policies  of  that  class $2,091,372.16 

Addition  to  the  Fund  during  1883  for  surplus  and  matured  reserves 1,116,939.00 

DEDUCT-  $^208,811.16 

Returned  to  Tontine  policy-holders  during  the  year  on  Matured  Tontines 972,215.12 

Balance  of  Tontine  Fund  January  1,  1884 .^TTTTTT.     2,236,096.04 

Reserved  for  premiums  paid  in  advance 28,610.48 

«507540,388.55 

DIVISIBLE  SURPI^US  at  4  per  cent  5,002,514.17 

Surplus  by  New  York  State  Standard  at  4i  per  cent.,  estimated  at  over 10,000,000.00 

From  the  undivided  surplus  of  $5,002,514.17  the  Board  of  Trustees  has  declared  a  Reversionary  dividend  to  partici- 
pating policies  in  proportion  to  their  contribution  to  surplus,  available  on  settlement  of  next  annual  premium. 
During  the  year  16,561  policies  have  been  issued,  insuring  S53, 735,564. 


Number  of  Policies 

in  Force. 
Jan.  1,1 880..  45.705. 
Jan.  1,1 881..  48,548. 
Jan.  1,1 882..  53,927. 
Jan.  1,1 883..  60,150. 
Jan.  1,1884..  69,227. 


MoKRis  Franklin, 
Wm.  H.  Appleton, 
William  Barton, 
"W1LLIA.M  A.  BooTn, 


Amount  at  Risk. 


Death-claims  Paid. 


Jan.  1,1880. 
Jan.  1, 1881 . 
Jan.  1,  1882. 
Jan. 1, 1883. 
Jan.  1,  1884. 


.$127,417,763. 
.  135,726.916. 
.  151,760.824. 
.  171.41.5,097. 
.  198,746,013. 


1879 

1880. 

1881. 
1882. 
1888. 


H.  B.  Claflin, 
John  M.  Furman, 
Da  VIP  D0W8, 
IIenky  Bowers, 


.$1,569.S.M. 
..  1.731.721. 
.  2.013.203. 
,  .  1,9.5.5.202. 
^2,263,092^ 

TRUSTEES: 

L00MI8  L.  White, 
RoKKRT  B.  Collins, 

S.    S.    FiSIIKR, 

Enw'ARD  Martin, 


ncome  from  Inter- 
est 

.$2,033,650. 
.  2,.31 7,889. 
.  2,432.6,54. 
.  2,798,018. 
.  2,712,863. 


1879. 
1880. 

1881 . 
1882. 
1888. 


John  Mairs, 
Henry  TrcK.  M.  D., 
Alex.  Sttdwell, 
K.  PrvPAM  C.i:ant, 


Divisible  Surplus  at  4 

oer  cent. 
Jan.  1,1880..  $3,120,371. 
Jan.  1, 1881 . .  4.29.5.096. 
Jan.  1,1882..  4,827.0,36. 
Jan.  1,  1888  .  4.948.841. 
Jan.  1,1884..  5.002..514. 


Archibald  IT.  Welch, 
William  H.  Beers. 


THEODOKE  M.  BaNTA,  Cashier. 

O.  O'DELL,  Superintendent  of  Agencies. 


HENRY  TUCK,  M.D., 
A.  HUNTINGTON.  M.D., 


Medical  Examiners. 


MORRIS  FRANKLIN,  President. 
WILLIAM  H.  BEERS,  Vice-Pres.  and  Actuary. 
HENRY  TUCK,  Second  Vice-President. 


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